As advertised, last week’s City Council meeting took place at the usual venue, 301 W. Second, and not in an alternate reality where Danny Thomas is already mayor. But even if it had unfurled on that astral plane, the situation would still run a distant second to the controversy that came to the fore that morning.
With the Mayor Pro Tem actually presiding over the dais in Mayor Will Wynn’s absence – the latter was plugging plug-in hybrid vehicles at the U.S Conference of Mayors in D.C. – approval of the standard laundry list of initiatives called the consent agenda was delayed by a speaker on Item 23, to approve $4.2 million for the Downtown Wastewater Tunnel project. Former Austin Clean Water Program director Bill Moriarty, whose lawsuit against the city has him in the middle of a spreading sewage stain, used his six minutes to rehearse highlights of his lawsuit against City Manager Toby Futrell, Deputy City Manager Joe Canales, and Council Member Brewster McCracken – alleging that Futrell and Canales, pressured by a self-dealing network of contractors and abetted by McCracken, forced him from his job. On the subject at hand, Moriarty blamed roughly the same cabal for the wastewater project’s delay, enabling potentially deadly water contamination at Town Lake.
Moriarty took credit for reviving the tunnel plan, calling it one of the reasons for his ousting by the city, via contractor Earth Tech. “Because this project is now only starting,” he said, “it guarantees that the city will suffer several more years of raw sewage being dumped within a few hundred feet of the intake of the Green Water Treatment Plant.” Intermittent overloads of the current system dump sewage in Town Lake; should any of that pollution enter the Green water uptake, Moriarty warned, it would create the possibility of a cryptosporidium outbreak – a microscopic parasite that sickened many people in a 1998 spill at Brushy Creek, and more alarmingly, was responsible for more than 100 deaths in a 1993 outbreak in Milwaukee. “City council has been either misled or not properly informed as to the seriousness of the situation in Town Lake and the quality of the drinking water,” Moriarty insisted. “Because of the city manager’s lack of attention,” he said, “the city is exposing water consumers to a potentially deadly disease.”
That Downtown’s drainage infrastructure is overloaded is no secret: The city is under orders from the EPA to overhaul its sewers by 2009. But a doubting Thomas called on several speakers to refute Moriarty, in a rivetingly wonky discussion of the city’s anti-crypto measures. Canales (sitting in briefly for Futrell) rejected Moriarty’s charge that a good-ol’ contractors network delayed the tunnel. “If there were any delays,” he said, “they were attributed primarily to investigating concerns and allegations that were brought to our attention” – obliquely referencing the third of three city investigations into Moriarty (which ended, finally, in his dismissal). Open Question of the Week: Who clogged the pipeline?
Mayoral aide Matt Curtis advises bringing (discreet) snacks to today’s Thursday meeting, because it’ll be a good one. Or at least a long one. Despite a short list of council items (highlighted by the so-called McMansion ordinance; see Naked City, facing page), and otherwise slight roster, three substantive briefings are scheduled for 2pm, including the belated, ballyhooed presentation of the Bond Election Advisory Committee‘s recommendations.
The BEAC has not been shy about pushing for a May election, but the mayor’s office – still looking to squeeze Highway 130 infrastructure in somewhere – is increasingly floating the likelihood of a delay until November. The bond presentation is sandwiched between the first annual report from the Mayor’s Mental Health Task Force Monitoring Committee (Godspeed) and a briefing on the city’s new Regional Water Quality Protection Plan (ditto).
The action is sure to continue at 6pm, when several “Seaholm District Items” come up for approval. “Gables District Items” would be more precise, as the ordinances relate to Downtown’s latest controversial condo development, the Gables Park Plaza, to be nestled between Lamar and the Pfluger pedestrian bridge on Cesar Chavez. Not incidentally, the Gables come up for rezoning at 4pm, while the 6pm items concern proposed road realignment and public improvements and financial agreements with the latest would-be purveyors of luxury suites. The current form of the Gables deal will be opposed by a coalition of environmental and neighborhood groups, who call it a discount giveaway of public funds to private interests that will neglect affordable housing while further fouling the Town Lake waterfront. Watch out for an overflow.
This article appears in February 3 • 2006.