Want to know how far up and how far down the 2010s took Rockdale?
Just look at the faces.
It’s stunning that the low point and high point of a rollercoaster 3,655-day decade should have come within a mere 69 days of each other in the fall of 2017.
On that year’s Friday the 13th, in October, Luminant announced it was closing its Sandow 4 and 5 power units, ending 65 years of power generation just southwest of Rockdale, throwing hundreds of area residents out of work.
Two months later, on Dec. 21, the Rockdale Tigers won a state football championship, routing Brock 45-29. That didn’t make up for the horrific economic news, but it sure felt good and couldn’t have come at a better time for this reeling community.
Lots more happened in the decade of the 2010s, of course, including an economic bounceback, as a couple of future-looking cryptocurrency operations came to what was once an aluminum plant that was the area’s economic lifeblood in past decades.
Rockdale’s hospital struggled and finally closed. The city’s water system struggled and is being replaced, at great cost to rate payers.
There were too many murders and too much water. (Ham Branch flooded twice in 2015).
Downtown Rockdale saw a building fall down and a new police station go up.
There were some fireworks over the location, and cost, of that new PD, but the wildest public meetings came when the city decided to float the possibility of annexing land around Rockdale.
You can read about all those in what follows and about the state football title in the sports decade-ender which begins on page 1B:
2010
In the “show trial” of the decade, a 20th District Court jury found for Luminant after the company had been sued by Alcoa, claiming the power company’s charges for “outrageous prices” ultimately led to the shutting down of Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations in 2008-09. The jury not only rejected that charge, it awarded Luminant $10-million in damages it hadn’t even sought from Alcoa.
Rockdale’s Richards Memorial Hospital was recovering financially after its last-minute rescue by a Georgetown purchaser after the disaster that was Blackhawk Health Care. Blackhawk had laid off 15 to 20 percent of the RMH work force during the summer and had been poised to close the facility in November.
Three young boys were killed as a Union Pacific freight train hit the vehicle in which they were riding at a railroad crossing east of Rockdale.
Milam County politics began to turn toward the Republican Party as the GOP’s Dave Barkemeyer defeated incumbent Democrat Frank Summers for county judge. Barkemeyer became the county’s first elected Republican county judge. (A previous county judge had changed parties in office).
2011
The decade’s second year remains Rockdale’s hottest ever. The mercury climbed above 100 on 94 days—the old record was 62—there were 42 highs of 105 or greater, including 13 days in a row. The spring and summer of 2011 broke every high temperature record for the town but one, the biggest temperature of 112 missed tying the all-time high, set in 2000, by one degree.
A 50-year-old San Gabriel resident was gunned down by a shotgun blast as she answered her door. Two men were later convicted in the killing. Brandon Cotton received life in prison without parole and Tanner Baker was sentenced to a 60-year term.
Census figures from the 2,010 count showed Rockdale with a population of 5,595 more than Cameron’s 5,552. It was the first time Rock-dale’s population had been pegged higher than its neighbor at a census.
On June 1, The Rockdale Reporter passed a milestone, 100 consecutive years of ownership by the Cooke family. In 1911, John Esten Cooke purchased the newspaper from R. W. H. Kennon.
2012
For a few months it looked like the 34,000 acres which once comprised most of Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations has been sold to the giant Lower Colorado River Authority. The sale was announced in August, pending confirmation by the LCRA’s board of directors. That proved to be the sticking point as the “deal” fell through the next year.
There was considerable opposition to an Alcoa request before the Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District (POSGCD) for the authority to drill additional wells and increase pumping capacity. The request was approved by the POSGCD board.
A brick 19th-Century firewall collapsed in the 100 block of East Cameron Ave. (US 79), heavily damaging two buildings and causing some damage to several others. Nobody was injured.
2013
Rockdale got a 100,200-square-foot senior citizen housing complex on East Belton Avenue. The $4.5-million Hunter’s Chase complex was nearing completion at year’s end.
