At the insistence of Mayor Steve Adler (and Council Member Paige Ellis), City Council postponed vote on Thursday for a resolution that would Equalize environmental regulationsCentral and East Austin have protections that have been in place for a long time in the Drinking Water Protection Zone (West Austin). Council is scheduled to return to this resolution on June 9.
Ann Kitchen and Kathie Tovo were two of the resolutions sponsors. They argued early in day that the postponement was not necessary. However, Tovo accepted the postponement as soon as the item came back up to consideration towards the end.
Luke Metzger (executive director of Environment Texas) expressed his strong support for additional protections in remarks made to Council.
In a letter to Council, he also highlighted that Austin’s water pollution problem continues to be a serious concern. Since 2019, at least seven dogs have died due to exposure to toxic alga in the area lakes. According to the Watershed Protection Department 36% of the city’s creeks contain levels of fecal bacteria making them unsafe for swimming, wading, or fishing.
Natasha Harper, a Council Member, asked Metzger for confirmation of his statement regarding the city’s creeks. Metzger confirmed that 36% is correct.
Along with Metzger, representatives of Clean Water Action of Texas and the Save Barton Creek Association signed the letter. The letter writers noted that staff, boards and commissions have already reviewed the resolution’s policies. Many of the resolution’s proposals are included in it. They were approvedCouncil approved the ill-fated rewrite to the Land Development Code by a majority vote.
Metzger answered a question from Tovo during his Thursday appearance before Council about how much consideration was given to different parts of the proposed rules.
Metzger stated that many of the items in your resolution were first proposed five years ago. They were thoroughly vetted during the land code rewrite process and passed through boards, commissions, and the Council on two different readings. As Ive frustratedly communicated to many of you over the last year or two, we cant wait any longer for action to address the water pollution crisis in this community …. We have been waiting for years to take the necessary actions to clean up these waterways.
One of the proposed techniques is green infrastructure for urban settings, which are not compatible with traditional landscape requirements. Metzger replied to Kitchen’s question and said that tree islands in parking lots are a previously approved technique, as well rain gardens and green islands in dense parts of the city, which have been vetted by Council.
Adler stated that he believed everyone on the dais was a champion of the environmental goals. Many of these items were approved when Council approved the disastrous Land Development Code revision.
When we passed the (Land Development Code) we passed greater entitlements so we didn’t have to make a forced choice,” he said. “So, my reason to request the delay and I recognize the need to move forward quickly is to give us a chance to make sure were finding those trade-offs.
Kitchen responded, What I would really find distressing is if we felt we had to postpone to spend a lot of time thinking about all the aspects of this we’ve done a lot of that work already. Kitchen mentioned the July break ahead budget deliberations in Aug. She responded, “I would not want this to be delayed while I continue to think about the other aspects this is just to initiate change.” It still needs to go through the entire vetting process, so we need to be careful.
Adler concluded that we could tell them to create mitigating measures so it’s not a forced choice between affordability and the environment.
Tovo offered to delay the item until June 9 towards the end of the afternoon. Tovo also mentioned that the item had six sponsors. This implied that it would have passed if she hadn’t chosen to fight about it.
Photo made available by a Creative Commons license.
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