News
Hays County Master Gardener Association announces 2019 training course
The Hays County Master Gardener Association will hold a Master Gardener Training Course on 12 Fridays in spring of 2019. The Master Gardener Training Program is an educational/volunteer program conducted by Texas A&M AgriLife Extension Service designed to increase...
New Year’s resolutions for friends of fresh water
It’s true that in many ways, 2019 brings us more of the same: Texas is growing, the climate is changing, and we’re in a race to figure out how Texans can thrive in a not-so-distant reality of tumultuous flooding, harrowing droughts, and less fresh, drinkable water....
Van Gogh’s Starry Night reimagined as Amsterdam Light Festival installation
Serbian artists Ivana Jelić and Pavle Petrović have reimagined Van Gogh's famous painting The Starry Night as an LED installation over the canals of Amsterdam, to highlight the issue of light pollution in urban areas. A series of 1,400 acrylic rods illuminated by...
$250 million residential, golf course project planned for Driftwood
Amid continued growth in the Texas Hill Country, construction is poised to start on a $250 million luxury residential community and private club that would bring more than 300 houses, a golf course and other development to 800 acres near the popular Salt Lick BBQ...
Research underway to help track pollutants in the Edwards aquifer
Jessica Quintanilla, a hydrologist for the Edwards Aquifer Authority, sloshes back onto shore in her black waterproof boots from the middle of this creek just off Scenic Loop Road, south of Grey Forest. “Next, we have to set up the peristaltic pump,” she said, as she...
Barton Springs Pool to reopen after drilling clouds water
Barton Springs Pool will reopen Saturday. The City of Austin closed the pool Wednesday due to cloudy water. They now know that cloudiness was caused by drilling. City officials say sediment was discharging into the pool due to a well being drilled in the Barton...
America’s holiday lights can be seen from space
Forget going out to view your neighborhood's Christmas lights this year: You can do it the 21st-century way, bathed in the pallid glow of a monitor. That's because NASA has just released a wonderful bunch of satellite images of American cities, gleaming like nebulae...
Worries grow after quarry cited for discharge violations
Violations stemming from two separate discharges of sedimentary debris into Onion Creek in 2016 and 2017 led to citations for the Hays Quarry Rock Crushing Plant, according to a Barton Publications investigation. The investigation came after video and photo evidence...
San Antonio getting first sanctioned outdoor rock climbing area in 2020
Medicine Wall, a roughly 80-foot limestone bluff in northern San Antonio, will become the city’s first officially sanctioned outdoor rock climbing area when access to the site opens in 2020. After roughly two years of negotiations with landowners and developers, the...
Natural gas pipeline planned to run through Hays County
More than 80 Hays County landowners—and hundreds more across the Hill Country—either have already or will soon be contacted by Kinder Morgan, Inc., one of the largest energy infrastructure companies on the continent, asking for permission to survey their property to...
First of 55,000 current by GE streetlights installed in innovative regional program spanning 11 Southern California cities
The City of Murrieta, California earlier this month became the first of 11 Riverside County cities to obtain ownership of thousands of streetlights that will be retrofit with LED fixtures to minimize light pollution, enhance public safety and save approximately $60...
Is Texas’ overcrowded, underfunded state parks system being loved to death?
More people are enjoying Texas’ 95 state parks than ever. In the 2017 fiscal year, there were 10 million visitors, a 20 percent increase over 2012. Visitation at some destinations has skyrocketed. For example, the number of visitors to McKinney Falls, a small park on...
Reserve a big part of local dark sky efforts
The stars at night are big and bright … for now. But encroaching development and lights are making our views of the nightly heavens less heavenly. But several communities and individuals are working to see that this part of the Hill Country can still focus upward for...
TCEQ grants hearing on Vulcan quarry project
As expected, the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality on Wednesday granted numerous requests for a contested hearing on an application by Vulcan Construction Materials for an air permit to operate a limestone quarry in Comal County. If approved, the project would...
Austin’s Water Forward plan is a bold step into the future
One of the clearest threats to the future of the Texas economy and the well-being of our communities is the lack of water. During times of drought, supplies are already stretched razor thin in many areas of the state – so, what will happen when our state’s population...
