Book traces origin of Barton Creek

When former American-Statesman journalist Ed Crowell moved to Austin in the late 1970s from a Florida beach town, he was determined to live near water. Picking a spot in Barton Hills, he was close enough to Barton Springs Pool to walk there and go for regular dips. But for years, he had little idea about the source of Barton Creek, the beloved waterway that spills through onetime farm and ranch land, before it reaches the iconic pool.

Over the last several years, Crowell and former Statesman photojournalist Alberto Martínez, journeyed along the creek to solve that riddle — and tell the stories of people who live along the waterway as they decide whether to sell their property for suburban development or keep it preserved. The backdrop of the story includes the famed fights involving endangered species protections and property rights that consumed Austin and its suburbs in the 1980s and 1990s and ultimately colored the city's identity.

Crowell and Martínez will be talking about their book, "Barton Creek," published by Texas A&M University Press, as well as the creek's natural beauty and the looming threats that surround it, Saturday and again on Monday evening. Both events are free and open to the public.

The following is a transcript of an interview with Crowell, edited for space.

What was Barton Creek like when you moved to Austin?

When we lived in Barton Hills, there was no official greenbelt, no official trails down there, no markers — it had not been bought by the city yet. It was pretty rough.

In a way, the book reads like a mystery or a quest book. Why the need to find the origin of Barton Creek?

I didn’t see it as the search for the Nile, but it seemed like a good story. It wasn't mystical, but it was a mystery. I'd ask environmental organizations, but nobody quite knew exactly. The real journey was in between (the origin and the end of the creek) and meeting those landowners in that middle ground.

Some of them come off as heroes in your book.

They’ve had developers offer many millions of dollars, and they've turned them down in favor of these conservation easements (in which a landowner gets a tax break in exchange for agreeing to limit land development). That's not an easy thing to do. It doesn’t make your kids rich, but you can do things that guarantee kids can build houses on the land, and you can keep living there for the rest of your life.

How easy is it to trace the creek by foot, given how much Texas land is in private hands?

Under Texas law, you can walk the creek bed. You can have reasonable access to the banks. But you can’t go hiking through private property. It becomes an access issue, since you have to have a public road crossing (to get into the creek).

Is Barton Creek the umbilical cord for Barton Springs Pool?

It has more than one umbilical cord. Onion Creek provides three times as much water to the aquifer (that feeds Barton Springs) than Barton Creek. But it’s a symbolic umbilical cord for the city.

Is Barton Creek loved to death?

For sure, with all the development out on the tributaries, there's a huge amount of houses planned and built in Drippings Springs and Bee Cave areas. Everyone wants a Hill Country view, but that comes with vehicles, pets and pesticides, and all runs downhill and all ends up in Barton Creek.

Are we the seeing consequences?

Not yet. The creek tests pretty good on water quality. But it’s happened before that a nearby sewage treatment plant has malfunctioned. I was walking in the Lost Creek subdivision and thought to myself "What is this stink?" I find out two weeks later that there was a tank overflowing, but it was caught before it got into Barton Creek — but that’s just yards up from the shore.

You interview both environmental activists and the property rights activists they dueled.

I guess it's my journalistic background that I wanted to give everyone a say. I asked Frank Davis (of the Hill Country Conservancy) why are all these people moving out here? He said: "I don’t know. They come out and live right on top of each other. They commute into work. They think they’re in the country, but they’re not." I asked the same question to a developer: "They're coming out here for good schools, the amenities like theaters and shopping centers, and the cheaper home prices." I understand why developers want to go where people want to find houses. But how much care they take with their sewage treatment plants, their holding ponds, their conservation efforts, is open for debate.

There are a lot of new Austinites. What would you want them to know?

There were lots of battles (for environmental protections). Some were won and gutted later by the Legislature. But they gave the city a sense of identity that we’re an environmental city and proud of it and going to fight to protect these amenities. At the time, the pool was being polluted heavily, and you had the construction of Barton Creek mall, and the extension of MoPac (Boulevard). Because of those efforts a lot more care was taken to where development went. It could have been a lot worse. Development could have been much further along creek than where it is now.

If you goIf you go

Ed Crowell and Alberto Martínez will talk about their book "Barton Creek" 5 p.m. Saturday at Prizer Arts and Letters, 2023 E. Cesar Chavez St., and 6:30 p.m. Monday at the Park, 4024 S. Lamar Blvd. Both events are free and open to the public.