SAN BENITO — A toddler is in critical condition after nearly drowning in the bathtub yesterday afternoon.

Paramedics and police were called at around 2:45 p.m. to the Vista Park Apartment Complex on Cornejo Drive for a possible drowning.

When they arrived they found the toddler who Police Chief Michael Galvan said is about eight to 10 months old, unresponsive.

The boy’s mother said she left him alone in the bathtub for about a minute, Galvan said.

When she returned, the boy was floating face-up in the tub and wasn’t breathing.

Galvan said the child had drowned but was revived.

Paramedics rushed the boy to a local hospital, where he is listed in critical condition.

Police will continue to investigate this incident.

HARLINGEN — The birthing pains of the cross-border, multi-city economic development alliance called BiNED continue to be felt nearly three years after it was conceived.

BiNED, short for Bi-National Economic Development, is a first-of-its-kind regional economic development effort among four U.S. cities, two Mexican cities, Cameron and Hidalgo counties and the federal governments of two nations.

The complex relationships between those principals, officials say, has made organizing BiNED an unusually time-consuming affair.

“Everything is like on one-quarter time versus full-speed ahead,” Raudel Garza, manager and CEO of the Harlingen Economic Development Corp., told his board members this week. “BiNED is progressing as we expect it to progress, given the size of the organization and the complexity of some of the things that they’re working on.”

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SAN BENITO — And then there were five.

Another employee with the Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office has been arrested in connection with an undercover operation dubbed “Operation Dirty Deeds,” in which several employees have been accused of taking bribes and other charges.

Texas Department of Public Safety troopers arrested Claudia Elisa Sanchez on Wednesday and charged her with one count of tampering with government records, DPS spokesman Johnny Hernandez stated. Sanchez worked at the tax assessor-collector’s office in San Benito.

No other information on her arrest was immediately available. Her arrest is the fifth one tied to “Operation Dirty Deeds.”

Earlier this year, Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector Tony Yzaguirre Jr. was arrested along with county tax investigator Pedro Garza, dealer/notary supervisor Omar Sanchez-Paz and Chief of Investigations Lt. Jose Mireles as the result of a two-year DPS investigation of the operations of the tax assessor-collector’s office.

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BLUE TOWN — Every morning Abraham Castillo gets off his pickup truck with his two dogs ready to farm his crops.

Castillo’s German Sheppard, Milagros, always rides “shotgun” and Charlie a black Labrador likes cruising in the back with the equipment on the way to manage the 18-acre onion field on Military Highway along the Texas and Mexico border south of La Feria.

The longtime farmer enjoys farming with his two dogs.

And this year Castillo is having a good onion season, unlike his last two years.

“Last year was a disaster,” said the 59-year-old area crop farmer. “I didn’t harvest any onions because we had so much rain.”

This season, Castillo got off to a late start on account of the rains in October and November.

Or he would have planted even more onions, he said.

He said he will be sending thousands of 50-pound bags of onions to the Tex-Mex Sales packaging group in Weslaco who will buy, and sell his harvest up north.

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Customers of Cameron County Irrigation District No. 6 now have a more reliable supply of water thanks to a new pump station christened Thursday.

A commissioning ceremony and ribbon cutting for the Los Fresnos-Santa Rita Pump Station took place around noon at the end of a dusty caliche road off Military Highway on the banks of the Rio Grande.

Elected officials, employees with Cameron County Irrigation District No. 6 and others gathered under a tent next to the ruins of a century-old “pumper’s house” and a stone’s throw from the old and new pump stations, which overlook the river.

The new station houses two natural gas-powered Caterpillar pump engines (200 and 400 horsepower) driving two stainless-steel pumps for sucking water out of the Rio Grande and depositing it into the adjacent conveyance canal for delivery to users. The station has a capacity of 120 million gallons per day.

The district provides irrigation water and drainage to approximately 21,000 acres in southern Cameron County and supplies raw water to the city of Los Fresnos, Olmito Water Corporation, Cameron County Irrigation District No. 10 and Bayview Irrigation District No. 11.

U.S. Rep. Filemon Vela, D-Brownsville, state Sen. Eddie Lucio Jr., D-Brownsville, and Edward Drusina, commissioner of the U.S. Section of the International Boundary Water Commission, were among the dignitaries who delivered comments.

Also speaking were Alex Hinojosa, deputy managing director of the North American Development Bank, which helped pay for the project; Bech Bruun, chairman of the Texas Water Development Board, and Bryan Shaw, chairman of the Texas Department of Environmental Quality.

District chairman Ray Lopez, district general manager Tito Nieto and Frank Ferris, the project engineer, also took turns at the podium. Ferris said construction on the new station started 18 months ago but was hampered by delays due to heavy rain and high river stages.

