A look back at three decades of environmental coverage

by Nora Ankrum

1) Comprehensive Planning For nearly a century, Austin city officials have been trying to figure out how to manage growth and steer development to protect – to some degree, anyway – the city's natural beauty and resources. "City of Dreams" (Dec. 1, 1995) takes a look back at all those efforts, beginning with the City Plan of 1928 and ending with the planning efforts under way in the mid-Nineties. "Comp Plan Combo Platter" (Oct. 1, 2010) brings the story to the present.

2) South Texas Nuclear Project Just a few weeks after the first issue of the Chronicle hit the stands, Austin voters sent the South Texas Nuclear Project packing – or thought they had, anyway. On the eve of that vote, in the Chronicle's fifth issue, reporter Diane Jane Morrison summed up the city's history with the plant ("STNP: Reactions to the Reactor," Oct. 30, 1981, p.13). Thereafter, the controversial project appeared regularly in the Chronicle's Politics pages, with Daryl Janes declaring in Council Watch on June 26, 1987, that "the South Texas Nuclear Teenager is 14 years old; 7 years behind schedule; 5 times over budget and hasn't produced one lit fart of energy."

3) STP, Continued Eventually, STP (having dropped the discomfiting "N" somewhere along the way) did start providing electricity for Austin Energy ratepayers, though it had been shut down for the second time when, in 2003, Mike Clark-Madison updated the tale of the scandal-plagued plant in "Wanna Buy a Used Nuke?" (July 4). Even today, three uneasy decades since Austin voted STP off the island, the project hasn't gone away: "AE's Nuclear Option," Jan. 21, 2010.

4) Water Treatment Plant No. 4 The debate over Water Treatment Plant No. 4 – where it should be built and whether it should built at all – has rivaled the South Texas nuke controversy in longevity. City Hall Hustler Wells Dunbar took a look back at three decades of discord in "Water Seeks Its Level," Feb. 23, 2007. In 2009, on the eve of a public forum debating the project, we summed up the major points of contention: "Point, Counterpoint," Sept. 18, 2009.

5) WTP4 Lives On Though construction on WTP4 has begun, the controversy rages on. See "Hell in a Handbasket or, the Worst of Austin," Aug. 27, 2010, and "Water, Water (Plant) Everywhere," Sept. 3, 2010.

6) Green Dais In "The Coming Elections: A Struggle for Austin's Soul" (Dec. 21, 1984), Chronicle contributor Jim Shahin described a conference of "environmentalists, minorities, neighborhood activists, labor organizers" that convened – after a resounding defeat at the polls in a bond election that fall – in order to draft "a non-partisan progressive platform" for the following spring's City Council elections. Five months later, in a "triumph" Shahin described as "nothing short of astonishing," the effort emerged victorious: Austin voters ushered in what would later be known as Austin's first "environmental council." In "An Election Recap: Storm Clouds and Spilled Scotch" (May 17, 1985), Shahin described the endeavor as a "classic against-all-odds campaign" that left the happy but "weary campaign workers" spilling scotch on one another and "pinching themselves." This council would later dedicate all city-owned land along Town Lake (now Lady Bird Lake) as parkland and pass the Comprehensive Watersheds Ordinance, a precursor to the Save Our Springs Ordinance.

7) Green Dais, Part II "In "Max: I'm the Message" and "Power of the Press Meets Power of the People" (May 15, 1987), Shahin reported on the election of City Council Member Max Nofziger – "a former streetcorner flower salesman with a handlebar moustache whose campaign would spend only $29,000 to his opponent's $153,000." Nofziger's success proved that "environmentalists, progressives, whatever you want to call them, constitute a majority in this town," said political consultant Peck Young at the time. In other words, wrote Shahin, "the election of a managed-growth majority to the City Council in 1985 was no fluke."

8) Tank Farms/PODER Environmental activist group PODER, with Susana Almanza at the helm, cut its teeth in the early Nineties "tank farm" battles over a gasoline storage facility in East Austin. Exxon finally agreed to close the facility in 1993 ("Exxon Ends Tank Farm Holdout," Feb. 26, 1993), but neighbors and the city were still trying to figure out what to do with the land in 1996 ("Tank Farms: What Now") and in 2002 ("Visualize Whirled Tank Farms"). What sits atop that storied piece of land today? A used-car lot, among other things.

