Patricia Scheumack, with her husband Mason, spent about six weeks shoveling about a ton of gravel, silt and trash from a 6-foot crevice to uncover a spring that flows into the Salado Creek.

In most cases, Scheumack’s hard work might have earned her a little civic recognition, but what she got instead was a stern warning from the village mayor and the sadness of watching much of her work covered up by a truck load of rocks and gravel by the village.

“It’s just wrong,” Scheumack said. “I can’t let this drop. There’s too much at stake.”

Scheumack vowed to get the state government, and if possible the federal government, involved to ensure that the spring is cleaned out and Mayor Merle Stalcup is held accountable for proceeding without first seeking permission from the village council.

But there are probably as many twists in this story as there are in the creek itself, and much of that begins with who owns the property.

The property, which most in the surrounding area believe is a park, is actually privately owned by the family of the late Grace Jones, who died earlier this year.

Stalcup said the natural crevice was covered because it posed a danger to anyone swimming in the creek.

“My major concern was pure safety,” Stalcup said, citing several instances where small children had tried to swim under the crevice. “This does not mean that it could not be grated or cleaned out. It was a pure safety situation at this time.”

Stalcup said it was those concerns that prevented him from contacting the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

Stalcup said the city, which maintains the area, has had a standing agreement with Ms. Jones and her family for at least 15 years and that the family of the late Ms. Jones gave permission to dump the rocks into the crevice.

Mickey Matocha, whose family owns the property, said the spring still flows as freely as it ever has and has not been covered up with sand and gravel as previously reported, but with large rocks and pea gravel.

Mrs. Matocha countered claims that the area would become a stagnant pool if the spring was covered.

She also echoed Stalcup’s comments of the potential danger posed by the crevices and did not want to close the area off to the public.

“Nobody wants to do that,” she said. “We were extremely concerned. It is such a liability to have a hole that a child could fall into.”

However, Stalcup’s decision to act before seeking approval from any outside entity before dumping those rocks into the creek may be an error.

Salado Creek, according to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, is deemed a U.S. waterway and requires a permit before anything can be dumped into the waterway.

“We need to know what is going in there,” said Melanie Ellis, spokeswoman for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Fort Worth.

U.S. waterways are protected by the federal Clean Water Act, initially passed in 1972.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency Web site, “... the statute employs a variety of regulatory and non-regulatory tools to sharply reduce direct pollutant discharges into waterways, finance municipal wastewater treatment facilities, and manage polluted runoff. These tools are employed to achieve the broader goal of restoring and maintaining the chemical, physical and biological integrity of the nation’s waters so that they can support the protection and propagation of fish, shellfish and wildlife, and recreation in and on the water.”

Ellis said the village should have sought a Section 404 permit under the Clean Water Act from the Corps’ regulatory office before the action occurred.

Information on any potential penalty that could be levied against the Village of Salado for failure to comply with this act was not available at press time.

Meanwhile, local residents are hoping this can be resolved quickly.

Grainger Esch, who owns the Silver Spur Theater, swam in the creek as a child and said he can’t understand why the spring was covered up.

“I was really excited about getting the springs back,” he said. “I really don’t understand the reasoning for covering it back up.”