The city council wanted a “new set of eyes” to handle promotion and tourism and hired Orasi for that purpose. Several high-profile events were scheduled with varying successes. But, when the Rockdale Tourism Committee reported Orasi went $30,000 over a $32,000 budget for an event, the firm’s contract was terminated.
Rockdale mayors, who only vote in case of ties, rarely get a chance to cast votes but Mayors Larry Jones and John King did so five times in 2013, to settle council motions on nominating Post Oak Savannah Groundwater Conservation District directors, funding for the Chamber of Commerce, proceeding with new water tower construction, demolishing a downtown building and appointing a Municipal Development District (MDD) member.
School trustees also had an interesting year. The board declined to renew the contract of Supt. Dr. Howell Wright, who then submitted his resignation. After an exhaustive search, trustees selected Vickie Bridges of Grand Prairie for the post. The day before she was to be officially hired, Bridges declined the post. Donald Denbow of Corsicana was appointed interim superintendent as the search process started over.
2014
It doesn’t just happen in big cities. The big story in Rockdale during 2014 was the capital murder conviction of 55-year-old Sherill Ann Small in the death the previous year of two-year-old Alexandria “Alex” Hill, for whom she was providing foster care. The prosecution claimed Hill was slammed onto the floor while Small maintained the child’s injuries were accidental. The jury convicted Small after only four hours of deliberation and she was sentenced to life in prison. Small died in prison of natural causes two years later.
The Tough Mudder extreme running event drew 14,000 persons to Apache Pass to compete over a grueling course which featured everything from climbing the banks of the San Gabriel River to electric shocks.
Two years after efforts to give what became known as the Cameo Building new life in downtown Rockdale, the structure was razed. The building, and several others, had been damaged in a firewall collapse in 2012.
2015
Central Rockdale flooded. Twice. The first incident was on Memorial Day when Ham Branch surged out of its banks flooding homes and at least 15 vehicles. Rockdale volunteer firefighters carried several residents to safety.
Then it happened again. It was the wettest October in town history with 13.73 inches and that triggered another flooding event with Ham Branch water again creeping into houses in Central Rock-dale. There were several high water rescues in the bottom-lands northwest of town.
Luminant submitted drastic cuts in tax valuations for its Sandow 4 and 5 power plants. As a result, the Rock-dale ISD raised its tax rate 10 cents. Milam County kept the same tax rate but cut five county jobs.
Former Rockdale resident Susie Sansom Piper was the keynote speaker for the LBJ Library’s ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of passage of the Voting Rights Action in 1865, Mrs. Piper spoke alongside Luci Johnson, daughter of President Lyndon Johnson and wife Lady Bird.
2016
Controversy over the location and cost of a proposed new Rockdale Police Station dominated much of 2016. The Rockdale City Council first bought a 6-acre-plus site on US 79 west of town intending to place the facility there. Opposition developed and, while the city followed through with that $250,000 property purchase, it also solicited suggestions from the public for alternative locations. By year’s end the city had selected an alternate site, downtown, at the corner of East Cameron (US
79) and Green.
The Rockdale Volunteer Fire Department dedicated a memorial area at the fire station which honored J. W. Hooper and Wilbur Williams, who died battling the Scarbrough & Hicks fire in 1935, the only firefighters fatalities in the department’s history.
Two new industries—plastic packaging and Styrofoam cleaning—were announced for Rockdale. Neither one came to pass.
2017
Luminant announced it would close its Sandow Power Plant Units 4 and 5, ending a 65-year run of the lignite-coal-fueled power generating industry in the Rockdale area.
Rockdale High School won its second state football championship, and first in 41 years, defeating Brock 45-29 at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, home of the Dallas Cowboys.