9) Circle C As reporter Kayte Vanscoy explained in "Dotting the i's, Circling the C's" (Dec. 19, 1997), "Like all of the best infotainment – Watergate and Whitewater, O.J. and the House of Windsor – either one has followed the tortured progress of the Circle C Ranch, or one has not, and never the twain shall meet, apparently. " Nonetheless, she does her best to explain the whole sordid Circle C affair, which dates back to the 1983 purchase of land atop the Edwards Aquifer that was later developed by Gary Bradley amid much tumult and strife. It is Austin's quintessential developers vs. environmentalists battle, stretching on for more than a decade and involving all the major players: Jim Bob Moffett, City Hall, the Save Our Springs Alliance, the Texas Lege, and many a lawyer.

10) Barton Springs PUD The Chronicle promoted a feature story on the controversial Barton Creek planned unit development with a cover that read, "If you don't read this issue, we'll poison Barton Springs" (June 1, 1990). The following Thursday, when City Council convened to consider a vote on the PUD, more than 800 people signed up to speak, and the meeting lasted all night. In the end, council unanimously rejected the PUD, and the Save Our Springs movement was born.

11) Save Our Springs Ordinance If you do a search for "Barton Springs" in the Chronicle's online archive, you'll get 1,000 story hits. Since that database only goes back to 1995 – three years after the Save Our Springs Ordinance passed and five years after that legendary all-night hearing – that means you're really seeing just a fraction of our coverage of Austin's biggest environmental story: the movement to protect the springs, to pass the SOS Ordinance, and then to save that ordinance. For a play-by-play of all the major skirmishes, check out this 2002 feature by Mike Clark-Madison, Amy Smith, and Robert Bryce: "Did SOS Matter?" complete with a Cliffs Notes version in this timeline: "The Battle for the Springs: A Chronology."

12) Freeport-McMoRan In February 1995, City Council shot down Freeport-McMoRan's controversial planned unit development over the Edwards Aquifer, prompting Freeport lobbyists to take revenge both at the Capitol (contributing to a dark era of Austin-bashing legislation; see No. 14, below) and in court, where it attempted to sue the city for $75 million in damages ("Freeport Wins Small," May 19, 1995.)

13) Jim Bob Building On Dec. 1, 1994, UT board of regents proposed naming a building after Freeport-McMoRan CEO Jim Bob Moffett, a move that amped up local animosity for the company – and for the man, two years since his face had ignominiously graced a 1993 Chronicle cover as a Halloween mask – to a whole new level and cast a spotlight on the company's environmental and human rights violations abroad. See "Freeport McMoRan: A Timeline," Nov. 10, 1995. (Today, that UT building is called the Louise and James Robert Moffett Molecular Biology Building.)

14) Austin-Bashing The environmental battles of the late Eighties triggered a backlash at the Capitol, ushering in an era of Austin-bashing legislation that perhaps reached its zenith in 1995 ("Kick Me, I'm From Austin," April 28, 1995) with bills putting developers' rights before local water-quality protections. Ultimately nine anti-Austin bills were passed that year ("Top Ten Political Stories," Jan. 5, 1996), along with a doozie known as the "Trust Me" law ("The Solution to Pollution," June 9, 1995), which allowed companies to audit themselves for violations of environmental and other regulations.

15) 1995 Lows & Highs Aw, hell, as this Top 10 list shows, 1995 was just a bad year all around for anyone who cared about the environment: "Spanked All Over," (Jan 5, 1996). Still, it wasn't all bad. The Balcones Canyonlands Conservation Plan represented a rare triumph in the hard-fought battles to protect the Hill Country: "Night of the Living BCCP, Part 37," (May 19, 1995).

16) Kirk Watson Before he was a senator, he was the guy who helped break the political stalemate between environmentalists and developers and showed that "a healthy environment and a strong economy go hand-in-hand." Just a few months before Watson proclaimed mayoral victory at the polls, reporter Alex de Marban wrote about the unlikely alliances backing the candidate's campaign: "The Fight of His Life" (Dec. 6, 1996).

