On June 7th, 1990,
hundreds of people swarmed an Austin
City Council meeting.
[chanting] They were there because the
council was taking a vote on a new
development.
It was going to be built right along
Barton Creek near Southwest Parkway.
On one side of this fight, you had
the environmentalists.
They filled up the seats in the
council chamber until it reached
capacity.
That's a record.
And if everyone took their three
minute limit we could, would
radically be here another 24 hours.
Those who couldn't get in stood
outside.
They held signs that said, "Honk if
you love Barton Springs," [honking]
Because you see, all these people
had shown up in the name of Barton
Springs, in the name of water
quality.
On the other side of this fight, you
had a big dog.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I'm Jim Bob Moffitt.
I'm the chairman and CEO of
Freeport-McMoRan.
Moffitt's the rich guy trying to
build this new development in
Southwest Austin.
We will categorically not
pollute Barton Creek.
Thank you.
One after another, protesters came
downtown.
They went to a building at the
corner of Second and Lavaca Streets.
And if they were lucky, they got
inside.
They stood up at this podium,
and there they yelled.
Deceitful, delirious,
disrespectful to every
person in this room.
They sang.
[singing] If we don't cherish our
river, it'll perish
forever.
They invoked religion.
Well, I baptize my baby at Barton
Springs about ten months ago,
and I want to make sure that my baby
can baptize his baby there.
They spoke for hours and hours
and hours.
The record of pollution is
disturbing.
It's not going to do anybody any
good.
Ruined.
We have enough houses already.
I was reminded of the people in
Cocoon.
We're going to see headlines that
say Freeport-McMoRan
met their Waterloo in Austin,
Texas.
From five at night until five
in the morning.
These people want to come in and
use our land to make a fortune
off of.
It's spoken of as this legendary
night. One of those moments that
defined what it meant to be in
Austin.
And if you were there, you were part
of history.
[singing] Someday you'll be sorry
when Barton's blue turns
brown.
It will have cost us a
river, lost
us a river.
Don't let the people of Austin
down.
Run those developers
out of town.
[cheering]
But we know how these things
go, right?
No one defeats the big dog.
You're listening to Growth Machine:
How Austin Engineered its Housing
Market.
Episode three.
Listen to this podcast or
we'll poison Barton Springs.
Every Sunday morning I come to this
place in Austin.
I sit on a blanket, I take out a
magazine or a book, and
I wait for the sun to warm me up,
to get really sweaty, so
that I can just jump in.
I consider this my weekly mass.
I call it Barton baptism.
And this week I brought someone
along with me.
Hey, Mose.
It's Mose Buchele.
What's going on, Audrey?
Whenever I come here, I wonder how
many people come to visit,
sit here on this lawn
and think, "That's it.
I'm moving to Austin.
Like, this is just too cool to have
this right in the middle of the city."
Yeah, and it's kind of funny to
describe, like, you know, you're
like, "It's a public pool," and
they're like, "Okay ..." And I'm
like, "You won't get it 'till you
get there.
It's hard to explain."
It is a truly unique
place.
It kind of looks like a big outdoor
pool, but it's spring
fed, right?
And it's huge.
Like, I think when you first come
here, you're really struck by the
size of this pool.
Just seems to go on and on.
Yeah, it's like, almost as big as a
football field, it seems like.
I mean, you can swim one or two laps
and you feel like you've got a full
workout pretty much.
And it's cold.
[laughter] And what it maintains, it
stays around 68 degrees
Fahrenheit, so
it's chilly.
All right. But today's a hot day.
So I think it's going to hit, it's
going to hit, the cold's gonna hit
us. You ready Mose?
Let's do it.
[screaming, jumping in to Barton Springs]
[laughter] Woo!
Yeah, that's good.
That's real good.
Woo! Taking your breath away.
Oh man.
It is. It's rejuvenating like no
other place.
Yeah, woo ...
Our story today has to do with
Barton Springs Pool, but it's about
a lot more than that because
this big fight that I told you about
earlier didn't just end up
determining the future of Barton
Springs pool.
