The days when Texas Hill Country was just rolling hills and the backdrop to a country life are gone. 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. Unfortunately, this mindset is not well-respected for the future of the region.
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Downtown Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther /Express NewsAccording 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 the Hill Country, often destroying small towns and threatening the Hill Country way to live.
The 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.
The Hill Country is seeing a lot of development as a result of the rapid growth in the major metros. 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.
ExpressNews.comSave the edge of night: Starry sky admirers fight light pollution in Hill Country amid growth and development
Homes in Sunfield, located east of Interstate 35 Buda, are available for viewing February 28, 2022.
William Luther /Express News
Katherine Romans is the executive director at the Hill Country AllianceAccording to him, the pandemic has only increased the rate of fragmentation in this region. Large tracts of land are being divided up to make way for 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. It has only gotten worse over the past two years.
Blanco, for example, is trying to stop a 1,500-home subdivision which would more than double the city’s 1,800 population when it is finished. Buda is planning for a 2,500-home subdivision within its extra-territorial jurisdiction. This is despite the near universal opposition of city leaders who claim they are unable to handle the additional stress on infrastructure.
Dripping 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.
Developers who build the homes often clash with city leaders who want to preserve the once-quiet Hill Country lifestyle. Colin Strother, a political strategist, lives in Buda and served for 10 years on Buda’s planning and zoning committee.
These developers don’t give a damn about us,” he said. They don’t care.
Downtown Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther /Express NewsCities cant manage growth
The Hill Country Alliance or HCA has carefully monitored the region’s population growth over the past two decades. The most recent 2020 census figures are shocking.
According to the HCA, nearly 3.8 million people lived in the Hill Country in 2020. This is a nearly 50 percent increase since 2000. The region is expected grow by 35 percent in the next 20 years and reach 5.2 million people by 2040.
Some of the growth occurred within city boundaries, such as Fredericksburg, Boerne, Kerrville. However, the majority of growth has occurred in unincorporated areas, which aren’t subject city rules and regulations.
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 has seen a decline in the population of several cities since the 1990s, but an increase in the overall population.
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 can build subdivisions in unincorporated counties without being subject to density, zoning, or wastewater regulations.
Downtown Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther /Express NewsRomans said that Texas is the only state that doesn’t give counties tools to plan and manage growth. We are seeing a lot of growth in our region and more incompatible land uses being added to each other.
This could look like a concrete plant passing by a hospital or an amphitheater with large, outdoor lights coming in right next to a quiet neighborhood.
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.
Many 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 hailed the bill as a way to allow residents of unincorporated areas to remain in control of their city and not be subject to increased taxation and regulations.
Some say that the bill has had an unintended effect of preventing cities from having a better control on development coming in close to their boundaries, most often in their extraterritorial jurisdictions (ETJs). Developers will use the little county oversight to build large subdivisions in an ETJ city, while being close enough that a city still 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 also stated that the program empowers developers to build their own infrastructure in these unincorporated areas to create dense communities on our outskirts.
Strother, a Buda political strategist, stated that House Bill 347 was like the state Legislature using a meat cleaver for cities’ ability to control growth or development.
Strother said that they just took out a whole section from the code that allowed cities to have what little power they had to manage their growth.
The Sunfield planned community development at Buda can be seen Monday, February 28, 2022.
William Luther /Express NewsImpact on water supply
One of the biggest concerns with increased development is the impact it has on the environment, in particular the strain that all the new homes are putting on Trinity and Edwards Aquifers, which are the two main aquifers that supply drinking waters to the entire Hill Country region.
Barron compared the Hill Country’s current water supply situation with a glass of water that had only one or two drinking straws. Now it has 10, 11 or more.
She stated that it is impossible to keep adding more straws in the same glass of drinking water and expect it not to last as long as it did when there were just one.
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 is one of the most famous and important spring wells of the region. It was dry for the first times in the late 2000s after a combination of excessive pumping, drought, and it had never been dried in recorded geographical history. 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 NewsWe know that the Hill Country was once home to 1,100 springs. But, unfortunately, 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.
Authorities like the Edwards Aquifer Authority or local groundwater conservation district manage and cap water permits. They have been working over the years to manage the number and type of water permits that are issued for new homes and businesses.
Roland Ruiz is the general manager at the Edwards Aquifer Authority. He said that developers and environmental interests can sometimes be at odds. He said that it is up to the Hill Country’s developers and environmental stakeholders, to consider groundwater supply and endangered species when planning for new growth.
Ruiz stated that it is complex and complicated. We believe there’s a path forward that can be worked out, and that is why we do the things we do so that we might all move forward together.
Strother, a political strategist, said that the Hill Country’s draw is its rolling hills, starry sky, and proximity to big 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. He stated that this is a problem for the entire region as we don’t have the infrastructure necessary to handle it. This unchecked growth is causing havoc in the entire region.
The Austin skyline can been seen behind a car on Sunfield Parkway, in the Sunfield development, just east from Interstate 35 in Buda.
William Luther /Express NewsAnnie Blanks writes for Report for America. This national service program places journalists in local newsrooms. ReportforAmerica.org. [email protected].
