City to honor Mary Gay Maxwell

The city of Austin will honor the late Mary Gay Maxwell by naming a unit of Austin Water Quality Protection Lands after her. As noted in a press release about the dedication ceremony planned for Thursday morning, Maxwell devoted “much of her life to protecting Austin’s unique environmental features and sensitive natural resources. She was a strong, zealous and influential advocate for Barton Springs and the entire Edwards Aquifer.” Maxwell served on the city’s environmental board, later named the Environmental Commission, for 15 years and was chair of the commission at the time of her death. She was also a leader in the Save Our Springs Alliance during the 1990s, at one point serving as the group’s volunteer executive director. Maxwell died in a head-on collision on Highway 71 near Smithville in 2016. The city notes that wildlands are “not parks, but are public lands held in trust for a specific purpose based on the mission of the program under which they are managed.” Find more information here.