That's right. It helped change the
way the city has grown
basically ever since.
Austin, you could argue, would look
really, really different today
if the story had ended up
differently.
And I got to tell you, this story
has everything.
Greedy real estate developers.
Radical activists.
Fistfights.
Spying, literal spying.
And it all starts in the early
eighties.
[music] Any way you want it, that's
the way you need it, anyway
you want it.
So Audrey, what was Austin like in
the '80s?
Well, I was not here or
alive, but
[laughter] this was the first wave
of tech here in Austin.
That's right. And this is a different
kind of tech economy
than we would know today, right?
Back then, people were like actually
building things right?
They're making real things.
People might have heard of Michael
Dell.
Building computers in his dorm room.
You had the beginning of this
semiconductor
industry, which I'm
still not exactly sure what those
are, [laughter] but I know they're
really important.
Like you can't have computers
without them.
All of this is happening and this is
about the time when people start
calling Austin Silicon Hills.
And like with any boom, companies
are creating jobs, and so a lot of
people are moving here.
Between 1982 and 1987,
more than 100,000 people moved
to Austin.
The city's population was growing
faster than it had since its
founding, and all these people
needed houses.
So developers were building a ton.
In 1983, they built nearly
as many homes and offices
as they did in 2019,
when there were three times as many
people living here.
So downtown is getting some taller
buildings, but really they're also
building out a lot, pushing out
of the boundaries of the city,
right? Building more subdivisions.
Things are growing like crazy.
And then, in 1989,
there's this big financial crisis.
This is NBC Nightly News.
Reported by Connie Chung.
Good evening.
President Bush today grappled with
his first pressing domestic problem,
trying to save the savings and loan
industry.
The savings and loans scandal that
could cost half a trillion dollars
...
All you really need to know is
that there were a bunch of these
small banks throughout the country
that were poorly regulated, poorly
managed.
And as interest rates started to go
up in the '80s, a lot of these banks
started failing.
That became a problem for people
with big real estate investments.
Maybe they got foreclosed on because
they owed the bank money and they
had no way to pay.
Or maybe they just got desperate to
sell.
Either way, it created an opening
for developers, with the right
financing, to start buying
up more and more land.
And in a lot of cases they're
actually buying up a bunch of
ranchland, especially in Southwest
Austin.
And so you might have wondered why
there are, like so many subdivisions
around the city that have the word
ranch in the name, you know,
like Steiner Ranch.
Avery Ranch.
Circle C Ranch.
This is not just marketing.
It's because a lot of these places
were actual ranches or farmland.
And in the '80s, these landowners
either get foreclosed on or decide
to sell — often to developers ...
who then start turning these big
swaths of land into subdivisions or
suburbs.
Right. A Super Ranch subdivision.
Super Ranch.
So ... [laughter] So it's important
to realize that all these
parts of Austin, like this was like
the country back then.
You could go out to southwest
Austin, suddenly feel like you're in
the middle of nowhere. It's not like
how it feels now.
It felt like nature, it felt
untouched, felt pristine.
And there were a lot of people in
Austin who really liked that.
And these people, many of them
environmentalists, start to get
concerned about development,
particularly in this part of Austin.
Well, for me, I got involved with
local Earth First-ers and Sierra
Club-ers, and some other
local activists, let's say Barton
Creek folks, in the
mid late '80s.
This is Bill Bunch.
He's actually still a really
well-known activist in town.
So you had the
Earth First!
activists who were basically U.T.
students who were the, you
know, the quote unquote, radical
environmentalists.
But you had the old school groups
say, Barton Creek Association,
the local group, or the Sierra Club
...
You had your city beautification
advocates, right? Maybe not
radicals, but, you know, more like
Lady Bird Johnson types who wanted
to preserve nature, improve
parkland, stuff like that.
A group, We Care Austin ...
The Audubon Society.
You know, like the bird people.
... were all very active.
And there were some of us young
folks coming along to join
with the folks who'd been leading
some of these groups since the
'70s.
