News & Updates
Branch Towers and T-Mobile Curtail Plans to Build Cell Tower
Thanks to some quick community organizing and excellent volunteer leadership from residents of Vanderpool, plans to build a new cell tower on the banks of the Sabinal River have been shifted to instead utilize an existing cell tower. With the help of HCA, Vanderpool...
HCA board member Kathleen Tobin Krueger to take over Edwards Aquifer Authority board seat
Dalondo Moultrie | Herald-Zeitung | New Braunfels resident Kathleen Tobin Krueger, a former mayor pro tem, was scheduled yesterday to be appointed to a vacated seat on the Edwards Aquifer Authority board of directors. Krueger is taking over for Craig Massouh, who was...
Abbott signs bill limiting annexation powers of cities
Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday signed into law Senate Bill 6, which requires cities in large counties to receive voter approval before annexing new areas, one of his top 20 priorities for the special legislative session. “I’m proud to sign legislation ending forced...
In South Texas, Threat of Border Wall Unites Naturalists and Politicians
Last month, Marianna Wright, the executive director of the privately owned National Butterfly Center here, discovered survey stakes on the property marking out a 150-foot-wide swath of land. Ms. Wright later encountered a work crew cutting down trees and brush along a...
Infill Development Could Make or Break San Antonio
San Antonio is changing. Just a few years ago the city saw the odd infill project here and there among the rehabs of historic homes in King William or Monte Vista. These days, infill projects are everywhere in the collar neighborhoods – the ring of historic streetcar...
Volunteers clean up South Llano River
On Friday, August 4th intrepid volunteers from the Texas Master Naturalist Program met with the Llano River Watershed Alliance, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), and Hill Country Alliance to clean up a portion of the South Llano River south of Junction,...
150K gallons of wastewater spills in Llano due to flash flooding
Around 150,000 gallons of wastewater spilled into Oatman Creek, about 150 yards from the Llano River. The wastewater spilled from the city’s wastewater collection system starting around 7 a.m. Monday. At around 4 p.m. Tuesday, crews diverted the wastewater into a...
Invasive cane continues to plague land on creeks
Two years have passed since the attempt to eradicate Arundo donax began and the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD) continues to try to get landowners involved. Arundo, also known as giant river cane, is an invasive plant that can grow up to 30 feet tall, take...
Groundwater withdrawals may be the cause of disappearing streams in the mid-west (and here!)
Keith Gido, professor of biology, and Josh Perkin, a Kansas State University alumnus, recently published "Groundwater declines are linked to changes in Great Plains stream fish assemblages" in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The research maps the...