After the Flood: Retrofi tting Austin’s Urban Core to Accommodate Growth - Politics of Urban Runoff: Nature, Technology, and the Sustainable City - page 75

than half of these structures. Refl ecting on the challenges of maintaining
such a vast system of drainage strategies, a municipal staff member notes,
“We don't know where they are, we don't know how they're working, we
have doubts about whether they are working well or not, and there's an
inertia through the whole thing such that we continue to go forward.” 34
To remedy the situation, in 2005 the department began a comprehensive
fi eld survey to identify all BMPs in the municipality's jurisdiction and
construct a database to manage them effi ciently and effectively. As of
November 2007, the database contained about 4,700 commercial BMPs
and 860 residential ponds and was about 85 percent complete. 35
One of the most striking differences between the stormwater activi-
ties in the Hill Country and the inner city is the central role of municipal
experts. Where environmental activists and landowners are the central
actors upstream of Barton Springs, inner-city activities are dominated by
Watershed Department staff members that rely on rational environmental
management strategies that are scientifi cally proven and cost-effective.
This difference refl ects a bias of environmental activists who see the inner
city as contaminated and unworthy of environmental protection as well as
the heightened threats of fl oodwaters to private property and human life.
Balancing Flood and Erosion Control with Water Quality Goals
Austin's approach to managing urban water fl ows has changed over time,
and with respect to water quality, the greatest transition has occurred in
the last two decades, long after the municipality earned its reputation
as a leader in stormwater management. In 1996, the municipal govern-
ment underwent one of many departmental reorganizations and brought
fl ood control and erosion control (originally in the Public Works Depart-
ment) together with water quality protection (originally in the Environ-
mental Resource Management group in the Planning Department). The
newly formed department, Watershed Protection (later named the Water-
shed Protection and Development Review Department), has adopted
an integrated environmental management approach that recognizes the
interrelation of the various drainage mandates of the municipality. The
departmental reorganization resulted in a substantial change in the ad-
ministrative culture of the Watershed Department staff and emphasized a
collaborative approach to reconcile the tensions between the various drain-
age missions. A Watershed Department staff member notes: “In 1996, it
was basically two cultures coming together. The engineers from the Public
Works Department were mainly focused on fl ood control and they got