Good Life Comes North
As he became more involved in the neighborhood association, he says, "I began to look for ways to protect the health of Waller Creek". The fruit of this search was his 2002 appointment by the City Council to the Water and Wastewater Commission. Based on his experience so far, he says that "boards and commissions are a fantastic way for an individual citizen to make an impact on quality of life in Austin". Coleman says the city has done some very good work in preserving Waller Creek, for example via the Parks Department's efforts at controlling erosion along the creekbed. The primary threat to the creek, he says, now comes from the leaky sewage pipes, "some of them many decades old", that line the creek. The US Environmental Protection Agency cited the city for this in 1999 and ordered the city to clean it up by 2007. The city subsequently launched its Austin Clean Water Project, which Coleman describes as a positive, "aggressive" response to the problem.
Coleman's position on the Water and Wastewater Commission means that he has a say in recommending the city's approach to creek and sewage issues, not just for Waller Creek, but all over town. He makes the point that we all live in watersheds, even though we may sometimes forget that when we live or work in the central city. He sums it up with words that any environmentally conscious urban dweller would do well to remember: "Nature is here, too". I inadvertently opened my own eyes to some of these issues on the way to work a couple of weeks ago. We recently moved from Travis Heights in South Austin to Crestview in North Central Austin, in part so I could be closer to my work on Airport Boulevard. Since my old car is on its last legs, I've taken to running or walking to work-at least on the mornings I have my act together.
On one of my first days getting to work on foot, my jog took me behind Reilly Elementary, where I was following the draw -- I still think of it as a "draw", since we didn't have "creeks" in West Texas -- as it squeezes in behind the Department of Public Safety auto shop. I came to the footbridge that crosses the draw...and flushed out a Little Blue Heron. This is, what?, five hundred yards from Airport Boulevard? Six hundred from Lamar Boulevard? I never thought to see a Little Blue Heron foraging for its breakfast, in broad daylight, right here on the Swell, what is this ditch, or draw, or creek?
It's Waller Creek, of course. I crossed it -- on campus, right about where Joseph Jones opens his book -- almost every day of my four years as a UT student. I worked cheek-by-jowl with it for two years after college when I was on the staff at the Alumni Center, which perches on its eastern bank. During those same years, my wife and I crossed it much farther north, walking to the pool in Shipe Park or along Forty-Sixth Street to get to the Intramural Fields. But somehow, in my mind, the creek stopped right about there, until a heron sighting sent me back to the map.
Austin keeps growing,and its growing pains along with it. But life on Waller Creek continues.
Tim Walker just bought a bicycle so he can get to work under his own power every single day. You may e-mail Tim at twalker@goodlifemag.com.
