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TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: Mary Arnold (MA)
INTERVIEWER: David Todd (DT)
DATE: August 21,1997
SOURCE MEDIA: Hi-8 and DAT
REEL: 1012
NUMBER OF TAPES: 3
TRANSCRIBER: Judy Holloway
Please see the full Real Media video
record,
shown in parts
A and
B,
of our interview with Ms. Arnold.
[Tape 1 of 3, Side A.]
DT: This is David Todd. It’s August 21st,[1997]
and we’re in Austin, Texas, and I’ve got the good opportunity to talk
to Mary Arnold about many of her contributions to conservation in
Texas, central Texas and Austin in particular, and I just want to take
this chance to thank you for your time, and—and then to maybe launch
into this. I’ve got a long laundry list of questions, and I just hope
that they’re a launching pad for talking about things and not
something that’ll confine what we have to say. I thought I’d begin in
the early days and just talk a little bit about your parents and some
of your childhood friends and about how they might’ve influenced your
interest in conservation.
MA: My parents grew up in south Texas
close to Corpus, and my father’s family was sort of a ranching family.
One of his brothers went into farming, and we still have land down
there that’s been in the family for over 120 years. So I think that
just an appreciation for land was certainly part of my heritage. I
didn’t get to go down there all that much, but during World War II my
parents bought a little farm outside of Dallas, and we’d go out there
on the weekends just to kind of get away and to have a sense of being
on the land. So, I guess that’s a little bit of it. My father was the
civil engineer and built bridges and power plants and things like
that, so while he was changing the land to some extent, it was still
very much tied to the out of doors, so to speak, in that sense, and—we
didn’t really talk about conservation or things like that but
certainly there was a love and appreciation for the land and a sense
of the value of that land just to care for.
DT: Did your mother have much of an
interest in conservation or…
MA: No, no, she was interested in
music. And—but she had moved around with my father in the early years
to the different areas where they were building bridges, and ‘course
always loved the land in south Texas. And when they retired, they
decided to retire to the Kerrville area, which is certainly part of
the Hill Country, and our time in the Kerrville and Hunt area became
very important to all of us. I was fortunate to go to camp over there,
and my kids did as well, and I’m still going to camp over there, so
the Hill Country atmosphere has certainly been one of our family
loves.
DT: Well, did you have any friends
when you were growing up who sort of shared your interest in the
outdoors?
MA: No. No, not much at all.
DT: No?
MA: No. Um-umm.
DT: What about any teachers who
might‘ve inspired a little spark of interest?
MA: I think that my experience at the
university of Texas was more of a broad liberal-arts perspective, and
I began to be interested in architecture and urban planning, and
that’s I think where my interest began to focus a little bit, and to
think of how green spaces worked into urban planning. You know, some
of the modern architects—Frank Lloyd Wright, certainly—the way he
built involved a lot of bringing nature in, as well as having the
architecture feel that it was a part of and enhancing what was there
naturally.
DT: Did you study any sort of local
architects, like O. Neil Ford?
MA: Not specifically,…
DT: Uh-huh.
MA: …no. There was one fellow at the
University named Harwell Hamilton Harris, who did some residential
architecture. But—you know, no. Not—not really. But certainly, my idea
of architecture involved more of the natural stone constructions and
the—big open windows bringing the trees inside and—thinking about it
in that way.
DT: Hmm. Sometimes people—have mentors
that they never meet, people that they read about, some people who—who
may not even be living any longer. Are there folks like that who you
sort of draw some inspiration from?
MA: Well, another one that I might
speak of would be William Morris in England, and the movement that he
was a part of in the—what, late 19th century, mid—mid to
late 19th century, with sort of the—what do I want to call
it, the hand craft movement, weaving his own rugs, designing his own
wallpapers, building his own houses. He was kind of a follower of John
Ruskin. So it was a naturalist—well, and then there were the
pre-Raphaelites, too, but anyway, William Morris was sort of a
Renaissance man, so to speak, because he was a writer, an artist, and
a craftsman, all-- together. So that was—he’s always been an
inspiration. I also was able to spend a year in London after I
graduated from college, so I was able to observe how those wonderful
green parks in London made such a difference to the fabric of the
urban area there, and to hear some about the green belts around London
and the ideas about planning for how growth would occur outside those
green spaces--but the importance of the green space.
DT: [Pause.] Can you ever point to
a—sort of a turning point, a watershed, your own little Waterloo,
that—that decided…
MA: Right. Yes. [Laughs.]
DT: …your interest in conservation and…
MA: Yes, absolutely. The effort to
save the municipal golf course. "Save Muni!" The Lyons Municipal Golf
Course happens to be on land owned by the University of Texas. And in
the early ‘70’s, when Frank Erwin was chairman of the U.T. Board of
Regents, he was making all sorts of expansions in the University, both
here in Austin and around the state. And as part of his expansion, he
made some references to the fact that the University should sell the
golf course and make some money off of it. And the city over the years
had leased the land, and the golf course had been there since the late
‘20’s, I guess. But I had heard stories when I was a university
student about George Brackenridge, who had made the gift to the
University of that land. And one of the ladies that I had worked with
as an art docent at UT lived in the Muni area and began to organize
with the golfers opposition to the University’s plans to sell off the
golf course and lose that green jewel in the middle of Austin. So I
had great fun doing research on George Brackenridge and the
Brackenridge Tract and all of the UT machinations to get around
Brackenridge’s will, and all sorts of things. So that was the
watershed event.
DT: Well, can you tell me a little bit
about what it was in Brackenridge’s will that they…
MA: Got around?
DT: …were trying to avoid and…
MA: Right.
DT: …if he has stipulated the kind of
use that he envisioned?
MA: He—his vision for the land was
that the University should move the campus out there. But, he clashed
with George Littlefield. Littlefield had fought for the Confederacy
and Brackenridge had worn the Union uniform. Littlefield wanted the
campus to stay where it was, and Brackenridge had offered 500 acres,
at Muni and the surrounding area, to move the campus, and this was in
the—about 1918-1919, I guess. Anyway, the—oil had not been discovered
in west Texas, so they went to the Legislature and the Legislature
wouldn’t give them the money to move the campus, plus Littlefield
said, "I’ll give you a million dollars to stay." Brackenridge finally
died and didn’t have any money left in his estate to give any extra
money to move the campus, so the campus stayed where it was. The
Lions’ Club came to the University and said, "Well, you’ve got all
this land. Would you mind if we built a golf course?" And they said,
"Heck, that land’s worthless to us, go ahead." Then during the
Depression, the WPA [Works Progress Agency] was doing work in the
area, so the city took over the golf course, used some WPA money to
build it into 18 holes, and they got a 50-year lease with the
University until 1987, ’37 to ’87. And here was good ol’ Frank Erwin
saying, "No sirree, Bob." There was a clause in the will that said if
the University did anything that wasn’t educational with the land,
then it would revert back to Brackenridge’s home county in the Edna Ganada
area—I can’t remember the name of the county. Anyway, they had put
somebody on the Board of Regents from that area and they’d made deals
with the school district down there that was supposed to benefit from
the land—this, that and the other—so anyway, they got around the will.