The point is, there were a lot of
environmentalists, and they all
started coming together over this
one concern.
They decided all these new houses
and development in Southwest Austin
were going to destroy Barton
Springs.
So why is that?
It helps to think of this part of
central Texas, west of Mopak,
like a big sponge, okay?
Basically, this is land that
soaks up all the water.
It soaks up the rainwater, soaks up
creek water flowing over it, and
it soaks it up into this big sponge
underground, and then it pushes
it back up, a lot of it, back
up through Barton Springs.
And so if there's some sort of
pollution on the ground, it soaks
into the earth, soaks into the
sponge. This is called an aquifer,
and that pollution likely ends up
back in Barton Springs.
So what does a big suburban
subdivision have to do with that?
Well, if you think of these
developments, they can create a
lot of pollution.
There's all the runoff from, you
know, businesses, toxic stuff, oil
spills from gas station, runoff from
parking lots, but also sewage,
fertilizer runoff from lawns, all
this stuff.
Once it gets into the ground, it
goes into that, that sponge
and then it could come back up
and poison the springs, like,
like turn crystal clear Barton
Springs into a swampy,
fetid, un-swimmable
dump.
And that brings us back to June 7th,
1990, and Jim Bob Moffett.
The big dog.
Thank you, Mr. Mayor.
I'm Jim Bob Moffitt.
I'm the chairman and CEO of
Freeport-McMoRan.
I came onto this campus of the
University of Texas
in 1956 as a
young boy from Houston ...
So this guy owns a big mining
company called Freeport-McMoRan.
And what you have to understand
about Jim Bob is he is a guy
with a lot of fans in Austin, right?
He's kind of a larger than life
figure.
He grew up poor.
He played football at U.T.
under coach Darrell Royal, the guy
they named the stadium for.
Then Jim Bob goes on to
become an oil man.
He ends up heading this huge
mining company. Freeport-McMoRan
controls the biggest gold mine in
the world in Indonesia.
And now he's found real estate gold
to mine in Austin.
All these people are moving here and
they need places to live.
So for a lot of people, Jim, Bob
Moffitt is a Texas success
story, a self-made man,
an entrepreneur.
But for other people, especially
for environmentalists,
it's kind of like a villain in a
muppet movie.
But we have done everything to
ensure the safety of
Barton Creek.
And as a geologist, I will promise
you I know more about Barton Creek
than anybody in this room.
Bullshit.
Excuse me ...
I mean, seriously, like
Freeport-McMoRan's mines
pollute rivers in Indonesia,
destroy coastland, destroy
forests.
His company works with, and in some
cases pays, Indonesian police
and security, who brutally
suppressed dissent.
And so opponents of this
development, they see this guy,
and now he's coming into
Austin. He's saying, "I'm going to
build this huge subdivision right
over this aquifer, the very
place the environmentalists don't
want me to build.
That's where I'm headed." So now
let's see how this works out.
And I will also tell you that
if any standards are shown by
any future studies that are done by
any environmental group, whether
they are state, city
or free enterprise, we
will, we will adhere to those
standards. We will categorically
not pollute Barton Creek.
Thank you. [clapping]
Well, that was the largest
development that had ever been
proposed in Austin up
to that point.
Just for context, the Mueller
development in North Austin is about
700 acres.
This development in Southwest Austin
was going to be more than five times
that size.
So Bill Bunch and this coalition
that he described, they zeroed in on
this development. They fought it in
public hearings and zoning meetings,
and they did all this organizing to
galvanize people against this
specific project because
this was the most visible and
the biggest example of the
development they opposed.
And it got pretty dramatic.
So in researching this story, I came
across a cover of the Austin
Chronicle from around this time,
and there's a picture of Barton
Springs pool on the cover.
The pool's empty, no one's swimming
in it, but there's this inflatable
ball floating in the middle of the
pool and it has a skull and
crossbones on it.
Then above this picture of the pool
is this sort of, like, ransom
letter writing.
It says, if you don't read this
issue, we will poison Barton
Springs.
