Water & Money -- Last week the Austin City Council approved another $7 million to build a $100 million, 6.5 mile, 10-foot diameter water transmission tunnel below the Bull Creek nature preserve. In doing so the council ignored the threat posed by the transmission tunnel to the fifty-two (52) small Bull Creek headwater springs and wet caves that are within one mile of the tunnel route and which harbor the Jollyville Plateau salamander.
This amazing network of small springs also makes it possible for Golden-cheeked warblers, an endangered migratory song bird, to live in much higher densities than in other parts of its Hill Country woodland habitats. Upper Bull Creek provides the best habitat in the world for the warbler: the Bull Creek Preserve was established as the highest priority preserve in the City/County "habitat conservation plan" as a result.
Drilling, blasting and hammering the massive tunnel through the nature preserve might be justified if the new water plant it would serve was important to meeting city water needs. But it is not. The current drought should make it obvious that our real funding needs are for fixing old, breaking pipes and building a water efficient economy – not adding capacity to treat water we cannot afford to waste.
The "Jollyville Transmission Main" tunnel is just the most expensive piece of the $600 million white elephant known as "Water Treatment Plant No. 4" – a project that has $350 million and almost 3 years of construction yet to go. Completing the plant at this time will send our Water Utility debt through the roof – along with water rates -- with no benefit of any kind to Water Utility customers. Real water needs go unfunded, exposing Austin to a serious water crisis if the current drought becomes the "new normal" that climate models suggest.