But, we were lucky to have Ed Clark appointed to the Board of Regents
during this controversy, and Ed Clark in an interview said that he
felt that the University should not sell the Brackenridge
Tract, and that the green space was important. So, the city and
the University finally worked out a deal to at least let the lease run
until 1987. And then, we negotiated with the University and made
agreements whereby the University got certain development on the rest
of the tract, and the city has a 30-year lease on the golf course and
is paying about $250,000 a year rent out of our golf fees to the
University for the use of that land. But where the conservation and
environment part of it came was in trying to figure out and being made
aware of laws that had been passed to say that you had to have a
public hearing, if you were gonna take publicly owned green space and
do something else with it. And that’s where we ran into Ned Fritz, who
had been very much responsible for getting that legislation passed,
and we began to meet others who had—were in the environmental
movement, so to speak. But the idea was that keeping that green space
was important for the urban dwellers, and that there were state laws
that could help us, if we mobilized the public to oppose taking away
that green space. It was part of an overall campaign to try to
persuade the powers that be not to let it go. So that was a lot of
fun, and that kind of launched me into working with the city of
Austin. It was after that that I was appointed to the goals assembly
and worked on the Bicentennial Committee and then went on the Parks
Board. But that was the beginning, and with the Goals Assembly, I was
assigned to the environmental subgroup. So through those discussions I
learned so much more about the city of Austin and about the creeks and
things like that, and through the Bicentennial effort, I was serving
on the Horizons Committee, which was supposed to identify Austin’s
gift to the nation in honor of the Bicentennial. And Beverly Sheffield
was heading up the bicentennial effort as a city employee, and of
course he was a very strong mentor in my work with the city of
Austin because he had the wonderful stories of the past, and Andrew
Zilker’s gift to the city of Austin and the importance of those green
belts along the creek, and he had been there practically when they
were established and knew the reason for them and was so committed to
having those be part of the fabric for the recreation purposes and as
part of the Parks and Recreation Department’s integration into the
whole life of the city and the quality of life here. Sinclair Black
was also in that group, and Tom Sheffelman, and so it became rather
easy to come up with this idea that the preservation and enhancement
of our creeks and waterways would be Austin’s gift to the nation. And
there was a bond election coming up, and the bicentennial people spoke
very much in favor of the bond money to begin to buy the Barton Creek
green belt, and I guess the whole Barton Creek issue was something
that I wasn’t that personally involved with, but in the early ‘70’s
that was definitely in the works.
DT: Can you mention some of these
early environmentalists that you got in touch with in—I guess it’d be
the late ‘60’s, early ‘70’s?
MA: Ned…
DT: You’ve mentioned Beverly Sheffield
and Sinclair Black?
MA: Right.
DT: What were they like?
MA: Well, you know Beverly, don’t you?
DT: No, no.
MA: You don’t know Beverly Sheffield?
DT: Don’t.
MA: Beverly was head of our Parks and
Recreation Department for, oh, 30 or 40 years, and swims daily at
Barton Springs. He’s a charmer. He’s retired, but still very, very
active. After he did the bicentennial, he started the Austin Community
Foundation and was the executive director for a number of years until
he retired from that job, and he has lots of wonderful stories to
tell. He definitely does.
DT: I’m sure. What about Sinclair
Black?
MA: Sinclair Black is a—he was a young
architect here at UT at that time and he’s still around and has been
very much involved in a lot of different projects, over the years.
DT: Well, so a lot of these people
were trained or it was part of their job to protect some of these
green spaces. I’m curious if you could tell me a little bit about the
Citizens Groups that were I guess more lay people, folks that were
doing this as a hobby or…
MA: Um-hmm. Right. One of the—I mean, I really
didn’t know Jeanette and Russell Fish that well, but Jeanette Fish and
her husband, Russell, were sort of responsible for the first hike and
bike trail in Pease Park, and her father had been head of the Chamber
of Commerce here—I think her father was Walter Long, and that the lake
out at Decker is named Walter E. Long Lake, in honor of her father. So
they were long-time people but she and others began the idea of the
hike and bike trail in Pease Park, and that of course became very
important as a model for Town Lake, and the hike and bike trail around
Town Lake. And of course I’ve been very fortunate to get to know
Roberta Crenshaw over the years, and she certainly has wonderful
stories to tell, and served as chair of the Parks Board for a number
of years and of course worked with Beverly Sheffield for a number of
years, and she’s the one—one of the ones that’s extremely responsible
for the Town Lake area being redone as green space and a park area,
because of course the Colorado River didn’t always have a dam at both
ends. When they built the dam at the end to do the power plant, then
that created the lake. And when Roberta heard that there was gonna be
a dam at both ends and that there was gonna be a lake,…
DT: Oh, you mean, at Longhorn Dam and
then at Tom Miller Dam.
MA: Right. I mean, Tom Miller Dam had
been there for many, many years, but Longhorn Dam was not put in until
the ‘60’s, I don’t think. So when she found that out, then she went to
work on getting the area cleaned up and having more green space down
there. And of course, it would take a whole—another day to talk about
the sand beach reserve and our struggles to maintain that land that
was granted to us by the state of Texas. And this is an area on the
north side of Town Lake that was granted to the city in about 1945 by
the state, with the idea at that point that the citizens wanted to use
it for public purposes. But that’s—that’s a whole—another story.
DT: Well, maybe a story that ties
together a lot of this is that you seem to be trying to work towards
the future and plan for and accommodate it, and retain some of the
things that attracted a lot of the growth and people…
MA: Um-hmm.
DT: …and industry to Austin…
MA: Right.
DT: …as—with its Green Belts and so
on, and I was curious if you could talk a little bit about what the
vision for the city was and the compact city and why people thought
that was so important.
MA: The—well, one of the things that
had happened, it—I mean, it all kind of came together with Austin
Tomorrow and the Goals Assembly and the Austin Tomorrow Plan, which
was, you know, funded by a federal planning grant but it just happened
to come at the right time. For instance, I think it was--the Sierra
Club or the Audubon Group had done an inventory in the late ‘60’s or
early ‘70’s of the natural places in Austin that were left and were
undeveloped, but important places that they felt should be preserved.
So, when we came together for the Austin Tomorrow Plan in 1975, you
were beginning to get the pressures of the growth in the Barton Creek
watershed south of the city, south of the river. And with the
information that we were getting, I guess it was also about that time
that there were growth pressures in the Lake Austin watershed, and
Lowell Leberman was a member of the City Council—arranged for the city
to hire Ian McHarg’s company from Philadelphia. And Ian McHarg was—had
the idea of building with the environment, rather than against
it, and his group came in and analyzed the Lake Austin watershed and
said, "O.K., you know, you shouldn’t build close to these steep
slopes, you should protect the slopes. You’ve got to protect your
water quality in the lake. It’s drinking water. You’ve got to control
the storm water runoff. You can do that by limiting your density and
really being careful and setting up formulas for how you can build
with the environment, etc." So, that all was bubbling up in the
community as well as the people in south Austin who got upset when
they were gonna build an office building across a creek. And
that’s when we finally got a creek ordinance in the early ‘70’s that
said you’ve got to preserve the natural character of the waterway. If
you’re going to destroy the natural character of the waterway, show us
why it has to be and try as much as possible to preserve that natural
character. So I think there’s—there’s pretty much always been an
appreciation of the natural beauties that we’re blessed with here in
the Austin area, and so there’ve always been people willing to try to
protect them, but trying to do that in the midst of the growth
pressures in the ‘70’s, the growth pressures in the ‘80’s—we’ve lost
some things but we haven’t lost everything yet. And so the work that
was done for the Goals Assembly and the Austin Tomorrow Plan took what
was going on that they knew of around the country, and talked about
how the--the western part of Travis County was the Balcones Escarpment
and the Hill Country and could be destroyed if you didn’t develop it
in the right way, or it would be better not to encourage development
out there. They also felt that we had good rich blackland soil to the
east--farm land, cotton land--and at that point they were saying,
better preserve that, too. Use your growth area along the I-35
corridor because it comes in between these two natural geographies. So
you can protect the land on the west and protect the land on the east,
for geographic and environmental reasons—I mean, geologic--different
geologies, etc. So that’s kind of how the Corridor Plan worked--and
the talk about clustering your development, which then led to talk
about compact development. And I guess Boulder was beginning to
experiment back in the ‘70’s with trying to keep their development
within a certain area and not let it spill out. But that was always—at
that time there was still the conflict with the normal—what America
was experiencing in the urban sprawl after World War II. And you had
land masses that the developers got their hands on and kind of leap-frogged
over the city of Austin, and then that’s where you got into the MUDS.