I mean, the city's here because of
the springs, quiete literally, we
would not be talking sitting here
without Barton Springs.
So there's all this organizing,
all this activism, and it all
comes to a head at this one
city council meeting.
A word to Jim Bob Moffett: If
this goes through, your name will go
down in infamy, just like all
the other three name serial killers
Texas has ...
It really is kind of, like, almost
a social event as much as it was
a political event.
You know, everyone's just coming
down to City Hall to yell at their
council members.
Oh, it was wild.
The fire marshal had to limit
access in and out to the council
chambers.
I'm being told that as now no more
people can enter the council
chambers because we're at our
maximum capacity under the park
codes of the city of Austin.
So a few hundred in there and
hundreds more out on the sidewalk
and, you know, banging drums.
[drums]
It was huge.
And, you know, people were excited
because just seeing that,
that so many people cared about
the springs and were willing to come
up and speak up.
This is a critical, environmentally
sensitive area.
The golf courses alone would attract
several times the residential
development, as is included in the
initial 4000 acres.
Remember, this was a time before
social media.
No Facebook, no Twitter,
no Instagram.
And local radio stations, including
KUT, actually aired these meetings
live. You could get in your car,
turn on your radio and hear
a city council meeting going on.
Then decide, "Hey, I'm going to go
downtown and tell them what I
think."
My name is Kevin Connor.
I live with 1711 Moly, and
I work at K98.
I have a morning radio show.
I'm usually up at this hour.
And when I woke up this morning
to KUT, uh ...
[laughter] Don't tell anybody.
[applause] I couldn't believe that
this was still going on, I-
Welcomed to Austin
Pardon?
Welcome to Austin.
Yeah, well ...
Right, or you tell your buddy like,
"Hey, you know, put on KUT.
You're going to hear me in, like, an
hour. I'm going to be screaming at
the mayor."
This is the most beautiful
pool I've ever seen, ever in
my life. And it would be a fucking
shame to ruin it with
pesticides.
[laughter]
Excuse me, that kind of comment is
out of order, sir.
Thank you, sir.
So it's this huge grassroots
uprising. And mind you, this is a
zoning case, right?
But it's not like any other zoning
case.
Hundreds of people showed up to talk
against this one development.
And Bunch says he was not sure
how the vote was going to go.
We knew we had two votes, and maybe
three.
There was a seven vote council.
The other side had four or five
votes going in.
[applause] We have a substitute motion
on the floor, any other ...
And so now it's around six
in the morning.
They've been going on for more than
12 hours straight, and the council
is finally ready to vote.
A yes vote kills the development.
A no vote keeps it alive.
Council member [inaudible]?
Yes.
Council Member [inaudible]?
Yes.
Mayor Cook? Yes.
Mayor Pro Tem Shipman? Yes.
Councilman [inaudible]?
Yes.
Council Member Carl Mitchell?
Yes. This closes the hearing too.
Council Member Humphrey?
Yes. [applause]
They won.
The hippies beat the big dog.
All these environmentalists went up
against this wealthy developer,
and they got the council members to
vote against the development.
[applause]
But this is just one development,
right?
And so the second you win this, you
got to start wondering, "Wait a
second, people can just build
somewhere else in this area.
There are a bunch of other projects
already on the books being planned."
So what are they going to do about
that?
More after the break.
[applause]
The night that environmentalist shut
down Jim Bob Moffet's big
development became known in
environmental circles as the Barton
Springs Uprising.
The time when Austin banded together
to tell developers Enough is enough.
It put the brakes on one of the
biggest subdivisions in city
history.
[applause]
It also ushered in a new political
reality in Austin.
The environmental movement had been
growing for a while, but now it had
flexed its muscles, and it had
won. It was empowered,
it was organized.
It was not going away.
And watching it all unfold was this
26 year old intern with the city's
water department.
I was this super young,
green whippersnapper in 1990
when I joined the city.
This is Matt Holland.
He was just starting off as a city
staffer working on water quality
when all this went down.
I mean, imagine you're this
wonky, watershed protection
scientist.
