Martindale — From the distance, it looks like a dust storm. From across the San Marcos River near Martindale, it sounds like a highway being built.

Instead, all the commotion is the beginning stages of a 200-acre gated, high-end development that, when complete, will contain more than 100 home sites, almost two dozen acres of parkland and a 40-acre "ski lake."

San Marcos River Ranch is located partly on the old Emmett Harper Ranch and is bound on three sides by Scull Road, the San Marcos River and Cottonseed Creek. The development's only entrance would be on Scull Road.

Earth-moving machines began work about two weeks ago. Owner/developer Gordon Hall of Houston said last week that if the weather cooperates, he could be putting out notices of a Grand Opening in 60 to 90 days.

But that’s about all he would say, referring any questions to governmental authorities. Hall said he had "no comment other than we've gone through the proper permitting process of Guadalupe County, the city of Martindale and the State of Texas."

He also would not grant permission for images, information about lot size, price and availability or descriptions of San Marcos River Ranch available on its Web site, www.sanmarcosriverranch.com, to be published by this newspaper.

However, he laid out his vision for the development, and answered questions, before the Martindale City Council in an emergency meeting last August.

The Record obtained those minutes; and concerns expressed then are still being voiced.

Potential problems, Martindale officials and residents say, include the development's permit to take 150 acre-feet of water from the San Marcos River each year, especially in times of drought; the effect changing the landscape might have on nearby properties, especially in times of flood; and the impact of additional traffic on Scull Road.

Last August, Hall described San Marcos River Ranch as an upscale community in a rural area, limited to single family homes that lot purchasers would design and build. Uses of the lake, which would be filled with San Marcos River water, would include recreation as well as retention and detention. He acknowledged limits on the permit, which would disallow pumping when the U.S. Geological Survey's San Marcos River gauge at Luling read 130 cubic feet per second (cfs) or less. (Friday's reading at that guage was 103 cfs, according to the U.S.G.S. Web site.) Hall also said he knew the water level in the lake would not be constant, but would have the "ability to fluctuate," according to minutes of the Martindale meeting.

Regarding traffic, Hall said last August that the development will be targeted towards retirees who would be making fewer trips in and out than, for example, families with children.

“We can only go by what he told us at that meeting,” Martindale Mayor Patti Peterson said on Thursday. Peterson said she’s been getting calls about the development since ground was broken. “The dust clouds were coming into Martindale and that brought the people out,” she said.

Dan Buie, whose home on Buie Lane offers him a front-row seat to the development, was one of those the dust clouds “brought out.”

“I woke up the other day and I was in a dust bowl,” he said on Friday. “The air quality went to zippo.”

Buie said he called Hall on that day and the earth-moving later slowed. “Within two or three hours the air had cleared up quite a bit.”

Buie reiterated concerns about the project being problematic both in times of low water and flooding. In the great flood of 1998, he said his sister, then living on the property next door to his, had higher water in her front yard — that fronts the former cow pasture now being transformed — than at her back door, which faces the San Marcos River.

In low-water times, he said the concern is for the quantity of water still in the river. Buie said he considers it a “failure of state government,” that developers like Hall are able to amend what was an agricultural-use water permit to municipal and recreational use without other stakeholders knowing.

“No one is notified so you don’t have an opportunity to express your concerns,” he said. “I’ve voiced lots of concerns about the water in the San Marcos River being diverted into these lakes.”

And Buie shares concerns about increased traffic on Scull Road. “I can’t hardly even articulate what’s (the development) is going to do to the traffic” on a rural roadway already seeing more traffic than in years past.

“Scull Road has been used for far too long as a dumping ground for unwanted pets and garbage and trash. As the traffic situation increases it just becomes worse," he said.

Buie said he lives where he does because he intended to retire “on the river in the country.”

“This is about to drastically change,” he said. “We’re going to have a community out here probably in the next five years that’s going to dwarf Martindale. It’s going to be a suburb of San Marcos.”