DT: Well, when McHarg came and talked
to you, is—I guess he gave you some guidelines on how he thought
growth would happen, and how it maybe should be guided to occur, and
I’m curious if—how close his predictions were to what actually
happened.
MA: ‘Course he was just looking at the
Lake Austin watershed,…
DT: Right.
MA: …which was kind of the northwest
area,…
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: …and—at least we had a Lake Austin
ordinance early on that did speak to not building on the slopes, and
staying away from the creeks, so to speak. But as it went on into the
1980’s, the problem was that if it were an area outside the city
limits, you had no zoning, so that while you could partially control
the way the development happened, a massive amount of
development has been approved in that northwest quadrant. And…
DT: Outside of city limits.
MA: Yeah.
DT: Maybe that would be a good reason
to talk a little bit about MUDS, Municipal Utility Districts.
MA: Um-hmm.
DT: I understood that in the early
‘80’s, from ’83 to ’86, you worked hard to persuade the City Council…
MA: Certainly did.
DT: …not to approve the
creation of these MUDS,…
MA: Right.
DT: …and that you’re still active
trying to…
MA: Yes.
DT: …to persuade them to be more
careful about…
MA: Yes.
DT: …how they regulate these MUDS. I
wonder if you could just give us a little bit of background as to what
a MUD is and how it’s created.
MA: I wish I had…
[Tape 1, Side B.]
MA: I wish I had had time to do more
research into other states and how they handle this, but—in Texas
these seem to have developed first of all in the Houston area, and the
idea was that you needed water and sewer to have a development, and in
the Houston area you could dig water wells and you could put in small
package waste-water treatment plants. All right, so that served the
new growth outside the city limits. The Municipal Utility District was
organized under the State Constitution guidelines for a water
district. So in other words, it provided a legal mechanism to issue
tax-exempt bonds to pay for the water wells, the water lines, the
sewer plant, and the sewer lines in this new development, so that they
could, instead of going to a bank and borrowing all the money to pay
for these improvements, they could issue bonds, and then over the
years the residents in the district would pay taxes to the water
district to pay off those bonds that had been used to build their
water and waste-water facilities. The way it was different in Austin
was that the developers and development lawyers figured out that they
could get commitments from the city of Austin to provide water and
sewer service, and then if big improvements were needed to get that
city water and sewer out to the new development, they could
issue contract revenue bonds. the MUDS would contract with the city
and issue bonds for these large water and waste-water lines or
projects, and then the city would pay the debt service on those
contract bonds for these facilities to serve the new areas. The
concept was sold to the city as a way of providing planning outside
the city limits that they wouldn’t get otherwise, with the ultimate
carrot of, "Well, once we get developed, you can annex us." And of
course, that hasn’t happened. The city has only been able to annex one
municipal utility district so far. And yet, it has been city water and
sewer that have made it possible to develop in these little areas
around town.
DT: Well, let’s see if I have this
straight. In Houston, it was the residents of each of these little
water districts that paid the debt service, but in Austin, it was the
population as a whole, not—outside of the utility district that took
on the debt service?
MA: Right. We took on the debt service
for the large water and waste-water facilities to serve that district.
The district itself would pay debt service on their internal
water and waste-water lines.
DT: But the equivalent of the water
well or the sewage treatment plant in Houston…
MA: Uh-huh. Right. It…
DT: …was actually being funded by the
city of Austin’s…
MA: They were—the facilities were
oversized. In other words, the districts would pay for their small
little part of these over-sized facilities.
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: And then the city—you know, the
water and waste-water rate payers are paying the debt service for
these over-sized lines. It was not a fair deal for our rate payers,
plus, it got around the City Charter that required the citizens to
approve bonds for water and waste-water facilities. By issuing the
contract revenue bonds, they could avoid having to get city voter
approval for those bonds. So it was very slick and neat. The City
Finance Department issued a scathing report, saying, if you—if the
City Council approves all the MUDS that are being proposed right now,
all the new growth is gonna go to those areas and not inside the city
limits, and the tax base of the city is going to suffer. And that is
what has happened.
DT: And what year was this that the
City Council finally approved this kind of financing?
MA: They started out on a small scale
in the ‘70’s with places like Anderson Mill and Lost Creek, where the
city provided the water and those MUDS built their own small package
treatment plant. Then, there were a few more, and finally in the early
‘80’s you began to get Wells Branch, and the north-central Austin
Growth Corridor MUD, which were also sold because they were in the
Growth Corridor. We’ve annexed the north-central MUD, but we have not
annexed Wells Branch. But the voters had turned down bonds to extend
the city’s water and sewer lines, until there was an agreement from
the developers to pay capital recovery fees for new hookups, so that
the new growth would pay its fair share of buying into our system. And
so, creating those MUDS then allowed big projects to be built without
voter approval. And then--then you got the rush of the southwest MUDS,
and then there was a rush of MUDS in the northwest. Most of the
northwest MUDS did not ultimately get approvals. But unfortunately
those southwest MUDS were approved in about ‘84—’84, ’85--Circle C,
Southland Oaks, NPC had their MUDS, Milburn had its MUDS and Gary
Bradley had his MUDS. So everybody got a little piece of the action.
It’s a mess.
DT: Can you explain a little bit
about—beyond sort of the democratic issues at heart and the economic
problems of exporting tax base, can you explain what the environmental
problem is for MUDS?
MA: They were able to retain
exemptions from updates in our water quality ordinances, until SOS.
The southwest MUDS—some of them are on the recharge zone of the
Edwards Aquifer, and they did come in under the Lower Watersheds
Ordinance or the Williamson Creek Ordinance. But, as we began to study
and monitor our water quality controls and realized that they weren’t
as strong as they needed to be, you came along with changes in 1986 to
have a comprehensive watershed ordinance. The MUDS managed to persuade
the City Council that they didn’t have to comply with the updated
ordinances, and that was part of our strong effort to get a new
ordinance that would do away with those exemptions and would go back
to the language in the MUD Consent Agreement that said that the MUD’s
agreed to comply with the city’s water quality ordinances as those
ordinances were amended from time to time. The MUD’s have a higher
density than the land can really carry down there because of its
environmental sensitivity.
DT: So it’s not just the fact that
it’s enabling sprawl, but it’s also where the sprawl’s
happening, that those are especially sensitive places? Can you
describe a little bit about Barton Creek Basin, because they—I imagine
a lot of people don’t appreciate—never understand it as well as you
do.
MA: The Barton Springs pool is fed by
Barton Springs, which is--what, one of the three or four largest
springs in the whole state of Texas. It sort of pumps out somewhere
between 30 to 90 million gallons of water per day—of cool, clean--so
far--water. The aquifer that bubbles out at the springs is a coursed
aquifer, which means that as storm water or water seeps down into the
aquifer, it doesn’t get much filtration because the limestone rocks
have holes in them, so that the areas where there are holes in the
ground where the water goes down into the aquifer take whatever water
comes down the creek and it then goes into the aquifer because 80% I
think of the recharge for our little portion of that Edwards aquifer
that comes out at Barton Springs—80% of that recharge takes place on
the creek--bottoms of the creeks that run over the recharge zone. The
area—the recharge zone is the area where there are the holes in the
creek that go down into the aquiver. The watersheds of those streams
that eventually come to the recharge zone in essence contribute water
to the streams, and then the water hits the recharge zone and goes
down into the aquifer. So the quality of the water that comes from the
contributing zone in that creek also becomes important to the quality
of the water in the aquifer. Well, right now, as you get more and more
development in the recharge zone and in those contributing zones,
you're gonna have less clean, clear, crystal water from the
undeveloped areas unless you’re very, very careful, so what we’re
trying to do is to limit the water quality impact on the waters that
get into the recharge zone, and part of the way that you do that is to
limit your urban development in those sensitive areas.