You probably don't expect your job
is going to be, like, the talk of
the town.
And suddenly it was.
And so I was definitely
all in because I was so excited
about my new profession and lapping
it up. And there was, you know, the
media, the conversations
within the city.
Not just wonky people, but, you
know, average people were really,
really engaged in the conversation.
So the overnight city council
meeting was the longest in a decade.
No doubt an indication of what
environmentalists are calling the
hottest environmental issue in
Austin. Or as one called this
area: the last vestige of
a natural environment in our city.
So in the months following that
night, City Council called a
temporary moratorium on development
over the Barton Springs watershed.
In other words, no one can build
here.
It also put in place temporary water
quality rules and told city staff to
come up with a long term plan to
restrict development.
This is what environmentalists were
demanding: permanent rules
to protect the springs.
But if they thought that this was
the end of the story, they
were wrong. Jim, Bob Moffitt
and Freeport-McMoRan had been caught
off guard the night of the Barton
Springs Uprising, but now they
were going to start showing City
Hall that there was another side
to this story. Developers,
landowners, business interests
opposed to this plan
also started organizing.
How many more companies will want to
locate quality jobs to a city
where environmental radicals dictate
city policy and the rules are always
changing?
And when city staff proposes
making development restrictions
permanent, they started
speaking up.
This is from a council meeting in
1991.
When I read the proposed amendments
to this ordinance,
ludicrous, outrageous,
ridiculous, off
the wall, and out of bounds
came into my mind.
People who owned land over the
watershed zone started to show up to
complain about how the new rules
could threaten their family's
livelihood, hurt their financial
future, basically by limiting
their ability to sell or develop
their property.
My message is simple.
Do not pass these amendments
to the Comprehensive Watershed
Ordinance.
You must say no to this insidious,
thinly veiled no growth
ordinance.
Notice how he called it a no growth
ordinance.
You're going to start hearing more
and more of that.
You first put regulations
on in 1981.
Again in '84.
Again in '86.
And every time something happens at
Barton Springs, you come
back to punish that same
small percentage of property owners.
That last voice you heard is a man
named Gary Bradley.
He was a big developer in his own
right. He actually started the
Circle C Ranch development.
Anyway, he was Jim Bob Moffitt's
partner, and he became, like, this
public face of opposition to
environmental protections in this
part of town.
Every cause has to have a villain.
And Jim, Bob Moffitt and Gary
Bradley were like poster child.
We talked to Bradley earlier this
year. He refers to himself the third
person here. He says he knew he
was fighting an uphill battle.
From 1989
on, you know, the environmental
coalitions ran city hall.
They elected the people and nobody
was going to go against them.
But it wasn't quite that simple.
Imagine you're a city politician.
By 1991, you have a highly
engaged environmental coalition on
one side ...
And they want to build and destroy
one of the most beautiful places in
the world.
... And a lot of business interests
and angry landowners in the other.
You're going to cause my property
values to drop to zero.
So what do you do?
This is Austin, so you start looking
for some kind of compromise, right?
The council played for time.
It delayed adopting these new
development rules and then it
proposed a different set
of development restrictions.
These were rules friendlier to
builders, and you can guess
how the environmentalists took that.
[drums]
They were outraged.
As far as they were concerned, the
people had spoken loud and clear.
Stop building over the aquifer.
To see their goals watered down was
unacceptable.
You know, we've been having meetings
with a variety of
environmental leaders for
months and decided
that we needed to form a coalition.
This is Brigid Shea, the woman who
led that coalition.
Save our springs!!! [screaming]
They called it the Save Our
Springs Coalition.
S.O.S. for short.
We needed to pursue
some kind of action to protect
Barton Springs, because it seemed
pretty clear that the council wasn't
going to do it.
So they hit the streets, started
circulating a petition to change
city development rules at the ballot
box. Basically, they created
a petition to take the stricter
development rules and enshrine them
into city code through a popular
vote ...
... forced the city to put strict
caps on development in the southwest
of town.
