Saving the Springs: Urban Expansion and Water Quality in Austin - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 51

The splintering of infrastructure services is exacerbated by Austin's
location in the state of Texas, where “home rule” or local control is the
law of the land. The state legislature has a long tradition of encourag-
ing municipalities to govern themselves, rather than promulgating state
legislation to direct growth, as illustrated by George W. Bush's guberna-
torial election campaign theme of 1994: “Let Texans Run Texas.” 66 The
emphasis on local control results in fragmented land management rather
than structures for regional cooperation and coordination for how and
where growth should occur. 67 More important than the emphasis on local
control in Texas cities is the lack of authority that larger governmental
bodies, particularly counties, have over development processes outside of
city boundaries. Instead, Texas law allows for “extraterritorial jurisdic-
tions” (ETJs) that enable municipal governments to exercise subdivision
and infrastructure regulation up to fi ve miles beyond their corporate limits,
depending on the population of the municipality. 68 However, ETJ regula-
tions do not include zoning requirements, resulting in an “anything goes”
form of land development in the geographic areas between municipalities.
As a whole, Texas land use policies are the quintessential recipe for ur-
ban sprawl: a confl uence of strong property rights supporters, weak local
and regional governments, and a lack of county and state regulations to
direct urban growth. A local journalist attributes the problem of urban
sprawl in Texas to a continual denial by state legislators of the importance
of large cities in Texas. He writes, “Texas' self-image as a primarily rural,
resource-based state, where the cities simply exist as service centers for
ranches and oilfi elds, is taking a long time to die.” 69 The frontier mental-
ity of a limitless landscape persists in the mind of Texans, despite the fact
that the state is home to three of the ten largest cities in the United States
(Houston, Dallas, and San Antonio) and six of the largest thirty cities. 70
These urban areas play an increasingly signifi cant role in regional issues,
particularly land use, transportation, water supply, and environmental
protection. 71
Controlling Growth with Water Quality Regulations
The regulatory attitude of the LCRA and the State of Texas is often con-
trasted with that of the City of Austin and is frequently characterized as
facilitating rather than regulating urban development and growth. The
LCRA and the state government follow an economic rationalist approach
that ties societal progress to property development and sees increasingly
dense human settlement of the Hill Country as not only desirable but