DT: So you think that it’s probably
more productive to reduce the amount of impervious cover and reduce
the density rather than to build structures on the—like, retention
ponds, detention ponds.
MA: The structural—right, the
structural controls—the studies that have been done show that the
pollutant removal efficiencies of the structural controls go down
dramatically as the impervious cover increases. In other words, the
more impervious cover you have, the more runoff you have when it
rains. And trying to treat that much more runoff would take a huge
pond and a lot of space, so what you get is—you at least try to get
the first half-inch to an inch of runoff and treat it, but the rains
here in central Texas can create a whole lot more water than that. So,
what the studies are showing is that that increased runoff—that
increased volume of runoff--begins to erode your stream banks, and
your stream banks then crumble and become sediments that are washed on
down into the aquifer, as well. And it just—there are some wonderful
studies and slide shows that have been prepared from different parts
of the country even, to show those impacts on creeks of the increased
runoff from development. So the structural controls can’t do the whole
job, if you’ve got a whole bunch of impervious cover.
DT: One of the things that you have
done is serve on the Impact Fee Advisory Board, and—which I understand
is part of the city’s Water and Waste-water Commission, and I’m
wondering if you can talk a little bit about how the city—at least the
Board has tried to bring some equity to how development is paid for
and how development is subsidized less, through some of those fees.
MA: The idea of a capital recovery fee
or an impact fee certainly did not originate in Austin but other
places that were experiencing heavy growth, particularly in Florida, I
think, and in California as well. The idea was that growth should pay
more of the cost of its impact on a number of different things. In
Austin, the only impact fees that have been instituted are the ones
related to water and waste-water infrastructure, so that you—anyway,
we set some capital recovery fees, and other cities in Texas began
doing the same thing. Some people went to the Legislature and
complained, and so they passed a state law dealing with how you
regulate impact fees. And so the Impact Fee Advisory Committee is
mandated by state law, and the state law sets out a very rigorous
formula for how those impact fees can be calculated. While it's a
rigorous formula, it has a lot of flexibility in it in terms of—as
long as you can defend a maximum fee under this formula, the city can
charge whatever it wants to as long as it doesn’t go over that
maximum. And of course the city had approved something like a billion
dollars worth of water and sewer projects. So the city had already—the
water and waste-water department had already issued bonds for millions
and--hundreds of millions of dollars worth of improvements, so that
the capital recovery fees and impact fees that we collect are simply
going off to pay debt service on bonds and projects that have already
been billed.
DT: So the fees were assessed sort of
after the fact, rather than as a just--sort of discouragement to those
projects occurring in the first place.
MA: Right. Right. One of the ways that
we have tried to use the impact fees in terms of growth management is
that you can have lower fees inside the city limits and higher fees
outside the city limits. And the City Council did accept that formula
from the beginning, so that that’s one way that you can encourage
growth inside the city limits is to say you won’t have to pay as high
a capital recovery fee inside the city limits.
DT: While we’re talking about planning
and development, I was curious if you could talk a little bit about
your view of development inside the city in places—well, you mentioned
the lines, of course, but also I guess the triangles is a pretty
controversial area now, where many of the people who I guess have been
trying to argue for a compact city are caught in a odd sort of
catch-22 where, you know, they value this green space inside the city
and they don’t want to see it develop haphazardly. Where do you fall
in that sort of controversy?
MA: One of the things that Andy Sansom
with the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department has been saying for the
last four or five years is—ever since he’s been in that office, he’s
been spreading the word all over the state that—what, over 90% of the
land in the large state of Texas is privately owned. We have very
little public land left, and it makes absolutely no sense to me
whatsoever to take publicly owned land for private development. It
seems that that is—we’re losing that public land for the future, and
we’re also letting the state compete with the private sector. If you
look at the Triangle development, you don’t have to go but five or six
blocks and you find the North Loop-Burnett Road shopping center area
that has been partially abandoned for years. What a wonderful
opportunity for redevelopment, where there’s already 100% impervious
cover! Why take green space, when there are many areas in that
geographic area near the Triangle that could be redeveloped and at
higher densities? That’s my viewpoint on the Triangle.
DT: So, I mean, in your view it’s not
that it’s an inner city compact site, but that it’s a public
site.
MA: It’s public land.
DT: I see.
MA: Why does it make sense for the
state of Texas to insist upon setting aside 200 acres at Mueller
Airport for the state to use to build buildings, and then to have the
state say, "We don’t need the Triangle area to build offices."? I
mean, that’s contradictory, it’s—that’s a farce.
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: If the state needs airport land to
build buildings, they could use the Triangle land to build buildings.
DT: O.K. [Pause.] I notice that you
served on the Barton Creek Task Force in 1993 as part of the SOS team
that was…
MA: Yes.
DT: …negotiating with Freeport-MacMoran
over their development, and I’m curious how you managed to bring
Freeport-MacMoran to the table.
MA: Oh, they wanted to be
there. They wanted city sewer service.
DT: So that was the carrot.
MA: That was the carrot. Plus, they
were threatening to go to the Legislature, to attack the SOS
Ordinance. So, it was in their best interest to try to get city sewer
service. But, they were not really willing to give up any development.
[Laughs.] In fact, they ended up wanting more, more square footage and
more buildings than was reasonable.
DT: I remember a little bit from that
time that there were some in the environmental community that felt
like a strategy of engagement and a sort of entente was good, and…
MA: One of the reasons…
DT: …other people felt like it
was—you’re dealing with the devil.
MA: Right.
DT: What did you think about that?
MA: That there was a real problem that
was created out there, as one of these special districts. It was the
Southwest Travis County Road District, which issued bonds to build the
Southwest Parkway, and the idea was that the landowners in that
district would do development, the development would pay off the debt
service on the bonds that had been issued. But the development didn’t
happen, and the debt service kept piling up. A big chunk of that
district was called the Uplands and Sweetwater Tract. It was taken
over by the RTC [Resolution Trust Corporation], as was Lantana, and
several of the properties in that road district ended up in the hands
of the RTC. The Nature Conservancy had worked on a deal to get some
RTC lands for the Balcones Habitat Plan, and the city had passed bonds
and were willing to buy those RTC lands from the—I mean, buy them from
the Nature Conservancy. However, Travis County is the one that had
approved the Road District. They were the Board of Directors of the
Road District, and they didn’t want to threaten Travis County’s bond
rating or something. Anyway, they said the city can’t have the uplands
and Sweetwater land until the Road District’s dissolved, and
something’s done about all these bonds. So the environmentalists were
saying, "We’ve got to save uplands and Sweetwater for the habitat for
the birds." And that’s—that group wanted us to be at the table, in
order to try to save uplands and Sweetwater. What ultimately happened
was that Freeport-McMoRan bought the bonds for the whole Road
District, and ended up using Uplands and Sweetwater as their
mitigation for the habitat destruction that they’re planning to do in
the Barton Creek Properties area, so that the city was cut out of
having Uplands and Sweetwater as part of the city’s preserve,
and having Barton Creek Properties preserve part of their own
land as mitigation for their destruction. So, while Uplands and
Sweetwater were ultimately saved even though we didn’t do the
development deal with Freeport-McMoRan, you still have lost some
control over the Freeport-McMoRan development but they probably will
not be able to develop as much without city sewer service
because they will have to set aside areas for spray irrigation of
their effluent, their waste-water effluent.
DT: Can you talk a little bit more
about this—the idea of mitigation and the idea that impacts in one
area can be offset by saving another area? I mean, some people think
it’s a very practical way. Other people feel like it’s somewhat
cynical, and, you know, that each acre of land’s unique and
you—they’re not fungible. What do you think?