But what were the rules that S.O.S.
was proposing actually do?
So there's this thing called
impervious cover.
Impervious cover.
Impervious cover. Impervious cover.
Impervious cover is anything on a
piece of land that stops
water from being absorbed into
the earth.
So we're talking concrete, asphalt.
Think about your driveway, the
foundation of your house.
All of that is impervious cover.
And we kind of explained this
earlier, talking about this big
sponge, this this watershed
that is the ground around this part
of the city.
They don't want that pollution
running off the impervious cover
and getting into the sponge
because then it's going to make
all the water really polluted and
then come right back up in the
springs.
I don't know how wonky you want me
to get, I'm a relatively wonky
person.
You remember Matt Holland? He was
the guy that worked for the city.
Looking at this stuff as basically
his job.
Phosphorus and nitrogen just can't
get very high in the water, or it
just goes wild with algae,
which isn't just a nuisance,
but actually can really kill the
aquatic life in the in the system.
Throughout most of Austin, the
impervious cover limit, and they do
this with percentages, is about half
of a piece of land.
So take the lot that your house is
on and half of that can be the
foundation, the driveway,
maybe a shed in your backyard.
And they're saying in this part of
town, in Southwest Austin,
near the watershed, we're going to
limit that to 15 to
25% of a piece of land,
really ratchet down the amount of
land that can be impervious cover.
So you're just looking at 15%
or 20 or 25 on the
developable uplands area alone.
So that actually makes it even a
smaller footprint on certain
properties.
So imagine you have a 5000 square
foot piece of land in this part of
Austin.
15% of that could be impervious
cover. So foundation,
driveway. 15%
of 5000.
That's 750 square
feet.
So that's like a one bedroom
apartment or a big garage,
but not both.
What developer would even want to
mess around and build on that land?
So that's what this ordinance does.
It it protects the springs by
blocking development.
This is the petition S.O.S.
is asking people to sign.
They need about 20,000 signatures
to get it on the ballot.
They set up their booths.
They talked to people on the
sidewalks, and they're showing them
this ordinance saying impervious
cover, impervious cover.
We need to do something about
impervious cover over the watershed.
And at the time, this is a really
popular idea.
It was hard to find people
that were against saving the
springs.
So needless to say, they did it.
They got more than 20,000
signatures, and they got this thing
on a citywide ballot.
Here's Brigid Shea back in 1992.
Today I'm announcing that the S.O.S.
Coalition has completed its drive
to put an ordinance on the May 2nd
ballot to save Barton Springs,
the creek and the aquifer ...
And suddenly, what would've been a
battle fought basically through
lobbying local politicians,
shouting at zoning hearings, council
meetings. It became like a citywide
exercise in direct democracy.
A battle for the hearts and minds
of every voter in Austin.
... So we believe in this case, the
citizens will not be fooled by
money, and we hope that they
understand what's at stake
and that it's something that money
can't buy.
So this sets up this big battle.
On one side, you have these
environmentalists.
They're often West Austin
environmental types.
They've made common cause with the
Hispanic groups in East Austin.
People have been fighting for
environmental justice in their
communities, where they typically
have a lot of heavy industry and a
lot of pollution in these low income
neighborhoods.
And on the other side, the anti
S.O.S.
side, you had your Chamber of
Commerce people, your real estate
council, you know, developers,
business types.
And they start recruiting others.
Landowners, people who we heard from
earlier that are worried about what
these restrictions would do
to their land.
And the developers also had one
more powerful ally, City
Council. The majority of City
Council at this time it was
pro-development. They actually ended
up putting their own, more developer
friendly proposition on the ballot.
So they really don't want this
S.O.S. ordinance to pass.
When the City Council realized
S.O.S. had the signatures, they
decided we're going to push the
election back.
So basically, pushing the vote back
accomplishes three things.
One, there was an expectation
that whatever new rule was approved,
it wouldn't be retroactive.
So the more time developers had to
file building plans with the city,
the better.
Though, A, even if S.O.S. wins,
there's still a bunch of land that
developers can work with under the
older, looser rules.
