I hope everyone had a wonderful Valentines Day celebration.
We have started 2026 as busy as we finished 2025. Your town council approved a very important new ordinance which all but eliminates flight operations inside of Copper Canyon. This ordinance will prevent the issues some of our neighbors recently went through. Let me be clear, there are no current nor proposed helicopter or drone operations for our town. What was passed is a “forward thinking” preventative ordinance that maintains our lifestyle. Think about that for a minute, a government organization that is looking out for you preemptively and not reactionary. I am very proud of what your council passed. This ordinance bans any “ground contact” flight operations throughout most of the town. The reason “ground contact” term is used is we can’t control overflight operations or drone deliveries from nearby marketplaces. Any other request would have an extremely “tall ladder” to climb prior to any town council deciding to approve or not. This is the same process for any proposal towards land use in our town. A conditional use permit is not a new process so we used it for this ordinance. The best part is this ordinance went through months of public input and town review before getting approved.
A forward-thinking approach will be used by your council through the rest of 2026. Each decision will always be made to protect your home, your lifestyle and your family. One decision we made last year was to update your town’s website. Good news is we are currently running staff training on the new site and hopefully we can launch it by late March. You will see entirely new up-to-date pages and hopefully “tabbing” to retrieve any information you need will be easier. We can use a little “home town” help with pictures of Copper Canyon. If you have some pictures of anything inside of town, please send them into our town manager’s email. Anything sent in will become public access, so keep that in mind.
Spring Yard Care and Stormwater Protection: What Residents Need to Know. As we move into spring, many residents are preparing lawns, trimming trees, planting gardens, and beginning outdoor projects. While these seasonal activities help keep Copper Canyon beautiful, they can also impact our creeks, ponds and drainage systems if not handled properly.
Copper Canyon participates in the State’s MS4 (Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System) program, which requires the Town to help protect local water quality. Simply put, everything that flows into our streets, roadside ditches and storm drains eventually makes its way to our creeks and downstream waterways without treatment.
Here are a few simple steps residents can take this spring to help protect our community’s water quality: keep grass clippings and leaves out of the street. Blowing grass clippings or leaves into the roadway may seem harmless, but rainfall washes that debris into drainage swales and ponds. This can clog culverts, increase flooding risk and add excess nutrients to local waterways. Please bag yard waste or mulch it back into your lawn. Use fertilizer carefully, apply fertilizers sparingly and avoid spreading them before heavy rain. Excess fertilizer can wash into nearby drainage areas and contribute to algae growth in ponds and creeks. Slow-release products are often a better option. If washing your car at home, consider doing so on grass rather than on a driveway. This allows the water to soak into the soil instead of running into the street.
Stormwater protection is a shared responsibility. Because Copper Canyon maintains a rural character with open drainage swales and natural waterways, our actions at home have a direct impact on the surrounding environment. By taking a few simple precautions this spring, we can help reduce flooding risks, protect water quality and preserve the natural beauty that makes Copper Canyon unique.
As we know from our mailboxes, it is election season. We had three council member positions up for election. This year all three places had candidates who were unopposed. So, Copper Canyon will not have candidates on the ballot. In May we will swear in three people to office for a two-year term. Place 1 – Jeff Dahl and Place 3 – Paula Castillo both have finished one-year terms and now will serve a full two-year term. Place 5 will have Nancy Henry seated. Nancy has been a Copper Canyon resident since 1983.
I want to finish this month’s article with a request. North Texas communities like Copper Canyon and others allow us to live near our livestock if we choose. That opportunity to be close to our horses, donkeys, llamas or deer can bring joy and peacefulness to us in our otherwise hectic world. That choice also brings the responsibility to take care of those animals and ensure their safety. We have had a couple of recent incidents of livestock getting loose in town which can cause problems. We don’t want any animal hit by a vehicle, nor do we want to bother our neighbors when animals intrude on someone else’s property. So please check your fences, make sure they are secure and tall enough to keep your animals in and predators like coyotes out.