MA: Well, the--mitigation is certainly
called for in the Endangered Species Act, and—I think there—that we
were talking about this this morning in another context but there was
an effort by some landowners to say, "Well, we’ll buy land for the
birds way out in Val Verde County. And that didn’t seem right, because
the mitigation ought to be in more or less the same area where you’re
gonna be destroying habitat. So I can’t—I think there are boundaries
and bounds that make more sense than others. With the Barton Springs
salamander and the watershed issues, a point was being made this
morning that the creek areas are different than the bird habitat. And
if you’re developing in one part of the Barton Springs zone, as long
as you stay in the Barton Springs zone, you might be able to work out
a reasonable mitigation scheme by acquiring land along some of the
creeks further out in the watershed. But that—that, yes, it didn’t
make sense to get bird mitigation 300--200 miles away for destruction
of bird habitat in this area.
DT: O.K. I have one more question
about this—the whole Freeport McMoRan, and I guess the whole idea of
suburban development. How much efffect do you think the regulations
had on Freeport McMoRan, versus the peer pressure and the citizen
outcry, on their willingness to make concessions?
MA: They were not willing to make…
[Tape 2 of 3, Side A.]
MA: They were not willing to make
concessions. [Laughs.] They—decided that—and I think it was a pattern
of how the company had operated with the Legislature in Louisiana.
When they put in their headquarters in New Orleans, apparently they
got special bills passed by the Louisiana Legislature. So, I don’t
think they were really serious about making enough changes in their
project, and the way the legal regulations are done in the state of
Texas, unless we annex the land, the city really cannot control the
land use there, and counties have very little authority in Texas to
regulate development.
DT: Well, do you find that any
developers besides Freeport-McMoRan are going beyond what is required
because they feel like it’s (a) the right thing to do, or (b) is the
popular thing to do, or it’s the low-liability thing to do?
MA: I think there are some examples
where that has happened or is happening. We like to point to the
Temple Inland building there on MoPac that has been built according to
SOS, and I think that there are several other developments that have
been—I wouldn’t say negotiating but have certainly been working with
environmental groups and have been trying to make adjustments to their
developments, in order to better comply with our environmental
ordinances.
DT: And when they explain why they’ve
done that, what do they say? I mean, is it because that’s what’s
required, or is it anything internal on their part?
MA: Well, for instance, I think Whole
Foods moved out of the Barton Creek watershed when they built their
store on Sixth Street as sort of a statement that they were gonna stay
out of the watershed, and they were willing to put in on-site water
quality controls at their new location, even though it was in an urban
area. They were willing to support with money some of the SOS efforts,
and they were attacked by Gary Bradley when they went through the
process to get their approvals for their building on Sixth and Lamar.
Mr. Bradley came down personally to the Planning Commission and to the
City Council to attack their project and to complain.
DT: Complained that they were doing
too much. And why did he find that offensive?
MA: And that—that they were spoiling
water quality in Town Lake, you know. Gary always likes to argue that
why should he be held to such high standards when urban
development doesn’t have to do that much. And the answer would be,
we’re sorry, [laughs], we’ve already spoiled Town Lake. It’s hard to
get it back, but why should we spoil the Edwards Aquifer when we know
more now than we did—why let water become polluted if you can prevent
it in the first place?
DT: Sure. Speaking of hearings, I
notice that you’ve been at many hearings besides those for the City
Council. I think you worked as a volunteer for the city’s ad hoc
committees that developed a number of the ordinances that we now rely
on—the Landscape Ordinance back in the ‘80’s, the Tree Protection
Ordinance, park land dedication ordinances, and I’m sure there are
others. I’m curious about something related to that. I remember
hearing that Louise Epstein, who was a Councilman a few years back,
was critical of some of these committees, feeling that they took too
much time, money, and they were unaccountable, and that some of these
same issues should be dealt with more directly within the city or on
the *** Council. What do you feel about that?
MA: I think one of the joys that I’ve
had in living in Austin has been the very strong citizen participation
with the neighborhood groups and the willingness of citizens to get
involved in trying to help make this a better place to live. And I
think—it’s just part of my political philosophy that having the
citizen participation is very valuable to the general outcome, and
that while many of the staff are very committed and do a good job, I
think that they’re able to do a better job because of getting to hear
the opinions of the citizens, ‘cause I think the citizens in
neighborhood situations are able to make suggestions and to point out
things that the staff, not living there, would not be aware of unless
the citizens were there to point it out. So I think that Austin has
benefited greatly from the very active citizen groups and citizens
that it’s had over the years. And that’s of course been one of the
wonderful things about the League of Women Voters is its strong stand
on the importance of public participation, and we’re really fighting
on this overall. There have been efforts at the congressional level,
and certainly efforts at the state level, to limit citizens’
participation in the governmental processes, and that has really been
a big issue on the state level the last couple of years. And, you
know, I have personally been involved in several lawsuits where as a
citizen I have complained about a governmental action, and it’s very
discouraging to hear courts say, "Well, you have no right to be here,
you have no right to bring up this issue. You’re just a citizen,
you’re not specifically affected by this action." You know, "You don’t
have a right to be here." So a lot of the efforts of environmental
lobbyists at the state level have been to try to keep a place for
citizen voices on governmental issues, even in the courts.
DT: And what is the argument that
people use against citizen involvement? Why do they say these
citizens should not have standing?
MA: Because they are not personally
adversely affected by—I mean, unless they live right next door to the
hog farm, [laughs],…
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: …and are smelling it every day,
the courts—I mean, in some instances, and in some ways--that the laws
are being drawn to limit the citizen’s right to sue. They are limiting
it by saying you have to be personally affected by the bad smell, by
the water, on your property before you have a right to sue. So
that it—it makes it so hard for citizens to join together in
non-profit groups that can work together to try to address some of the
wrongs, some of the impacts of things on the environment, if they’re
not allowed to be in the courts about it.
DT: Um-hmm. You mentioned the League
of Women Voters earlier, and I know that they’ve had this very strong
ethic and passion for citizen involvement, and I’m curious about other
sort of obstacles to citizens becoming more involved, such as just the
low voter turnout and the high campaign funding from special
interests, and I’m curious if you think that those are sort of
inseparable things or that there are ways around it. I mean, how do
you cope with those two problems if you’re a citizen who wants to be
involved?
MA: Well, the League, both locally and
nationally, has certainly been very much involved. I personally have
not been that involved, but the Motor Voter Registration activities
were supported and pushed—instituted—instigated by the League of Women
Voters, and the League here at the state level and locally—at the
state level worked very hard in the Legislature this time for campaign
finance reform, along with a coalition of other groups, but as I
understand it, it didn’t get anywhere. So those are still really big
problems, and I don’t have a solution yet. It’s just amazing to watch
the elections in Great Britain, where it—‘course Great Britain isn’t
as big as Texas. But you’ve got your one, two or three times when they
appear and make their presentations on the TV and that’s it. The rest
of the time they’re out shaking hands, but it’s within a very confined
time frame. I happened to be in El Paso this May right before the May
elections, and a friend out there commented that the Mayor had
released his campaign contributions, and he had—this was a week before
the election and he had collected about $8,000. And apparently in El
Paso, they have their municipal elections that don’t involve
these huge campaign contributions, but I guess maybe there’s less
development in the El Paso area or less moneyed interests that are
directly affected by the actions of the City Council, I don’t know.
But it’s—it was an eye-opener. [Laughs.]
DT: Gosh, 8,000! I understand that you
were involved in a—another way that citizens can get into
participating in City government with the SOS [Save Our Springs]
petition, and then later on the referendum, and I imagine the defense
of it,…
MA: Yes.