Here's Gary Bradley.
You know, they gave me a hurdle they
didn't think I could get over.
They said, "Okay, you got to file
your plans within a certain period
of time or you're going to fall
under the S.O.S. ordinances." Right?
Well, $4 million
later, with engineering firms going
24/7, we filed them
all on time.
Delaying the vote would also push it
back into August.
That would mean that U.T.
students are on summer break.
Student voters were typically
supportive of S.O.S..
If you move the election to August,
a lot of those voters are suddenly
out of town.
Also, good for the developers.
Then finally, pushing back the
election just gives the pro
developer side more time to
organize.
They knew they had a late start in
fighting this thing.
If they wanted to flood TV and radio
with ads, lean on different
voting blocks, maybe chip away at
the lead S.O.S.
seem to have, they needed time
and they needed the city council to
postpone the election.
And that's that's what they did.
Basically, a bunch of city council
members just stopped showing up
to council meetings.
[laughter] There were court orders
telling them that they had to go.
They didn't go.
And then when they finally did show
up, they abstained from voting.
It got really nasty.
Tempers on the Austin City Council
flared when they were taken
to court this spring.
Four members of the council defied a
court order.
And the divisiveness reached a fever
pitch.
I was born and raised here.
And, in fact, my first relative
was here in 1839.
This is Ronnie Reynolds, one of the
council members at the time.
Remember that no growth thing we
talked about earlier?
That's how he characterized S.O.S..
So all of you people that want to
roll up the fences
and not let anybody in, take
a hike because I'm tired
of it.
Never has a judge told
me how to vote.
And here's Max Nofziger, another
council member. He was pro S.O.S..
The only time it's happened,
and this is how extreme this is,
people, is that a judge
had to tell this council to follow
the law.
[applause Yeah!
So the anti S.O.S. side and their
friends on city council succeeded in
pushing the election back,
but they also succeeded in really
pissing people off.
Think about it. Tens of thousands of
people had signed this petition and
their elected officials said, "Eh.
We're gonna ignore this." Even
people who may not have had an
opinion about land development
suddenly started taking notice.
It also made clear, just
frankly, what tools
the city council was of
the developers.
This is Brigid Shea.
To see these, you know,
these council members
tying themselves in pretzel knots
to avoid doing what they were
legally required to do,
I think, was really shocking.
So with just three months
to campaign, things got
really ugly leading up to the
election.
Both Brigid and Gary describe
that summer as a crazy
time to be in Austin.
[music] Austin is a summer city and Barton Springs eternal ...
TV and radio ads, just people
bombarded with all this advertising,
pro and con S.O.S.
ordinance.
The campaign against S.O.S.
is insidious and dishonest,
writes the Austin Chronicle.
Now, I've read the S.O.S.
ordinance, and it's the wrong
solution from Barton Springs.
Brigid says she was getting tipped
off by moles by, like, spies
within the developer organization.
She's pretty sure her phone line was
tapped.
I'm looking across the street and
there's a guy sitting in a truck
with a newspaper.
He's clearly watching
me.
Gary says his car was constantly
getting vandalized.
I don't know how many times it got
keyed.
My car windows were smashed, my car
tires were slashed.
Gary says people tried to
kill him.
I had a high powered rifle shot
through my house twice.
We would get horrible phone calls
late at night and really just
violent, just foul,
nasty stuff.
[music] Barton Springs ...
All leading up to this vote
in August.
Barton Springs Eternal. Barton Springs Eternal. Barton Springs Eternal.
Barton Springs Eternal.
And the hippies win again! [laughter]
Good evening. The people of Austin
have spoken and the majority say
they want a stronger ordinance to
protect Barton Springs.
Let's look at ...
The S.O.S. ordinance won by a
landslide.
More than 60% of people who came
out to the polls voted in favor
of it, and the ordinance went into
effect immediately.
Suddenly, overnight, it became much
harder to build in this part of
town, west of Mopak and south
of the river.
Future developers wouldn't be able
to build golf courses and strip
malls. Sure.
