Hill Country Photo Contest Winners Announced

August 29, 2018
News

The Texas Hill Country is a unique region filled with diverse wildlife, clear springs, sprawling rural landscapes, historic towns, and some of the starriest night skies in the country. Each year the Hill Country Alliance (HCA) holds a photo contest encouraging photographers to capture the Texas Hill Country they would like to protect forever. HCA received over 500 entries to the 2018 photo contest from amateur and professional photographers alike. Submissions, ranging from a bolt of lightning cutting across a…

Texas deer industry to bring concerns over chronic wasting disease to Legislature

August 29, 2018
Land Stewardship

For some Texans, there’s big money in deer. Breeding and raising whitetail deer, running deer hunts on ranches, it’s all part of a multibillion-dollar industry. But since 2015, deer breeders and the state have been locked in an old-fashioned standoff. Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission has restricted the movement of this deer population in an effort to contain chronic wasting disease. Meanwhile, the Texas deer industry says this hurts its livelihood, and it plans to push lawmakers to make changes during…

Battle over Wimberley sewage reaches critical juncture … again

August 29, 2018
News

The on-again, off-again Wimberley wastewater treatment plant is off again while the City Council revisits a plan to outsource to a private utility company. Emotions are running high in the Hays County town of about 3,000, divided over an issue that’s been the subject of debate for more than 30 years. Some say they’ve even lost long friendships over it….Read more at myStatesman.com

Water restrictions in effect in Austin for first time in two years

August 29, 2018
Drought

Water restrictions are in effect starting Monday in Austin, the first time in two years Austin Water has cut back the number of hours residents can water their lawns. Lake Travis and Lake Buchanan have dipped below a combined 1.4 million feet of water, triggering the restrictions as dry weather persists….Read more on KXAN

What if another Harvey Hits?

August 29, 2018
Water Planning

On Aug. 24, 2017, we all watched the radar screen on the news as the storm gained energy in the Gulf of Mexico and began making its way toward the Texas coast. No one understood the unprecedented rainfall that was about to hit portions of Texas and Louisiana over the next five days, nor the devastation that would be left in its wake. As the storm made landfall, it destroyed homes and businesses in Rockport, Refugio, Port Lavaca, Port Aransas,…

Bexar County weighs whether to join regional fight over Edwards Aquifer rights

August 29, 2018
News

Bexar County could soon join the fray in a legal battle over water rights that highlights the conflict between the fast-growing cities and suburbs around San Antonio and agricultural areas that also depend on the Edwards Aquifer. On Friday, Medina County Judge Chris Schuchart appeared in Bexar County Commissioners Court. He asked commissioners to join his county and all its major municipalities to intervene to support the Edwards Aquifer Authority in a legal fight with the Uvalde County Underground Water…

Sand is choking Lake LBJ, but a battle looms over its removal

August 29, 2018
County Authority

In early 2017, homeowners in Sandy Harbor, a waterfront community in the Highland Lakes chain where Lake Lyndon B. Johnson meets the mouth of Sandy Creek, called Kevin Collier about a problem: sand. There was so much of it that it was preventing some of them from getting their boats in the water. Could he help? Collier co-owns Collier Materials, a Marble Falls–based company that collects and sells sand, soil, and rock, generally for construction. His most notable project at the time was…

Wildlife and The Wall

August 22, 2018
Land Conservation and Stewardship

“I wish that everybody who wanted to build an actual, physical wall could come and see this place first, because I think if they came and saw it and realized what the wall was going through and what it would do would have a profound impact on their way of thinking.” Filmmaker Ben Masters’ trailer of Wildlife and The Wall describes the trials of the Big Bend region and the impacts Trump’s proposed border wall would have on wildlife. “The…

Honey Creek, a pristine Hill Country stream, could soon see treated sewage

August 22, 2018
News

Developers planning a subdivision of more than 2,300 homes in Comal County want to build a sewage treatment plant to discharge into one of the most pristine, spring-fed streams left in the Hill Country. According to a permit application filed with state environmental regulators, up to an average of 500,000 gallons of treated sewage effluent per day could be headed for Honey Creek, which flows through Honey Creek State Natural Area on its way to the Guadalupe River….Read more on The Rivard Report

Texas Hill Country sets example for saving dark skies

August 22, 2018
News

Dripping Springs became the first city in Texas to become dark sky- certified by International Dark-Sky Association, and since the Texas Hill Country has become a hotbed for dark sky preservation. Dripping Springs City Administrator Michelle Fischer said there are currently more active groups working on developing dark-sky ordinances or getting dark sky-certified in Texas, specifically the Hill Country, than any other area in the world. An Arizona-based nonprofit that has set standards for lighting and protected the skies since…