25 Years of Saving Our Springs

"United We Stand" SOS Election Morning by Eric Beggs, 1992

It’s been twenty-five years of saving our springs. And, “It’s now or never, again.”

Here in Austin we are blessed with a natural wonder of global significance: Barton Springs, the fourth largest spring in Texas, home to two endangered aquatic salamanders, sourced by a cave-forming, karstic limestone aquifer more vulnerable to pollution than any other aquifer in Texas.

The capital was located here in large part because Barton Springs provided a reliable source of drinking water.   Quite literally, we are here because the springs are here.   They are the life-source of our city. If we lose Barton Springs, we lose Austin and our place here on Earth.

More than half a million locals and tourists every year enjoy swimming and snorkeling in and sunbathing beside Barton’s cold clear waters, sharing the waters with largemouth bass, blue gill, cormorants, ducks, herons, kingfishers, the mysterious salamanders and river eels, and many other native species. The springs connect us, residents and visitors alike, to the real world, the one that was here before us.

Since the 1970s Austinite's have banded together to protect Barton Springs from urban development and the pollution it brings. These citizen group advocates have included the Zilker Park Posse; Zilker and Barton Hills neighborhood associations; Austin Sierra Club; Save Barton Creek Association; Earth First!; Clean Water Action; Citizen Action; Hill Country Foundation;   and, since 1992, the Save Our Springs Alliance.

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Tell Council to Support What Makes Austin Austin

HOT facts; Convention Center Follies – Today Austin Mayor Steve Adler is announcing a convention center expansion proposal that would tie up more than 80% of our tourism hotel tax dollars for the next 20 years, even though convention visitors make up less than 2% of Austin tourists. Meanwhile, the people, places, and iconic, local Austin businesses that make Austin exciting to tourists and residents alike will continue to get little or nothing under the proposal.
Barton Springs, a top tourist draw, gets nothing from the hotel tax revenues. Struggling Austin musicians and artists, live music venues, and iconic Austin businesses get a few extra dollars while the proposed convention center expansion would lock in more than a billion dollars in funding over the next 20 years.
Check out this folder Hotel Occupancy Tax and Convention Center Fact Sheet – because you sure won’t learn the facts from Austin City Staff or the Austin Convention and Visitors Bureau. Let your councilmember know that it’s time to support what we say we love and stop pouring money into the failing convention center.

Legal Update

We continue to await a decision from the district court on the merits of our suit challenging the SH 45 SW, MoPac Intersections, and MoPac South projects. In the meantime, we have reactivated our suit in the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, seeking review of last October's denial of our request to halt construction pending the outcome of the case.  We will file our opening brief on August 15, and oral argument will be held in early November.

Our lawsuit challenging the MoPac Intersections project under the Endangered Species Act recently expanded to include the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service as a defendant. Save Our Springs and co-plaintiff the Center for Biological Diversity requested adding the federal agency after it issued a decision in June concurring with TxDOT that the MoPac Intersections project-located over the critically sensitive Barton Springs Recharge Zone-would not harm the Barton Springs and Austin Blind Salamanders, or the Golden-Cheeked Warbler. The Service's decision was based on an inadequate analysis and incomplete review of the science, and we will move quickly to help ensure the species receive full protection under the law before construction is set to this fall. You can read more about the suit here.

Support More Green for Travis County

Please take a few minutes to send an email to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.telling the Travis County Citizens Bond Advisory Committee to prioritize funding for more parks and open space in its recommendations for a proposed November bond election. The CBAC is finalizing its recommendations to the Commissioners Court. SOS is specifically urging the CBAC to recommend that (a) at least half of the likely total of $100 to $120 million in proposed bonds be allocated to buying more park lands and conservation easements; and (b) the proposed Reimer Peacock Road, between Hamilton Pool Road and SH 71 west should not be funded. The only real purpose for this road is to support development in a priority protection area. Please help us urge the county to buy more open space now, before it’s too late.

Celebrating 27 years of citizen advocacy to Save Our Springs

Twenty-seven years ago on June 7, 1990,  over 800 Austinites showed up at City Hall to protest the proposed 4,000 acre "Barton Creek PUD" development. The City Council heard public testimony all through the night, and voted as the sun rose the next day to deny the project. That night sparked the "Save Our Springs" movement, and led directly to Austin voters approving the citizen-initiated Save Our Springs ordinance in August 1992.

Watch excerpts from the Barton Creek Uprising here . Check out Austin photographer extraordinaire Alan Pogue's photos from the uprising here.

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