Saving the Springs: Urban Expansion and Water Quality in Austin - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 63

Furthermore, the impacts on the environment are interpreted only in
terms of urbanization and do not focus on other land uses, particularly
agricultural practices that also contribute to erosion and water quality
degradation. The purifi ed landscape is one that is decidedly nonurban,
but this fails to acknowledge the devastating impacts of rural landowner
activities, specifi cally agricultural practices. The interpretation of all forms
of urban development as “unnatural” has resulted in few examples of
design intervention by municipal engineers and landscape architects to
mitigate water quality impacts of new development. Emerging notions of
Low Impact Development and source control strategies are not considered
to be valid approaches to protect water quality in the region because all
forms of urbanization are interpreted as harmful. Refl ecting on the lack
of innovation in urban development, a city hall insider notes, “The en-
vironmental community doesn't think so much about BMPs as a way to
protect water quality. But in their defense, they don't know what sensible
development in this town would look like. They don't have a positive
model of land development.” 114
Two recent commercial developments in the Barton Springs Zone, Es-
carpment Village and the AMD corporate campus, utilize a number of
source control strategies (green roofs, pervious paving, biofi ltration strips,
and rainwater harvesting) to meet the SOS Ordinance requirements, but
these projects are not regarded by most as examples of best practices in
water quality protection. Rather, green romantics interpret the source
control strategies as superfi cial window dressing on unwanted new de-
velopment projects that will ultimately serve as magnets for suburban
development. Refl ecting on the attitude of land developers and builders,
an environmental activist notes that “they seem to think a green building
is automatically benefi cial, but this ignores the ramifi cations of having a
big employment center over the watershed.” 115 In other words, benefi cial
water quality strategies at the site level cannot address the larger aggregate
impacts of growth in the region. Again, this suggests that individual prop-
erties cannot be considered in isolation but instead need to be understood
in relation to the larger region in which they are located.
Conclusions
The population of Austin continues to expand while the prominence of
Barton Springs as the defi ning locale of the community slowly diminishes.
The City of Austin's demographer estimates that the municipal popula-
tion will double in the next three decades, and an environmental activist
worries about the relevance of the springs in the future: “With the huge