Gone are those days when Texas Hill Country was just rolling hills that provided the backdrop for a country lifestyle. It is a relatively undeveloped, unspoiled region of the Lone Star State.
Longhorns no longer roamed in dark skies. Instead, they were free to roam across wide open fields for miles. Major rivers, from the Sabinal to San Marcos, flowed unimpeded through the plains.
The Texas Hill Country has been officially discovered and there is no turning back.
Connie Barron, a Blanco city councilwoman and a member of the Hill Country Alliance’s board, stated that there is a Gold Rush mentality in Hill Country development. It’s not a consideration for the future of this region, unfortunately.
Hill Country Headlines: Get the latest stories from the region in your email
According to the 2020 census the Texas Hill Country is the fastest growing region in the country. Small town leaders are increasingly concerned about this fact. Developers are flooding Hill Country with thousands-plus-home subdivisions, often overtaking small town infrastructure and threatening the Hill Country way-of-life.
Downtown Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther/Express-NewsThe Hill Country Alliance is a non-profit that covers more than 11,000,000 acres in 18 counties. Its name region is named after its founder. It works to preserve the environment, strengthen conservation efforts, and counter rapid growth. The region is home to 12 Texas rivers, in addition to San Antonio and Austin.
However, as the population boom continues in major metropolitan areas, spillovers from this growth have created a development boom in the Hill Country. Texas homebuilders are buying up land in rural counties, often in unincorporated areas, that don’t have much government oversight. They then build subdivisions of thousands of homes that test the infrastructure as well as the environmental resources of small towns once quiet.
Katherine Romans is the executive director at the Hill Country Alliance. She stated that the pandemic only has accelerated the rate for fragmentation in the area. This includes the splitting of large tracts to make way of dense development.
She said that we knew that the loss of ranching land and the subdivision of large tracts wildlife habitat and open space would be a problem. However, it has gotten more severe over the past two decades.
Blanco, for one, is trying to stop Blanco’s 1,500-home subdivision, which would more then double the citys population, which currently stands at 1,800. Buda is also preparing for a subdivision of 2,500 homes in its extra-territorial territory. This is despite almost universal opposition from city leaders, who claim they can’t handle the extra stress on their infrastructure.
Downtown Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther/Express-NewsDripping Springs ranchers are anticipating that Hays County may exercise imminent jurisdiction over their lands in order to build a four-lane highway through hills to handle increased traffic due to the population boom.
The developers who are building these homes are often at odds against city leaders who want the Hill Country to remain peaceful, said Colin Strother. Strother is a political strategist who lives in Buda, and served as a member of Buda’s planning commission for ten years.
He said that these developers don’t care about us. They just don’t care.
Cities cant manage growth
The Hill Country Alliance (or HCA) has closely tracked the population growth in the area over the past 20 year. The most recent figures from 2020 are stupendous.
According to the HCA in 2020, the Hill Country had a population of nearly 3.8million people. This represents a growth of almost 50% since 2000. The region is expected increase by 35 percent over 20 years to reach 5.2 millions people by 2040.
While some growth has occurred within city limits in cities like Fredericksburg and Boerne, most of it has been in unincorporated areas that aren’t subject to city regulations and rules.
According to the HCA, more than 864,000 people lived unincorporated in the Hill Country in 2020. This is a jump of 103 per cent since 1990.
Bandera and Medina counties are the best examples of mass migration to unincorporated areas in the Hill Country. The 2021 State of the Hill Country Report, which the HCA examined the region using metrics such as population growth, water quality, conservation efforts, more than doubled the population in Bandera County’s unincorporated areas since 1990. Bandera’s population remained nearly unchanged. Medina County also saw a decrease in the number of cities over the past few decades, while the county’s overall population increased.
Because counties have fewer tools than cities to plan and manage responsible growth, the growth of unincorporated areas can be important. Texas law says so. Developers are allowed to build subdivisions without the need to comply with density, zoning and wastewater regulations in unincorporated areas.