DT: …the SOS Legal Defense Fund—and I
was wondering if you would comment a little bit about the whole
petition referendum process because I think a lot of folks struggle
with the—the power that it gives citizens to directly affect not only
the issues that are discussed but the decisions that are made. But on
the other hand, that oftentimes the—after the petition is passed, the
signatures are collected--the referendum passes, then it’s often
turned over in court as not accommodating to democratic processes, and
I was wondering, how do you balance those things? I…
MA: Well, I’m—I certainly am not in
favor of adding initiative and referendum to our state Constitution.
However, at the local level, it seems to make more sense, and it—I
don’t know how long it’s been a part of our City Charter. And, it is a
difficult process, but it provided a really important way to bring the
issues before the public in a way that we had not been able to do. We
had been unsuccessful at the ballot box in getting a majority on the
City Council. But from the very grass-roots approach of getting
signatures and from the way that--Freeport had come to town as an
outsider to try to work in this community and had in essence ignored
the concerns of the environmental community with their proposed
development, it made it easier to gain grass-roots support against
this outside intruder, so to speak. But the way the campaign was run,
I think that there was an amazing amount of education that went
on about the aquifer—how it works, water quality, how do you protect
water quality, what do we know about the pollution that’s happening—it
all kind of came together. The city was completing a number of
different monitoring studies at that particular time. The USGS [US
Geologic Survey] issued a very strong report in 1990 on the effects of
urbanization on creeks in the Austin area, and that was kind of a
warning of what was gonna happen in the Barton Springs zone if we
didn’t do something. So it just kind of all came together, and
when—the all-night hearing of the City Council in 1990 was an outcry,
an expression that then was ignored by the City Council in terms of
the Water Quality Ordinance that they ultimately adopted in response
to that all-night public hearing. That was in June of 1990, and we did
get an interim ordinance in February of ’91 that was a good, strong
ordinance. But the new City Council elected in the spring said, "Well,
we really haven’t had time to look at this. Let’s don’t adopt it until
we’ve had time to take a look at it," blah, blah, blah. So the Council
voted four to three to adopt an ordinance in October of ’91 that
carried forward the same exemptions that we had been fighting all—for
four or five years, and it just was not an adequate ordinance to
respond to the problems that had been identified in 1990. So, that
was—the referendum then was simply the next step. But because of the
all-night public hearing, there was a great stirring of interest on
the part of people all over the city that were not normally political
people. But I can remember going to that all-night public hearing and
sitting next to two members of the Austin Symphony Orchestra. So it
wasn’t just the rag-tag people who didn’t get off their job at the
bar until two A.M. that came down. But it was also people from very
much the mainstream who were concerned about the quality of life in
our community. So when you had the City Council ignoring
concerns from those kinds of people, it just made sense to go ahead
and try for the referendum.
DT: Well, let’s resume. We were
talking earlier about the referendum as one way that Mary Arnold’s
been involved in influencing city government and conservation efforts
here in Austin. But I was thinking that one of the most direct ways is
when she ran for City Council, and I was curious if you could tell us
a little bit about the campaign in—I believe it was in—was it Council
94?
MA: Yes.
DT: And first of all, why did you
decide to run?
MA: I wanted to be able to participate
in a different way in the decisions. I wanted to be one of the
decision-makers. And I also felt that perhaps I could help in kind of
coordinating communications between several Council members so that we
could kind of work together and divide up, so to speak, and have one
person work on a certain item and get support from others, and then
just kind of make better use of our time and efforts.
DT: Well, did you see yourself as sort
of a fence mender between different parts of the Council or—what did
you see your role as possible…
MA: Yes. I think because of the number
of years that I had worked with the city staff in various departments,
I felt that I had developed a knowledge about how the city worked and
things like that, that would be useful in trying to get things done
because so often we’ve seen our councils elected and wanting to do
good things, and yet being stymied because of the way the city staff
continued to operate. So, I felt that my previous experiences would
kind of help me to cut through to the quick, so to speak, in terms of
getting some things accomplished.
DT: Well, you just touched on
something, and I’m curious if you—sometimes it’s seen where a City
Council wants to go to the left and the staff wants to go to the right
or keep going straight ahead. Can you tell us some sort of instances
of that or why it happens?
MA: It’s—I guess part of it is just
the general bureaucratic maze there of people working in their own
little area and being reluctant to cross departmental lines and to
work with people in other departments, so that they look at things
with blinders on, and it makes it difficult for them to coordinate
their efforts with other departments and—then I think that
the—certainly some of the city staff that we have worked with that
have been sympathetic have not—well, if you don’t have a strong
majority on the City Council to give the word to the City Manager, and
the City Manager strongly giving the word to the city staff, then it’s
very difficult, and over the years, one of the examples I use is
Beverly Sheffield and the Parks Department. He had a wonderful
relationship with the Parks Board over the years and kind of used them
as an advocacy group with the City Council to advocate for parks
budget, parks programs, etc. When Beverly left the Department, it
wasn’t too long before the City Manager brought in a department head
from another city to serve as head of the Parks Department, and it
became very clear that that man was an employee of the City Manager.
That’s who he was working for, so that the Parks Board began to
get cut out of the loop. Several years later, we got a man come in as
head of the Parks Board who developed a very strong relationship with
the Parks Board, and I think that made the City Manager jealous, and
that man got fired. So, it’s going to be very interesting to see what
happens with this City Council and the city staff. The City Manager
has already made some changes that have been sort of indicative of
trying to make a shift toward where the new Council is versus where
the old Council was. And I guess another thing that we have felt over
the years is that the development community has the money to pay
lobbyists to be there all the time, and we don’t have the luxury of
being able to pay somebody to be there all the time. One of the things
I suggested to the new Mayor was that he ought to ask his city manager
and his top staff, "Who do you have meetings with on a regular basis?
Are you meeting with a group from the Chamber of Commerce, the"—let’s
see, you know, "the Association of General Contractors, the
Contractors and Engineers Association, the people from the development
community? Do you ever meet with representatives of the neighborhood
associations? Just where are you spending your time, who are you
listening to in the community," just as a way of finding out. So, that
was kind of my reason for entering the race, and in that particular
race, that was a Council member who had tried in every way to sabotage
the SOS efforts and there was not a strong candidate running in that
place against that incumbent. So I thought, well, I’ll give it a try.
DT: And who was—whose seat were you
trying to take and…
MA: Ronnie Reynolds.
DT: And what was his sort of approach
to government, the—I mean, beyond just the development issues, what
was his world view that sort of—differed from yours, like…
MA: I guess he was more on—government
must be efficient. As an accountant, he kept talking about cutting
taxes and efficiency and all this, that and the other, and I guess
pushing economic development and pushing growth was part of his world
view of what’s important for the community’s future, and of course, my
experience is that growth is very, very expensive for the citizens.
And, so we had differing viewpoints on a number of things.
DT: Can you recall some of your
experiences with Ronnie Reynolds and with the media and with the
public and--I guess all the different aspects of the race?
MA: I’m not sure I can say that much.
It was a very rewarding experience. I really enjoyed meeting the
people in the different parts of town, and the representatives from
Austin Interfaith, from the health care community, the neighborhood
people—the commitment that some of them had to their volunteer time
for my candidacy was very special, and I appreciated it very much. It
ultimately came down to the fact that there were 12,000 people who
voted in that election who had never voted—[laughs]—in a City Council
election, and most of them came out to vote for the City Charter
Amendment against domestic partners, which was not an issue that I had
been involved in, whereas Mr. Reynolds had voted against domestic
partners as a member of the City Council. I certainly felt that it was
a benefit to expand the health care for members of the Austin
community and I did not oppose the domestic partners action by the
City Council, and I certainly did not support adding it to the City
Charter because I felt that that was an inappropriate thing for a City
Charter to deal with. And the Charter Amendment sort of defined family
in such a way…
[Tape 2 of 3, Side B.]
