Saving the Springs: Urban Expansion and Water Quality in Austin - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 50

manager defends the growth-friendly position of his organization: “If
we have the water, then legally we have to provide the water.” 60 Urban
theorist Steven Moore links the water provision mandate of the LCRA
to its larger role in regional development: “This remarkably important
institution effectively controls water policy in a semi-arid region, and thus
by default it controls rural development policy, with neither accountability
to citizens nor any responsibility to coordinate their policies with regional
city governments.” 61
The presence of the LCRA expands infrastructure provision beyond
the exclusive, monopolistic practices of local government to include state
and private interests and offers multiple opportunities to provide essen-
tial services for new land development projects. This mirrors the trend of
“splintering infrastructure” that emerged in the 1980s due to privatization
and decentralization; service provision is no longer tied to the monopoly
of the municipal service provider but is instead guided by free market prin-
ciples of economic liberalism. 62 As such, negotiations over infrastructure
provision in the Hill Country have become the primary means of managing
growth, supplanting zoning and subdivision regulation. 63
Refl ecting on infrastructure service provision in the Hill Country, an
LCRA engineer notes, “We frame [water quality protection] as an op-
tion as opposed to a rule. . . . We also try to be a friendly regulator . . .
we try to help people with technical assistance.” The respondent goes
on to describe a technomanagerial approach to infrastructure provision
and environmental quality that emphasizes sound technical and scientifi c
decision making that is purportedly free of troublesome growth politics:
“LCRA is much less political than the City of Austin. It's so much easier
to do our job here. We do what we think is right based on the technical
fi ndings and the science and not have all of the politics weighing in on
something entirely different that might direct the policy of the City of Aus-
tin.” 64 This apolitical approach to urban development and infrastructure
provision in Austin resonates with the Progressive era of infrastructure
development, with experts tasked with solving a predefi ned problem: how
to provide collective services to a growing populous. But the public dis-
course in Austin and the Hill Country reveals infrastructure provision and
land use development as inherently political activities, ones that grapple
with the tensions of living in a fragile landscape. A consulting engineer
familiar with the organization provides a different perspective, noting
that the “LCRA has strongly resisted the regulatory role; they don't want
to be seen as a policeman, they want to be a provider of electricity and
water.” 65