“As far as the highway department is concerned, this is a drainage ditch.”
Dawson Neighborhood Association president Donald Jay Dodson gestures over the
side of the box culvert bridge on El Paso Street to the meandering flow of
water called East Bouldin Creek.
Dodson is probably right. The Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT)
installed an eight-foot drainage pipe that will catch runoff from Ben
White/US290 at Congress, and run it downstream and north to Lightsey Road, then
west along Lightsey where it will spill its contents into East Bouldin Creek.
TxDOT completed the drainage pipe in 1992, without the usual legal permits from
the feds, the state, or the City of Austin, and they have no plans to obtain
those permits now. The pipe was only opened in March of this year to partial
flow from the highway construction site, but once US290 is completely open –
which TxDOT engineers estimate will be around this time next year – highway
runoff from the west, next to West Bouldin Creek, and from the east, from what
would normally be the Blunn Creek Watershed, will flow into that pipe and into
East Bouldin Creek.
The East Bouldin Creek Watershed along Ben White extends from Congress to
South First. Runoff from the frontage roads outside the creek’s watershed will
still flow into West Bouldin Creek and Blunn Creek, but because of tunneling on
the main lanes, eight and a half extra acres of runoff outside the creek’s
watershed will now flow back into the Congress Avenue drainage pipe and into
East Bouldin Creek.
Everybody knows that TxDOT can, and will, do just about anything they want,
but can they alter a watershed? This is the issue at hand for the Dawson
neighborhood residents. Every creek close to Ben White will have to carry its
share of highway runoff, but because of TxDOT’s design on the highway’s main
lanes, changes in the natural topography are causing East Bouldin Creek to
carry more than its fair share. That extra runoff, say residents, will cause
flooding, property damage, and possibly even loss of lives, considering how
fast the creek rises naturally in heavy rainfall. Several outbuildings and
fences along the creek have already lost their ground support from erosion, and
many residents have watched their backyards slowly disappear over the
years.
TxDOT area engineer Russell Lenz contends that the extra flow caused by the
changes “will not have an adverse impact on the creek.” Lenz, who has been
TxDOT’s point man on the discharge pipe issue, maintains that just because the
runoff will be coming faster through the pipe, does not mean the creek will
reach its capacity faster. “When water comes faster, most of the time, as the
rate of flow increases, water surface elevation is decreased.”
Lenz met with the neighborhood group in April to explain his theory, but
the neighbors were unmoved, and still want TxDOT to redirect the excess runoff
back to West Bouldin Creek where it belongs. To do that, says Lenz, would take
retunneling the main lane grade on the highway to make it flow back the other
way, and that would cost a lot of money and time. Besides, he says, it’s not
necessary. Referring to studies done by his agency and the city, Lenz points
out that with the drainage pipe and the extra acreage of runoff, the creek
would only rise about six inches, and the velocity of the water would be 9.6
feet per second compared to 7.34 feet per second under normal conditions.
Those calculations were done, he says, without even taking into
consideration the water retention pond the City of Austin is building on Alpine
Street, two blocks south of Lightsey and upstream from the drainage pipe
outfall. The pond will catch runoff west of the pipe and release it slowly into
the creek at Lightsey. The pond will slow, or “meter,” the natural flow on
those parts of the watershed, says Lenz, thus preventing flooding in heavy
rainfall.
As for the neighborhood residents’ request to redirect runoff back to West
Bouldin, Lenz says that TxDOT does not want to “close the door on any
neighborhood issues until we find it can’t be done.” But he adds that “there’s
a difference between being willing to do it and being [able] to do it.” The
agency has done a temporary design for redirecting the runoff, but has not
performed a cost feasibility study. “I’m still waiting to hear on that,” says
Lenz, but he reiterates that studies on the creek elevation show him that
redirection is not needed. “The [highway runoff] design is fine – if we weren’t
convinced that the creek could handle it, we wouldn’t have done it that
way.”
At the same time, Lenz told me what he told the neighborhood association at
the April 4 meeting: “If we made a mistake, we are going to try to fix it.” But
there’s a big difference between being willing to admit it, and actually
admitting it. Lenz comments that he is “not going to criticize another
engineer’s design [for the highway runoff].” That, he says, would be
“unethical.”
So what happens if the design is indeed a mistake, and East Bouldin Creek
residents suffer the consequences? “It would be a black eye on us,” says Lenz.
“We have an obligation to all the people we impact. We don’t want to destroy
anyone’s property or anything else.”
And maybe the door isn’t really as closed as Lenz’s arguments make it seem:
The agency’s legal department is looking into their obligations on the permits
they won’t be pursuing, and into the stickier point of liability, just in case.
– Louisa C. Brinsmade
This article appears in July 14 • 1995 and July 14 • 1995 (Cover).