MA: …The Charter Amendment sort of
defined family in such a way as to exclude domestic partners, and it
didn’t seem to me that it was necessary to put a definition of the
family in the City Charter. I guess one of the negative pieces that
came out from the Reynolds campaign—well, a couple of things. They
tried to attack me on my financial disclosure form. My husband’s
mother had died and had left him stock in an oil company. His father
had worked for an oil company all his adult life, so they tried to say
that—how could I be an environmentalist and own all that stock in an
oil company. [Laughs.] And then, they went back in my Planning
Commission service and found a vote where I had voted for a particular
commercial development. And they said, oh, that this means, you know,
she was not an environmentalist because she’d voted for this
commercial development in an environmentally sensitive area. Well, as
it happened, there was an old residential preliminary plat, and the
neighborhood had been persuaded that the new office development would
have less impervious cover than the residential. And the neighborhood
was supporting this office-type development because of concessions
that they had gotten, etc., plus the fact that the development had
never happened, and the land went to the RTC and had been purchased by
the city as habitat land, so—[laughs]—but it was all—it just showed
what a horrible person I was, not to support the environment on that
particular vote.
DT: I guess you become very vulnerable
when you put yourself in the public light and…
MA: Yes. Yes.
DT: …and things get misinterpreted
and…
MA: Um-hmm.
DT: …the gloves really come off then.
I was curious if you could talk a little bit about another aspect of
the Money For campaign. There were a number of candidates from the
environmental community, and--I think there was some split in the
environmental community between…
MA: I thought that was in ’93.
DT: I’m sorry, ’93.
MA: Uh-huh.
DT: And I was—I think it involved
Jackie Goodman and one of the other candidates.
MA: Um-hmm. Um-hmm.
DT: Can you talk a little bit about
your memory of that and how that showed fault lines in—sort of the
environmental sentiment or groups here?
MA: Well, I—I’m not a person who deals
in political intricacies. I’m a lot more interested in the issues and
the governmental structure and the—things like that. So, trying to
play the games of if we do this, if we forward this candidate we’ll
get these voters behind us and if we do this it could hurt, blah blah
blah—that isn’t kind of the mindset that I work in. So I was kind of
feeling that if somebody wants to run for the City Council, you know,
that’s that person’s decision.
DT: This is Mark Tschurr.
MA: Right. I don’t see how you tell
somebody, "No, you shouldn’t run for the City Council." I mean,
obviously--you ought to know that it’s gonna be a very difficult thing
to do, yes, but you ought to make up your own mind whether you do it
or not.
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: And if you feel that you’ve got
something to say and you want to say it in the realm of the political
race, you know, I can’t fault anybody for that and I was certainly not
interested in saying, "Oh, this is a terrible thing, you shouldn’t do
this." And I guess I—it’s a shame that that seemed to get people’s
hackles up, so to speak, because I don’t think—I don’t think it should
have. But again, I just don’t—don’t think in those kinds of terms and…
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: …and—in one sense, if the
different environmental interests wanted to come together and choose
candidates or ask people to run for different places, that would be
one thing. Jackie had made up her mind early on that that’s what she
was gonna do, and she announced her decision to run and was off and
running without really having been recruited by the environmental
community. So, I don’t—I think everybody ought to be willing to take
their chances and I don’t think they ought to hold grudges…
DT: Sure.
MA: …for people’s different decisions.
DT: Yeah, and I--maybe I wasn’t clear
about this. I didn’t mean to focus so much on Jackie’s decision to run
or Mark Tschurr’s decision to run or, you know, certain environmental
leaders to sort of bless one candidacy or the other but rather, it
seems like the environmental movement is becoming enough of a
mainstream large group of people that it’s—it oftentimes breaks into
separate factions over certain issues, and that’s what interests me is
that, you know, are there different parts of the environmental
movement, or is it a pretty well integrated group of people.
MA: Oh, I would say there are
certainly very, very different parts.
DT: Uh-huh.
MA: We were successful in pulling
enough together on a Barton Springs position paper in the spring and
summer of ’91 that that became kind of the core of the SOS coalition.
And Helen Ballew is the one that really developed the position paper
draft and then went around to the different groups, explained it, and
asked them to support it, and they looked it over, made some changes,
and she’d take the different changes back. But it took her individual
efforts to pull that position paper together. And so that was a real
coalition effort that was then continued on into the SOS fight. But,
the Save Barton Creek Association did not sign the position paper, or
at first did not sign the position paper. So, you know, they—there
were just different groups looking at things in different ways, and
no, they didn’t always agree. So we’ve tried to maintain good
communications among the different groups, and we’ve tried since ’92
to kind of keep things together. But there are different ones
that are working on different issues, and as citizen volunteers we
don’t have, or have not developed, the financial resources to have the
full-time coordination that might be helpful in keeping things
together.
DT: Can you give me an example, with
the Barton Creek Position Paper--and I—it probably won’t apply to a
lot of other environmental issues but at least it would maybe
indicate, well, why didn’t Save Barton Creek feel that they could sign
on and, on the other hand, why didn’t Earth First feel that they could
endorse that Position Paper?
MA: Well, I think Earth First had sort
of a—you know, from their organization, just—the parameters that their
organization worked within, were such that they felt they had to
maintain complete independence to do what they felt needed to be done.
There were certainly representatives of Earth First at the various
news—press conferences that we had and everything else, but just part
of their wanting to be able to go off and act on their own as they saw
fit was just part of the way they operated. In the case of the Save
Barton Creek Association, they had many, many long meetings and
discussions about the position paper, and it just—they just could not
bring themselves to have enough people agree that they were willing to
join these other groups. Again, they, too, felt that they needed to
maintain some sort of independence, and—you know, we finally couldn’t
wait any longer, and went ahead and had a press conference in support
of the position paper without them. But they certainly did participate
in the SOS coalition.
DT: Well, so in a sense, do you think
that both groups were reluctant to join in sort of as an institutional
thing rather than a particular policy or issue-oriented follow-up?
MA: Well, there may have been some
words in there that they disagreed with or that they thought went too
far. In the case of, say, Barton Creek, I imagine, well, they’d say,
"This goes a little bit far." In the case of Earth First, they
would’ve said, "This doesn’t go far enough."
DT: Yeah. Yeah. [Pause.] Another sort
of—I guess fault line through environmental groups and movements that
I’ve been interested in--and there’s been, ‘course, tons of talk about
it in the media--is the whole environmental justice effort and
critique, and I’m curious if you can explain how that’s played out
here in Austin between some of the environmental groups that have been
working hard on west Austin or southwest Austin and issues such as
Barton Creek, and those that have been involved in sort of East Austin
issues, like the tank farms and other problems on that side of town,
and, you know, the west Austin folks being white folks and the East
Austin tending to be black and brown. And, you know, can you explain
sort of how they—the two mesh and where they fall apart?
MA: Again, I don’t think it’s a
question of lack of interest or lack of concern, but, partially, not
having enough resources to do everything, and not having enough
manpower to do everything. Back during the SOS fight, the SOS campaign
made great efforts to also support some of the issues on the same
ballot that were supported by the East Austin groups, and they did
joint statements and joint mailers and joint campaigning to support
some of the things that the East Austin people were supporting on the
ballot, as well as supporting SOS. So the SOS group certainly made
strong efforts to have involvement by people all over the city, and
also to be concerned about and aware of the environmental problems
that were being faced over there. In fact, a part of the SOS ordinance
talks about a risk assessment for the entire city of Austin with
regard to hazardous materials that might have the potential of getting
into the water, no matter what part of the city it’s in. So, there
were people from the Save Barton Creek Association who participated in
the tank farm demonstrations and tank farm efforts, and the Sierra
Club has had outings for disadvantaged kids for a number of years. So
I think there’s been a lot of contact from environmental groups and
individuals about the concerns--all over, not just Barton Creek and
Barton Springs. [Pause.] And a lot of the—I mean, one little effort to
try to create the division between the East Austin concerns and the
environmental concerns was, we think, funded by Gary Bradley. There
was a group formed called Save Our Neighborhoods. And again, it was
Gary Bradley making the argument, why should we be required to
keep all these environmental restrictions when you’ve got all these
other environmental problems in Austin and you don’t protect your
urban creeks and this, that and the other. And, so he has definitely
supported trying to say that the west Austin environmental interests
have been ignoring the East Austin environmental problems. So, we
don’t…
DT: I guess some of it’s natural and
some of it’s manipulative?
