Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
Austin also used the Pima County/Tucson code as a model, but held
meetings to address the variation in regional needs, particularly questions of
moisture and insect protection. The first permit was issued to Norm
Ballinger, who reports that getting through the process was made easier by
the abundance of alternative construction information resources in the
Austin area, and that other straw-bale homes had been built nearby, off the
grid. He found his greatest asset to be perseverance, likening the experience
to an advanced game of Dungeons and Dragons: “I simply found on sev-
eral occasions that I hadn't picked up or was not given the proper docu-
ment, or I hadn't spoken to the right department, or asked the right
question at the right time. The dragon, if there was one, would have been
my own impatience in the thick of it. I talked with several geezers who
were large-scale developers and such and found that they were having a lot
of the same problems. So it hasn't been so much a matter of experience as
diligence....My best resource seemed to be to try to find a human behind
every bureaucratic face I encountered.”
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Ballinger's perseverance in finding the human face behind the bureau-
cracy is particularly useful in Austin, a city with a higher-than-average
number of highly educated and activist citizens concerned with the local
ecology. A kind of haven of liberal thought in a state and region stereo-
typed for its conservative,“Bible Belt” culture and politics, Austin is known
as “the Berkeley of the South.” The University of Texas, the state capital,
the geography of hills and springs in a flat and arid state, and eclectic music
and art venues draw “progressively oriented” individuals from all over the
American South and elsewhere.
THE LANGUAGE GAME
The “progressive” and “green” orientation of Austin means that sometimes,
lurking under the bureaucratic structure of city, county, and private agen-
cies are people “inside the system,” willing to work creatively for change. A
case in point is a building inspector who does evaluations for mortgage
companies.When he fills out the forms for a straw-bale building, instead of
listing straw bales as the building material, he writes “cellulose fiber infill.”
Loan officers never question it. Particularly with post-and-beam construc-
tion rather than a load-bearing building, it is hardly necessary to mention
wall structure, as timber beams support the roof. Sometimes straw bales are
not mentioned at all in bank and insurance documents.
