OUTLOOK
Austin's growth faces off against group's environmental concerns
Texas Journalist Staff
Those skyscrapers popping up downtown may be doing their part to help Austin’s skyline, but at the same time, those developments pose a real threat to some parts of the landscape that are older than Austin itself.
Tyler Mathis places a soap boat he made into a creek near Barton Springs. Mathis and his friends tested the boat and its paper sail to find it didn’t work too well. | Photo by EBY HARVEY
With the population expected to double in the next 20 years, some worry that environmental issues will take a back seat in the growth process of the city. With the mayor rolling out a comprehensive plan that calls for the city to power municipal buildings with renewable energy, several environmental groups will be monitoring the progress of the city’s commitment to go green.
One of those groups is the Hill Country Conservancy. According to their website, the Hill Country Conservancy is dedicated to “ensuring a healthy environment and economy in the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer region.”
George Cofer, HCC’s executive director, said that if we continue to develop into the area’s open spaces, not only will the aquifer suffer, but so will the development itself.
“It’s a double edged sword,” he said. “People are moving here because of the open space that Austin has, but if we keep developing it, we won’t have any more and people will stop coming.”
Cofer said that since November, Hays and Travis counties have passed over $80 million worth of bonds to protect open space in the area. But even with this apparent step in the right direction, Cofer still says that he’s fighting an uphill battle.
Councilman Leffingwell is more optimistic.
“HCC is one of our good partners in preserving open space outside the city,” he said. “The more green spaces we can preserve, the better.”
But Chris Lehman, chair of the Austin group of the Sierra Club, said that despite what the city is doing to save land, they’re leaving other things out of their minds.
“Sadly the City seems unwilling to buy improved land instead has decided that it can only afford endangered species nesting sites,” he said. Lehman also said that the local chapter Sierra Club, the nation’s oldest and largest environmental organization, often organizes outings into the open spaces that have been preserved to further ensure the health of these areas.
Bill Bunch, executive director of the Save Our Springs Alliance, said that even with the open space preservation, the aquifer is under a lot of stress. He also thinks that the expected development won’t do much to ease the pressure in the region.
“This isn’t good, responsible growth,” he said, “this is a malignant metropolis. If growth is too fast, it’s fundamentally unmanageable.”
But unmanaged growth is what the city is trying to avoid.
“In 1940, there were more people living downtown than there are today,” Leffingwell said. “We’ve really been trying to redirect growth towards the downtown area.”
Despite the cities’ best efforts, Bunch said that the current trend continues to be a destructive one.
“The biggest threat to the springs is the sprawl pattern in the west,” Bunch said.
That sprawl pattern is the result of the population boom in that area that has been building for the last several years. Unfortunately for the new residents, their new neighborhoods lie in the recharge zone for the Edwards Aquifer, a trend that could hurt the aquifer’s ability to fill back up after a good rain. That is, if it rains.
Most of Austin’s drinking water comes from Lake Travis and Town Lake, but San Antonio, a city with nearly twice Austin’s population, gets nearly all of its water from the Edwards Aquifer. However, the city of San Antonio does not lie in the aquifer’s recharge zone, leaving its water availability at the mercy of the cities to its north.
To reduce the possibility of leaving southern neighbors without drinking water, Bunch suggested that growth efforts remain focused on the central Austin and downtown areas.
“The more people that live and work downtown, the less traffic there will be” he said. “The less people have to drive, the lower our greenhouse gas emissions will be.”