Romans said that Texas is the only state that doesn’t give counties tools to plan and manage growth. We are seeing an increase in growth in our region, with more incompatible land use coming in close to one another.
It could look like a concrete or brick plant is coming into a hospital. Or, it could look like an amphitheater with large lights coming in to quiet neighborhoods.
Multiple requests for comment from Hill Country Builders Association, Greater San Antonio Builders Association, and Home Builders Association of Greater Austin were not returned by representatives.
The Sunfield planned community development at Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther/Express-NewsMany leaders in cities point to House Bill 347’s 2019 passage as the catalyst for a lot more Hill Country developer takeovers. House Bill 347 eliminated involuntary municipal annexes, which allowed a city to annex unincorporated territory into its city boundaries without voter approval. Many people hailed the bill for allowing residents of unincorporated areas not to have to involuntarily annexe into a city. This would allow them to be subject to increased taxes and regulations.
However, some feel that the bill has had an unfortunate consequence of preventing cities being able to have a better grip on development coming in just outside their boundaries. Most often, this is in their extra-territorial jurisdictions or ETJs. Developers will use the little county oversight to build large subdivisions in an ETJ city, while still being within reach of a city that requires its water, wastewater, and public service resources.
Barron, Blanco’s city councilwoman, stated that the bill effectively stripped cities from their ability to exercise more control and protect them, as well as the opportunity to generate the revenue necessary to sustain small towns in the Hill Country.
She said that it also empowers developers to enter these unincorporated areas and create their own infrastructure to create dense communities right on our outskirts.
Strother, the Buda strategist, said that House Bill 347 was similar to the state Legislature giving a meat cleaver city’s ability to control growth and develop.
Strother stated that they just cut off a section of the code that provided cities with the power to manage their own growth.
Water Supply: The Impact
One of the major concerns about increased development is its impact on the environment, especially with the strain that all new houses are putting on the Edwards and Trinity aquifers, the two main aquifers that supply water to the entire Hill Country region.
Barron compared the current water supply situation to the Hill Country to a glass with just one or two straws. It now has 10, or 11.
We can’t keep putting more straws in the same glass of drinking water and expect it not to last as long, she said.
Simply put, more homes and subdivisions mean more groundwater pumps from the Aquifers. This could theoretically lead to some of those wells being drained.
Jacobs Well, one the most important and well-known spring wells in the area, was first dry in the late 2000s. This was due to excessive pumping and drought. It had never been dry in recorded historical geography. Roman stated that it had been dry a few times since then.
Old Black Colony Road marks a dividing line Monday February 28, 2022 between Buda, left, incorporated Hays County, and the city of Buda.
William Luther/Express-NewsShe said that although we know that the Hill Country was once home to 1,100 springs, we don’t know how many are still running. It is clear that once we lose those springs, we can see irreversible and dramatic impacts on the surface water.
Water permits are managed and capped by local groundwater conservation districts and the Edwards Aquifer Authority. They have been working on a case by case basis for many years to manage the new water permits issued so that new homes and businesses can be built.
Roland Ruiz is the general manager at the Edwards Aquifer Authority. He said that developers and environmental interests can sometimes be at odds. He stated that it was up to environmental stakeholders and developers to consider things such as groundwater supply, endangered species, and conservation efforts when planning for new development in the Hill Country.
Ruiz stated that it is complex and complicated. But we believe there’s a way forward. We do our best to make sure we move forward together.
Strother, the political strategist, stated that the Hill Country’s appeal is still its rolling hills and starry skies, as well as its proximity to major cities.
He said that the Hill Country will eventually be destroyed by the big-city people who want to live there.
These actions do not just impact the small communities. It is affecting the whole region because we don’t have the infrastructure to handle it. This uncontrolled growth is causing havoc in the entire region.
Annie Blanks is a writer for the Express-News via Report for America, a national program that places journalists into local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. [email protected].
