With drought continuing to plague the Hill Country, one local developer has offered to step up and provide local firefighters and wildfire responders access to retained rainwater free of charge.
Ben Wolff is building an equestrian center off a 60-acre tract of land on Sisterdale Road in Sisterdale, where he has plans for 90,000 to 95,000 square feet of rooftop. This could lead to large amounts of collectable rainwater, which inspired Wolff to reach out to the local fire departments for free access to the increasingly valuable and scarce resource.
“The fire department is probably 300 yards down from our facility, so we drive by it all the time,” Wolff told The Star. “And just thinking about the drought and the increasing risk of fire and just the fires we’ve seen this summer, we went to their benefit auction they had a couple weeks ago, and that’s where I said, ‘Let’s just see if they’d like to have access to it if that’s something the community could benefit from.’ And he (Sisterdale VFD Chief Brian Reilly) was pretty excited about it.”