But also a whole bunch of houses.
Remember, this was a time when
Austin's population was growing
quickly.
This was a big win for
environmentalists.
A win for the Springs.
And most people agree that this
worked. If it weren't for this
movement, Barton Springs might look
a lot different today.
But the question still remained.
Where were all these people going to
live?
And even in these interviews right
after the election is called, you
start hearing these fault lines
appear.
There wasn't a vote they wanted
because we didn't have that many
vote to give.
They wanted public image.
They wanted PR.
This is Cynthia Vasquez.
She was part of an organization in
East Austin.
At the same time S.O.S.
was on the ballot, there was funding
for East Austin projects,
but those failed.
She says she helped deliver votes
for S.O.S., but the same was not
done for her community.
They didn't want to seem that they
were elitist.
They didn't want to seem that they
were against the poor East side
minorities and the South Austin
minorities.
They didn't want to seem that they
didn't care about our environmental
issues, and we gave them
credibility.
And that's worth a whole lot.
Meanwhile, people are immediately
looking up Congress Avenue to the
state capital.
The developers are talking about
lawsuits, but also talking about
going to state lawmakers.
If they can't get what they want
from the Austin City Council, maybe
the state will step in.
I went to the legislature
to get justice
because I couldn't get it at city
council.
Locally, this also means big
changes in Austin politics.
The environmentalists are now firmly
in control.
Here's Brigid Shea after the vote.
Well, as they say, the price of
freedom is eternal vigilance.
And we, uh, in the environmental
community in particular, will be
very vigilant to make sure
that some members of city council
don't try and tamper with the
ordinance, and that people
don't try and go to the legislature
and overturn them through other
means.
Worth noting that Shea became
an Austin City Council member after
this and is now a Travis County
commissioner.
What we're hearing in these
interviews is a new emerging
city politics that's going to be
hyper responsive to environmentalist
concerns and is going to be
deeply suspicious, at least in its
rhetoric, of development.
It created a politics where being an
environmentalist means being
anti-development.
They're one and the same.
But this conversation seems
to be changing.
It's the topic.
I mean, you just nailed it, as far
as like the topic of environmental
protection.
You remember Matt Holland, he was
that fresh faced intern the
night the activists shut down Jim
Bob Moffett's big development at
City Hall.
Over 30 years later, Matt still
works for the city, and he says,
these days, development and,
especially urban density,
are not the boogeymen
that they used to be to a lot
of environmentalists.
I was all in with this, and
I remember being a pretty fierce
opponent of impervious cover, you
know, from an early age in
my career.
But now a lot of people, including
Matt, say we need to build more
to protect the environment.
Now, this could mean less green
space in some places,
but building homes closer together
and closer into the city reduces
our need to build farther out and to
drive everywhere.
It reduces water use.
It reduces greenhouse gas emissions.
That's one of the difficulties of a
S.O.S. looking landscape.
You've got very low density.
But this pro-density push
is something that's still fiercely
opposed by a lot of other
environmentalists.
Holland says he has a regular
meeting with an old friend at the
Springs where they argue about
this very thing.
We go to Barton Springs and swim,
and then we hang out and eat tacos
and talk about this, the exact same
topic, like probably hundreds of
times, the same topic.
[laughter]
He says they never seem to change
each others minds.
Meanwhile, more and more people keep
moving here, and they've
gotta live somewhere.
We'll get into that next time, on
Growth Machine: How Austin
Engineered Its Housing Market.
Growth machine is a production of
KUT and KUTX Studios
in Austin.
It's produced by me, Mose Buchele,
Marissa Charpentier, Nathan Bernier,
Jimmy Moss and Matt Largey,
with production help from Heather
Stewart. Technical help from Jake
Perlman and Rene Chavez.
Stephanie Federico is our digital
editor.
Special thanks to Karen Coker, the
Austin History Center, KVUE
and KXAN for archival
sound in this episode.
There's more at kut.org/growth
machine.
I'm Audrey McGlinchey.
Thanks for listening.