One of the main goals of the project was energy efficiency, he said. Because it uses natural gas, the new station will cost about half as much to run as the old one, which uses electricity, Ferris said. The new station was built at a higher elevation than the old one so that the engines will remain above water and functional even if the river tops the levee, he said.

The new pumps are variable speed, which means the pump rate can be adjusted to whatever amount of water is needed, which saves water. Bruun said the station is a model for other irrigation districts.

“Water conservation is hugely important,” he said. “I really view the district as leading by example.”

SAN BENITO – A baby is in critical condition after nearly drowning in the bathtub.

Paramedics and police were called at 2:45 p.m. to the Vista Park Apartment complex on Cornejo Drive for a possible drowning.

Authorities say when they arrived they found the infant unresponsive. Police Chief Michael Galvan said the child is 8 to 10 months old.

He said the mother told them she left the baby alone in the bathtub for about a minute and when she returned she found him floating face-up in the tub and not breathing.

Paramedics rushed the boy to a local hospital, where he is listed in critical condition.

Police will continue to investigate the incident.

Have you walked outside and been shocked with the haze and smell in the air?

The National Weather Service says a gravity wave with winds of 40 to 50 mph brought smoky air from south of the border into the Rio Grande Valley.

Forecasters say the polluted air is a combination of industrial and agricultural burning in Mexico, the Yucatan and Central America.

The NWS says air quality reached a very rare 155 at 2 p.m. this afternoon in the Brownsville, San Benito and Harlingen areas.

The haze should stay around through the night and then clear out by noon Friday when the winds changes direction.

Another employee with the Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector’s Office has been arrested in connection with the undercover operation dubbed “Dirty Deeds.”

The Texas Department of Public Safety arrested Claudia Elisa Sanchez on Wednesday and charged her with one count of tampering with government records, DPS spokesman Johnny Hernandez stated. Sanchez worked at the tax assessor-collector’s office in San Benito.

No other information on her arrest was immediately available.

Earlier this year, Cameron County Tax Assessor-Collector Tony Yzaguirre Jr. was arrested along with county tax investigator Pedro Garza, dealer/notary supervisor Omar Sanchez-Paz and Chief of Investigations Lt. Jose Mireles.

Yzaguirre was charged with four counts of bribery, a second-degree felony; engaging in organized criminal activity, a first-degree felony; and official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor.

Garza was charged with bribery, engaging in organized criminal activity and official oppression.

Sanchez-Paz was charged with engaging in organized criminal activity and abuse of official capacity, a Class A misdemeanor.

Mireles was charged with bribery, engaging in organized criminal activity and official oppression.

HARLINGEN – When Luis Betancourt and his wife opened Carlito’s Wine Bar on Jackson Avenue downtown, they had some expectations.

“My wife and I envisioned a quaint, quiet place to come and drink a glass of wine or two, people trickling in and out,” Betancourt said yesterday afternoon while sitting comfortably on a leather couch under the bar’s red-painted duct work.

Instead, he says, once the evening rolls in – especially on weekends – “this place is crazy and it’s packed.”

Betancourt has been forced to adapt to this unforeseen but entirely welcome business reality.

After starting his wine bar with five employees, he now has 14. And yesterday, he said, he was on the phone to the newspaper to place a classified ad to hire even more staff.

“We really need to be 16, 17, 18 maybe,” he said.

The crazy weekend nights at Carlito’s Wine Bar make it one of the success stories in Harlingen’s Downtown District, a public-private partnership that was founded in 1989.

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The Cameron County Beach Patrol will employ up to 45 temporary lifeguards during the summer at South Padre Island.

The increase in lifeguards will accommodate the influx of visitors that the coastal parks and beach accesses on South Padre Island usually experience in what Parks Director Joe Vega calls the peak season.

“That’s the number we feel can cover all of our lifeguard stands,” Vega said. “It’s important to make sure they’re covered adequately.”

The county has 12 lifeguard towers at the Island.

Lifeguards will work long shifts throughout the summer to ensure the beach is properly staffed from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Some lifeguards will be out on patrol. Others will cover the stands and keep an eye out for when people go too far out into the water. They will also have first-aid kits on hand for cuts and jellyfish stings, Vega said.

“They go through extensive training, and all have to be certified. They assist swimmers in distress and educate parents to make sure they stay close to their kids and keep them from going in more than knee high,” Vega said.

The majority of the lifeguards will begin working after May 15. The county has already hired 25.

“If anybody is interested, please apply. We’re always looking for good candidates,” Vega said.

The program has been successful in the past, and many of the lifeguards that work during the summer season come back the following year, Vega said.

The beach patrol can be reached at (956)772-9222 or at [email protected].