Texas Hill Country experiences a gold rush for homebuilding

The Texas Hill Country is officially discovered and there’s 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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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.

The Hill Country Alliance, a non-profit organization that encompasses more than 11,000,000 acres in 18 states, is named for its region. It works to preserve and strengthen conservation efforts in an era of 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 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.

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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 stated that it was something we knew from the beginning: the loss of ranching land, the subdivision large tracts of wildlife habitat, and open spaces would be a challenge. It has only gotten worse over the past two years.

Blanco, for one, is trying to stop Blanco’s 1,500-home subdivision, which would more then double the city’s 1,800 inhabitants when completed. 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 additional strain on their infrastructure.

Dripping Springs Ranchers are preparing for the possibility of Hays County exercising imminent domain over their lands to construct a four-lane highway through Dripping Springs to accommodate the increased traffic caused by the population boom.

Developers who build the homes often clash with city leaders who want preservation of once-quiet Hill Country life. Colin Strother, a political strategist, lives in Buda and served as Buda’s planning and zoning commissioner for 10 years.

He said that these developers don’t care about us. They 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.

Nearly 3.8 Million people reside in the Hill Country, which is almost 50 percent more than 2000. According to the HCA as of 2020. The region is expected increase by 35 percent over 20 years to reach 5.2 millions people by 2040.

Some of that growth occurred within city boundaries, in cities such as Fredericksburg, Boerne, Kerrville. However, the majority of growth has taken place in unincorporated areas, which are not subject to city rules or 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 show the highest levels of mass migration to unincorporated areas within 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 can build subdivisions in unincorporated counties without being subject to density, zoning, or wastewater regulations.

Romans stated that Texas is the only country that doesn’t allow counties to plan for and manage their growth. We are seeing an increase in growth in our region, with more incompatible land use coming in close to one another.

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 city leaders credit the 2019 passage of House Bill 347 as the impetus to a lot of Hill Country developer takeovers. House Bill 347 abolished involuntary municipality annexation. This means that a city could annex portions of unincorporated county territory to its city limits 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 profit from the lack of county oversight to build large subdivisions within a city’s ETJ while still being close enough for a city to require its water, wastewater and public services 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, 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 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.

Impact on water supply

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 Hill Country’s current water supply situation with a glass of water that had only one or two drinking straws. It has 10, 11 or more.

She said that we can’t keep adding more straws to the same glass of water and expecting it to last as long when there was one.

Simply put, more subdivisions and houses means more groundwater pumping from aquifers which could lead to some wells that pump from the water source to dry up.

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 said that it has been dry several times since then.

She said that the Hill Country once had 1,100 springs. However, we don’t know how many of those original springs are still operating. 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 over the years to manage the number and type of water permits that are issued for new homes and businesses.

Roland Ruiz (general manager of the Edwards Aquifer Authority) said that sometimes developers and environmental goals can 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 said that it’s complex and difficult. We believe there is a way forward. That’s why we do what they do so we can possibly 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 stated that it will ultimately be the Hill Country’s demise because of the desire to live in the big cities.

These actions do not just impact the small communities. He said that it is affecting the entire region because there is not enough infrastructure to handle it. Unchecked growth was a major problem 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].