The Austin American Statesman
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Ranch deal launches new effort to save land

By Stephen Scheibal
American-Statesman Staff
Wednesday, September 6, 2000

Storm Ranch, a sprawling 5,800-acre jewel 20 miles outside Austin, is about to become the rallying point for a new private sector fight to save Barton Springs.

A historic teaming of environmentalists, developers and business leaders will announce today a $300 million, five-year fund-raising drive to protect rural tracts like Storm Ranch from development, preserving open space in the Texas Hill Country and protecting water quality in Barton Springs. The group's first purchase will be $10 million for development rights to the terrier-shaped ranch southwest of Austin. Known as the Hill Country Conservancy, the group has an option to purchase a conservation easement on the tract and has raised about $300,000 for conservation projects.

The conservancy, which sprung from last year's truce between the Save Our Springs Alliance, the Real Estate Council of Austin and the Greater Austin Chamber of Commerce -- groups that had previously fought bitterly over environmental issues -- will make Storm Ranch a centerpiece in its drive for private land acquisition money.

Over the next five years, conservancy leaders have pledged to protect 50,000 acres of Central Texas land that feeds water through the Edwards Aquifer -- an underground network of caves -- into Barton Springs. Officials hope today's announcement will show potential donors what the group can do.

"This really is what I hope becomes a new sort of model for how we can get the job done," said Robin Rather, the former SOS chairwoman who now serves on the conservancy's board. "I think this is kind of the new wave of environmentalism."

The ranch lies entirely in Hays County, an area where residents and officials have long been concerned about Austin-based efforts to control development.

It stretches from RM 12 about seven miles south of Dripping Springs to Onion Creek and takes up much of the southwest corner of the Barton Springs Contributing Zone. Water flows east from there through tributaries such as Onion Creek, where it drains into sinkholes and enters the aquifer. Environmentalists have long fought development in the area, fearing it would pollute water in the aquifer and ruin Barton Springs.

But as Austin's rapid growth encroaches on rural areas to the west, the price of land has skyrocketed, property taxes have risen and many landowners have sold to developers who want to carve the land into subdivisions and suburbs.

"It's been obvious to the family for some years really that it was going to be awfully hard to keep the thing going," said Scott Storm, a conservancy board member whose family owns the ranch. "We were going to have to make some pretty hard decisions that probably involved selling the land."

The deal will not prohibit development on the land, but Storm said it will probably limit impervious cover -- structures such as buildings and roads that prevent storm runoff from entering the ground -- to about 1 percent of the property.

Conservancy officials say developers would have paid significantly more for the land than the group will pay for the development rights, but Storm said money wasn't his family's biggest consideration.

"Everybody hated the idea of seeing the place turned into a subdivision," he said. "This is better for our neighbors, better for us and, I think, better for the goals of the conservancy."

That reluctance among longtime landowners to develop their land will probably be key in the conservancy's effort to protect land in the next five years.

Groups like the Hill Country Conservancy probably will not match the prices developers can pay or the terms of the deals they can offer, said Jeff Francell, the Hill Country field representative for the Nature Conservancy of Texas, another land preservation group that has supported the local group but is not related to it.

But "you have a lot of landowners who are very interested in preserving their land and their heritage," Francell said. "I think it's very important that land owners can pass their land down (to several) generations and still make a good financial decision. No developer can offer that."

If the Hill Country Conservancy meets its goal, it will probably supplant the City of Austin as the region's leading land preservation agency.

Mayor Kirk Watson said the city set the stage for groups such as the Hill Country Conservancy with its 1998 drive to acquire 15,000 acres for preserves, and the private sector now must take more responsibility.

"It will always work better, in my view, with multiple partners," Watson said. "I think it grows on itself."

Hill Country Conservancy board member David Armbrust, a long-time lawyer for Austin developers, said he's heard support for preservation from people throughout the community, including Austin's technology industry.

"We're willing to take that risk and assume that there are other people in our community who do have a vision for the long-term quality of life in this community," Armbrust said. "We may find that we're living in a dream world. I hope not."