MA: Yes. Yeah.
DT: Over the long haul I think
there’re some folks that are concerned that as American society, and
certainly Austin as well, gets to be more Hispanic and more—made up of
the minority communities that are part of it now but--that as the
white portion becomes smaller and smaller, that the environmental
groups, which are largely white—that’s the mainstream groups—that
they’ll be marginalized, and I’m curious if you think (a) is that
gonna happen? Then—will they be marginalized, and (b) if they will,
you know, how do you make sure that they don’t get shunted to the
side, that they become sort of a footnote?
MA: Well, overall, what a lot of
people say is that our future, in terms of the environment, is going
to be in the hands of our children, and our children are getting an
environmental education, from grade school on up. They’re learning the
problems of the environment at a very early age, and we have to think
of them as our future, and our hope for a better environmental future.
They’re learning better environmental habits than we learned when we
grew up, and I think that crosses over into all parts of our society.
I don’t think you can say, "Well, this ethnic group is not as
concerned about the environment." It just may take a different form.
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: I’ve enjoyed watching the city
drainage utility, environmental conservation and services groups, as
they have tried to work on an East Austin Initiative over the past
three years, where they’ve done public education and held community
meetings. They've worked with the residents to make them aware of
where some of the environmental problems are, to show them where they
can go for help. The number of complaints that have come in has
increased because people are more aware of, if I see a problem this is
a problem, and this is what I do about it. I make a call and somebody
comes out and—and, you know, helps. If somebody’s pouring their crank
case oil into the creek, we know that’s not supposed to be done, and
we know this is where we call and we’re gonna get it stopped. So I
think efforts like that are gonna help, and again, I think that the
education of the young people is gonna work out.
DT: Well, that’s good. Another sort of
faction within the environmental community that I wanted to ask you
about is women. I notice that you had worked with the League of Women
Voters and a group called We Care Austin--I think that was a creature
of the Women’s Environmental Coalition,…
MA: Um-hmm.
DT: …and I’m curious if you could give
me some perspective on why women have been so significant in the
environmental movement everywhere but the—Austin as well.
MA: I don’t know. But, I suppose if
you go to the very philosophical realm, women have been associated
over the years—over the eons—with the Earth Mother.
DT: Um-hmm.
MA: So in a sense, it has been a
natural role of women over many, many cultures to be concerned about
the natural environment, and there are feminine aspects to Nature that
we hear about. So maybe there’s a natural convergence there of—the way
women look at the world is perhaps a little bit different to the way
men look at the world. So I don’t know. In my own case, my experience
at the University of Texas, and becoming more of an adult in that
environment—women were encouraged to play a part and to have a role,
not particularly as women but just as a member of society, and—that we
were never daunted, and felt we had a right to speak up and to be a
part. And if there was a group there or a women’s group, it became a
natural thing to be interested in—a natural way to do it was with a
women’s group. And perhaps women’s groups in some instances have taken
advantage of being able to go to businessmen, or men in general, and
say, with very sweet voices, "Don’t you see that this is the way
things should be? How can you object to something as reasonable as
this?" So, perhaps that has also played a role.
DT: Well, that’s a nice segue into
another thing I was curious about. You simultaneously—or I think, at
least in the—and a couple of years ago—have worked for the Center for
Public Policy Dispute Resolution at the University of Texas, and also
served on the board of the Save Our Springs Legal Defense Fund, which
has since changed its name but still has litigation as one of the
tools that it uses to protect water quality and habitat in the area,
and I was wondering if you can give some insight into whether you
think the future is with more sort of accommodating stance towards
development in trying to find middle road, or more—I don’t know if
this is the correct way to put it—more combative…
MA: Adversarial. [Laughs.]
DT: …adversarial approach.
MA: I certainly hope that it’s more
toward being able to work things out, public policy dispute
resolution, versus the courts and the adversarial thing. And of course
I think you have to have both. But, I’m pleased to’ve been invited to
participate at the Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution, and I
think the courses that they provided for us and the experience that
they brought forward has been very, very helpful in looking at
different ways of trying to get at solutions, of trying to manufacture
new solutions that may not have existed before. Right now, the City
Waste Water Department has decided to use a process that involves
people from the Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution. In
gathering together citizens of Austin and representatives from West
Lake Hills, Rolling Wood, the Lost Creek MUD, the West Lake Chamber of
Commerce, the Real Estate Council, just—it’s an interesting
conglomeration—to try to decide to what extent the city should be
involved with the provision of central sewer service to the west,
toward Rolling Wood and West Lake Hills. And, there are some very
creative solutions that are being discussed, and by being able to sit
down at the table with the city administrator of West Lake Hills, with
a Council member from Rolling Wood, with the Chamber of Commerce
representative--we’ve had conversations that we wouldn’t’ve had
otherwise, and I think that’s very useful in trying to work out a
solution that I may not have thought I would’ve approved when we first
got started. But working through the problem, we’re trying to find
things that can accommodate the—what West Lake Hills and Rolling Wood
seem to need, or say they need, and yet don’t impinge on the
environmental things that we’re concerned about or provide ways in
which to help what we’re trying to protect. And I guess that’s been
also one of my complaints about the city in its relationships with the
Municipal Utility Districts, because over the past five or six years,
I guess, they have kept the citizens out of it, and have had city
staff meeting with the MUD representatives on various issues. But
they haven’t allowed representatives of the general public to be
involved in those discussions, and I think that’s very important, so
that you can have sort of a people-to-people discussion of the issues,
because city staff is not the same thing—not that the city staff
shouldn’t be at the table, but they shouldn’t be the ones that are
entirely representing the city viewpoint.
DT: Well said. I see that we’re sort
of drawing down to a close, and I was curious if you could just give
me some parting words before we run out of tape. We have about a
minute left, I think.
MA: You had asked a question I think
about the city relationships with the state, etc., and one of the
books I read on my vacation was called Not Between Brothers,
and it was a sort of a fictionalized history of Texas from 1816 to
1861. And, as we read about the history of Texas and the frontier
spirit, what we always come up against is this spirit of independence,
and the way this state was developed and settled with that
independence and not wanting the private property owner to have to
answer to the government or to this, that and the other. And, I’m a
Texan born and bred, but,…
[Tape 3 of 3, Side A.]
MA: And, I’m a Texan born and bred,
but that frontier spirit is going to have to change a little bit as
the state continues to have more an more people. I was very pleased to
hear a representative of the Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association
answer a question to the Legislature this time that, yes, some of his
members had been having their water go down because somebody
next door was drawing out too much water, so—in terms of the city of
Austin and the state of Texas, it’s a case of hubris as far as I’m
concerned. Austin is very proud of what it is and its role, and its
particular environment. I think the rest of the legislators want to
knock us off our seat because of our pride. [Laughs.] And so that’s
been difficult because, you know, Amarillo is not the same as Austin
and La Mesa is not the same as Austin, and we have a lot to be proud
of and I hope we can continue to protect what we have and to be a
pride and joy to everyone in Texas.
DT: Well said. Thank you very much.
MA: You’re welcome.
DT: We appreciate your time.
MA: O.K.
End of reel 1012
End of interview
with Mary Arnold |
