Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
over the areas of the aquifer in the City of Austin's jurisdiction. The orga-
nization gathered over thirty thousand petition signatures to qualify the
citizen initiative for the 1992 municipal election ballot, and after conten-
tious political debates and procedural delays by the development-friendly
city council, the ordinance was voted into law by a decisive two-to-one
margin. According to an environmental activist, the passage of the SOS
Ordinance resulted in the “institutionalization” of water quality as the
primary agenda of Austin growth politics.
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Another environmental activ-
ist states that “with the SOS vote, Austin made it clear that Barton Springs
is where we draw the line.”
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The SOS Ordinance was different from preceding water quality regu-
lations because it became law by citizen initiative. It is an example of
an active citizenry collaborating with environmental experts to push
through regulations that municipal offi cials were unwilling or unable to
pass through conventional code-building processes. Specifi cally, the SOS
Alliance challenged the primacy of the municipal government and devel-
opment community in setting the standards for water quality protection
and urban growth. The group successfully transformed the grassroots
momentum of the All-Night Meeting into rational government policy.
The water quality protection strategies of the SOS Ordinance were not
new, but they were signifi cantly more stringent than the previous water-
shed ordinances; most important, the ordinance prohibited the granting
of variances by the city council and planning commission. The ordinance
restricted impervious cover in the Barton Springs Zone to 15 to 25 percent
depending on the degree of connectivity between the landscape and Barton
Springs. This is roughly the equivalent to half-acre to one-acre residential
lot development density. In addition to the impervious cover limits, the or-
dinance included a nondegradation policy that required technical strategies
or best management practices (BMPs) to ensure that the average annual
loadings of common stormwater pollutants (suspended solids, nutrients,
heavy metals, and so on) did not increase between pre- and postdevelop-
ment conditions. This portion of the ordinance is often referred to as the
“nondegradation clause” and essentially requires that new developments
do not affect water quality. Finally, the ordinance required building set-
backs of two hundred feet from major waterways and four hundred feet
from the main channel of Barton Creek. Refl ecting on the combination of
impervious cover limits and the nondegradation requirement, a consulting
engineer states, “There was a fear of technology and the idea that tech-
nology was going to fail you. So even though we had these requirements
for controls in the SOS Ordinance, we were afraid that they were never
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