{"id":1665,"date":"2003-12-03T20:25:24","date_gmt":"2003-12-04T01:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/192.168.1.5\/gardens\/gardenlog\/?p=1665"},"modified":"2017-07-17T16:25:53","modified_gmt":"2017-07-17T21:25:53","slug":"save-blunn-creek","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/just-browsing\/save-blunn-creek\/","title":{"rendered":"Save Blunn Creek"},"content":{"rendered":"

What kid can resist the lure of water? When my son was a child, we lived on the banks of Blunn Creek. Only three years had passed since Austin had raised the money to create a nature preserve<\/a> from the Storm tract, forty acre. between St. Edward’s University and Travis High School. Since we had no yard of our own, we used to take walks there in what seemed like our own private wilderness. We saw rabbits! I bought my first Texas wildflower identification book because the wealth of flowers I saw made me aware that there was a lot more to outdoors than a clipped lawn. Not that we even had that. Blunn Creek Preserve and the two Stacy Parks (Big and Little) were the only places for us condo dwellers to play outside.
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\nFast-forward twenty years. Wal-Mart is set to build another super-center. There’s no stopping that, but part of their plan calls for rezoning a section of land that feeds into the Blunn Creek headwaters and thus is integral to the health of the Blunn Creek and the nature preserve. What do we need to preserve? The three springs that feed Blunn Creek. The warm springs that create Stacy Pool<\/a>. Water that flows into Town Lake, into your<\/strong> drinking water.<\/p>\n

As the largest company in the world<\/a> Wal-Mart could easily be a leader in green building rather than a unwilling participant. If they spent a fraction of the money they spend on their various ad campaigns, they could generate some genuine goodwill in the community.<\/p>\n

Blunn Creek is threatened. The local neighborhood association (SRCC<\/a>) organized a rally today to send a message to the Austin City Council, to all the citizens of Austin, to Wal-Mart and it’s stock holders: “Don’t destroy what you can never regain.” <\/p>\n

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Until 2001, only 3.36 acres of the 125-acre Blunn Creek headwaters watershed was occupied by buildings. Roads covered an additional 14.68 acres and 107 acres were pervious. In just the last two years, Home Depot and Blunn Creek Apartment construction on Woodward almost doubled impervious acreage in this headwaters watershed by adding an additional 18.22 acres…The proposed Wal-Mart will add 18 acres of impervious cover to support a 207,5 square foot superstore. The proposed impervious cover will occupy approximately 78% of the total 23 acre site. Parking islands, flood detention, and sand filtration water quality control will occupy an additional 3.49 acres. Only 1.67 acres, or 7% of the site, will remain in a natural undeveloped condition. When construction of the Wal-Mart site is completed, imperviousness will cover 57 acres the headwaters subwatershed, or 46%. The effect of these changes will be to permanently and significantly impair Blunn Creek base flow, erosion, and water quality…”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read the entire report.<\/a> (Download pdf).<\/p>\n

\"photo:
\nThe preservation of our creeks concerns both young and old. Today’s rally at Blunn Creek.<\/p>\n

\"photo:
\nThirty years of fighting for the Blunn Creek Nature Preserve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"photo:
\nMid-1980s. JQS plays in a flooded Blunn Creek after a summer storm. Increased amounts impermeable ground cover, like the parking lot of the condos where we lived, result in a certain amount of flooding after every rain, even twenty years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1665"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5230,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1665\/revisions\/5230"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.zanthan.com\/gardens\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}