Of Land, and Water, and Home, and Stewardship

"Daryl Slusher is right, you [the city] have to own land if you want to protect it"....

That ended my three-minute testimony at the City Council hearing July 11, the land in question being the area draining into the Barton Springs watershed. Daryl's amendment would get the City a revenue stream for buying land, but levying a charge on some buildings and not others to pay for it may be illegal, and Stratus wasn't offering to sell the City any land it intended to build on. The amendment looked like a political gesture.

Still, the Slusher amendment was the only mention that evening of having the City of Austin buy land, the most often voiced solution for protecting Barton Springs. Instead, we got lots of testimony that evening on the drawbacks of the Stratus Settlement -it wasn't living up to the SOS Ordinance, why it can't fall back on the grandfathering laws (there may be a court case on that), etc. And then the Council, except for Raul Alvarez, voted for the Settlement, just as it had earlier voted for the Bradley Agreement that, you guessed it, also allowed damaging development over the aquifer.

According to one savvy activist, the outcome was perfectly predictable: hearings are Public Relations window dressing, and for both sides the P.R.is important. Still, it seems nothing changes unless there is a referendum and a vote -- that is, unless the public Will has legal clout. Even so, the law can still be ineffectual if it is not "outcome-based". For instance, using teachers' salaries and number of books in the library to evaluate schools is input-based; evaluating schools by how well the student s are doing is outcome-based, focusing on what matters.

The SOS Ordinance is input-based. It specifies inputs: the percent of impervious cover and the distance of setbacks of buildings from drainage areas. Who really knows if 17 percent impervious cover is enough? Or a 150 foot setback? An outcome-based law would ban any construction producing biologically unacceptable levels of pollutants in the water, with stringent consequences for existing development as well. The purity of the water is the only outcome needed for Barton Springs. Also, for permanent monitoring the landowner must be a permanent agent . Austin will be around a hundred years from now. Will any development corporation?