Report: Edwards Aquifer at greater risk with climate change, population growth
The Edwards Aquifer could be at risk in the next 50 years as a result of warmer temperatures and more frequent and severe droughts, compounded by population growth. “These climate change impacts will be exacerbated in central Texas’s rapidly urbanizing regions, as...
Texas parks department, advocates pushing Congress to reauthorize key conservation fund
The chief of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department says the absence of the 54-year-old Land and Water Conservation Fund is a "substantial loss" for state parks and natural areas. With Congress set to adjourn next week, parks advocates are pushing for lawmakers to...
Wharton County reservoir key in updated Colorado River management plan
A long-running feud pitting Austin-area lakeside communities against farmers downriver could settle down with proposed changes to a water management plan for the Highland Lakes. The pending update to what’s essentially a user’s manual for operating the river could...
Agency: Cost to curb Texas flooding over 10 years is $31.5B
DALLAS — The cost to curtail damaging flooding across Texas over the next 10 years is more than $31.5 billion and state officials are urging lawmakers to adopt legislation meant to end a cycle of “repairing and rebuilding,” according to a series of recommendations...
Big Bend Conservation Alliance hires Executive Director
Alpine - The Big Bend Conservation Alliance (BBCA) is pleased to announce the appointment of James “J.D.” Newsom as Executive Director. Born and raised in Midland, J.D. grew up surfing the Monahans Sandhills, swimming at Balmorhea, camping at the Buffalo Trail Scout...
Locals ready to fight 430-mile gas pipeline
As Houston-based company Kinder Morgan moves ahead on a proposed 430-mile underground natural gas pipeline that could bisect Hays County, local landowners worry the project could harbor a negative environmental impact. Bill Johnson, owner of the historic Halifax and...
As we grow, streams and rivers need TLC
There were four of five things going on in town last Thursday that I wanted to attend. Typical night in the busy ’Burg, huh? One of them I had to let pass was a forum at Schreiner University dealing with water pollution sponsored by the Hill Country Alliance....
Why are Austin’s trees having such a colorful autumn?
Austin is known for a lot of things, but fall foliage is not one of them. That is, until this year. Local trees are putting on an incredible color show lately. It seems like it came out of nowhere, but it didn’t. “This is my 24th fall in Austin, and I've never seen...
Water Forward plan including artificial aquifers, graywater reuse gets council nod
A 100-year water resiliency plan that calls for massive underground reservoirs and reuse of wastewater is now city policy after gaining the approval of the Austin City Council. The plan, dubbed Water Forward, has been in the works since 2014, when years of drought led...
Sen. Campbell files bill to address quarries, concrete plants in Texas Hill Country
AUSTIN – State Senator Donna Campbell filed Senate Bill 208 today to extend requirements for setbacks, or buffer zones, around aggregate facilities. If passed, the bill would double the current 440 yard requirement between concrete plants or quarries and existing...
State judge sides with Dripping Springs in wastewater permit hearing
The city of Dripping Springs will proceed with its wastewater permit application after a state judge sided with the city on all 12 issues raised by Save Our Springs Alliance—an Austin-area environmental nonprofit. The State Office of Administrative Hearings conducted...
Meyer Ranch to add 1,600 homes in rural northwest
With projects in Georgetown, Liberty Hill and Round Rock, developers Todd McCullough and Randy Rollo of Randolph Todd Development said they had an interest in expanding to the south end of the Austin-San Antonio corridor. Three years ago the Austin-based developers...
Will sewage treatment plants spoil the Hill Country?
The picturesque town of Blanco; a planned Christian recreational adventure camp in Bandera County; a Kerr County alcohol and drug addiction rehabilitation center hoping to treat more patients; a proposed subdivision in Comal County, just upstream of a state natural...
Water symposium addresses the future of flooding in Texas
One month after the destructive flooding of Texas Hill Country rivers led to multiple deaths and tens of millions of dollars in property damage, scientists, regional water management leaders, and academics are still weighing the consequences and the prospect of future...
In Bandera County, neighbors fight plans to discharge wastewater from youth camp
TARPLEY – Charles and John Blackwell stood at the edge of their property with their neighbor Margo Denke Griffin and pointed out the clear water pouring across their land in Commissioners Creek. “You can always see the bottom,” Charles Blackwell said of the creek,...