17) Smart Growth Watson's reign officially paved the way for the smart growth era, which for a while succeeded in keeping big companies off the aquifer (e.g., Intel, which ultimately had to pull the plug on its Downtown construction, and CSC, which now has buildings straddling City Hall; both companies had initially sought to build over aquifer). That golden era ended in 2005 when AMD announced plans to move to the aquifer: "Back to the Trenches" (Dec. 16, 2005). News Editor Michael King covered the grand opening of AMD's Lantana campus in 2008: "Point Austin: Raising the Bar" (June 20, 2008).

18) Longhorn Pipeline A pipeline carrying gasoline from East to West Texas had no shortage of opponents, especially those in South Austin whose homes sat right on top of it – and still do: "Gasoline Alley" (Nov. 19, 1999), "It's a Gas, Gas, Gas for Longhorn" (July 26, 2002), "Trouble on the Longhorn Pipeline?" (Nov. 26, 2004).

19) Light Rail In a victory for everyone who enjoys sitting in I-35 traffic, light rail lost on Election Day in 2000. Prior to the defeat, former council member Max Nofziger debated former Chronicle Politics Editor Daryl Slusher (then a council member, now assistant director of environmental affairs and conservation Austin Water) on the merits of light rail in Austin: "Light Rail Debate," Nov. 3, 2000.

20) Big Box Battles Four years before the 2007 Big Box Ordinance passed (subjecting developments larger than 100,000 square feet to council approval), the big-box battle atop the aquifer took a bite out of Sunset Valley, which turned land over to Austin in hopes the SOS Ordinance could stave off construction of the Lowe's on Brodie: "Sunset vs. Goliath" (Oct. 10, 2003).

21) Alternative Transportation The new millennium brought with it car-sharing and electric cars: "Can Austin Carshare?" (Nov. 11, 2005), "Plug-In Hybrid Cars: Coming Soon to Austin, Detroit, and Your Driveway?" (Dec. 8, 2006), "It's Nice To Car Share" (Dec. 31, 2010).

22) Austin Climate Protection Program In spring of 2007, the city of Austin launched what was touted as "the single most comprehensive global warming plan of any city in the U.S." Hopes were high: "How Cool Is Austin?" (March 9, 2007). After three years of stops, starts, minor successes, and lost opportunities, Michael King checked in on the program's success: "Slow Burn" (Sept. 24, 2010).

23) Coal Despite all that wind power blowing in from the West, Texas is still coal country: "Thinking Beyond Coal" (July 18, 2008).

24) Austin Energy Generation Plan "Twisting in the Wind" (Aug. 21, 2009) found Austin Energy struggling to balance competing interests as it developed plans to usher in more renewable energy and phase out coal.

25) Pure Castings The ongoing controversy over East Austin's Pure Castings foundry illustrated the clash between residential and industrial uses in a historically marginalized and rapidly changing sector of the city: "Cast Away" (Aug. 28, 2009).

26) Room for Bicycles Cars had to make way for more bikes over the last few years as the city's revived bike program ushered in major improvements making the roads safer for everybody on two wheels: "New Bike City" (March 12, 2010).

27) Bike Boulevard The bicycle community fought hard for a bike boulevard on Nueces ("Bicycle Dreams," Feb. 5, 2010), but thanks to guff from area business interests, the location was scuttled to the less ideal Rio Grande. Still, in the end, considering the relentless opposition of sore winners ("Despite Victory, Businesses Still Riled Over Bike Plan," April 23, 2010), the project was considered a success: "The Unstoppable Bike Boulevard," July 9, 2010.

28) Texas Commission on Environmental Quality Every day is opposite day at the TCEQ, where protecting Texas' environment is the agency's No. 1 lowest priority: "Environmental Cage Match" (May 28, 2010).

29) Mobility In 2010, an otherwise depressing Election Day for Travis County progressives saw a victory for multimodal transportation with the passage of proposition 1, aka the Mobility Bond: "Mobility Bond: Ready, Set, Go" (Nov. 5, 2010). Despite its success, however, the $90 million transportation bond wasn't without its opponents: "Point Austin: Getting Mobilized" (Oct. 8, 2010).

30) Smart Grid The electric grid of the fast-approaching future will look nothing like it does today – or, for that matter, how it has looked for the last century – and the Pecan Street Project aims to put Austin at the forefront of innovations that will usher in the new era: "Pecan Street Project Unveils Smart Grid Solutions," April 2, 2010.