Rockdale’s biggest fire in decades destroyed an older house, and spread into a massive junkyard in the 1300 block of East Cameron Ave. (US 79). Rockdale VFD firefighters waged a five hour battle against the blaze, fully aware that, at times, the propane business was only 50-75 feet away. “I’ve never been prouder of a bunch of guys in my life,” Fire Chief Ward Roddam said.
A 34-year-old Rockdale woman was beaten to death in a local house. Within a few days four persons were arrested and charged with capital murder. A fifth was later charged with helping to move the partially-burned body which was found in a shallow grave in rural Burleson County.
A consortium of Milam County entities submitted a proposal to entice Amazon to locate its proposed new second headquarters in the still-for-sale Alcoa property. Amazon did not select the property, but the attempt generated national publicity for Rockdale and Milam County.
The City of Rockdale’s preliminary venture into gathering information on possibly annexing areas around the current city limits hit a nerve with its neighbors. Crowds estimated at up to 200 attended a pair of town halls in the Patterson Civic Center for sometimes raucous discussion, promoting a warning from Police Chief Thomas Harris. In the end, a motion to continue with obtaining annexation information failed on a 3-2 vote.
2018
A new era began for the Rockdale community. Chinese cryptocurrency giant Bitmain announced it would renovate six of the eight potlines at the former Alcoa’s Rock-dale Operations, The original announcement indicated the facility would employee about 400 persons but that turned out to be drastically overestimated. Through the fall and winter a number of national news outlets indicated Bitmain had abandoned its Rockdale plans, assertions denied by a local Bitmain official. Bitmain did convert the potrooms into cryptocurrency miners and began its operations the next year.
Little River Health Care threw in the towel and closed all its facilities including the former Richards Memorial Hospital and two Rock-dale clinics. Reason given was failure to secure a larger health care provider to step in to save the situation. Other sources said business practices by Little River were the keys to the entities’ failures.
The Rockdale ISD completed construction on the district’s first new football-sports stadium facility in more than 80 years. An open house was held in late summer, one home game was moved out-of-town and the defending state champion Tigers opened the new field in October.
The City of Rockdale entered into a massive $63-million water-sewer project designed to rid the town of its many-decades-old “red water” problem once and for all.
A 20-month-old girl died in a Rockdale residence and police arrested a “male transitioning to a female” suspect for capital murder in connection with the death. The death penalty is being sought.
2019
A second high-tech cryptocurrency firm not only announced it was headed for Alcoa’s Rockdale Operations, it held a groundbreaking ceremony and started construction. Whinstone’s endeavor is seen as eventually becoming the world’s largest facility of its kind and is forecast to bring 200 jobs to the area.
Rockdale began to bounce back from 2018’s closing of all its health care facilities. The new Rockdale Medical Center, serving persons 12 and older, opened early in the year and by fall CHI St. Joseph’s/Health-Point had opened a full-service clinic in a suite on the Richards Memorial Hospital campus. The kicker: The Rockdale Hospital District, after failing to reclaim a half-cent sales from the Municipal Development District—or get a portion of the sales tax claimed by the city—imposed a 6.5-cent sales tax to fund the new clinic. The district said, unless source of revenue is found, that tax would climb to 16.9 in a couple of years.
All four persons charged with capital murder in the Emily Hacker killing accepted plea bargains and were sent to prison. Candice Jones and Edward Barry received 50 years each, John Stewart 18 years and Ashley Wesson-Zawadzke 15 years. A fifth defendant, charged not with murder but for helping to move Hacker’s body, was not scheduled for sentencing until the first week of 2020.
Rockdale began a multi-year-plan to fix its water system, termed “failing” by City Manager Chris Whittaker. Overhaul of both water and sewer systems will be funded by multi-year increases in water rates. The initial increase in 2019 almost doubled rates for many water customers. During the year the city changes directions on the project, opting to purchase water from Blue Water Systems, alleviating the need to build new water treatment plants but incurring the expense of constructing a pipeline to the Blue Water wells.
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