Council approves changes to environmental protections to upgrade Butler Trail

With little discussion, City Council last week approved amendments to environmental protections to clear the way for capital improvements on the popular hike-and-bike trail at Lady Bird Lake.

The code changes allow for exemptions from critical water quality zone rules protecting Lady Bird Lake, thus giving the Trail Conservancy the ability to make upgrades to the 10-mile Ann and Roy Butler Trail. The Conservancy operates and maintains the trail under an agreement forged with the city in 2022.

The amendments, prompted by City Council direction last spring, eliminate the existing 12-foot cap on the trail’s width and allow a mitigation minimum of a one-to-one ratio of watershed revegetation and restoration for each square foot of trail construction.

Council approved the proposed changes with eight votes. Council members Alison Alter, Ryan Alter and Mackenzie Kelly stepped off the dais before action was taken.

While the code changes were made to accommodate the Conservancy’s work, the amendments technically would apply to all property owners along the trail since the proposed South Central Waterfront regulations would permit landowners to modify the trail.

In testimony before the vote, opponents told Council that relaxing the rules would allow the Conservancy to widen the trail by as much as 20 feet and to replace the decomposed granite on the trail with asphalt and concrete. Additionally, they argued that the one-to-one ratio for mitigating the shoreline is insufficient for maintaining a healthy riparian system.

Proponents of the changes countered that the amendments are simply following City Council’s direction to bring the trail into compliance with city code and to make improvements that follow the guidelines set out in a 2021 safety and mobility study. Provisions designed to improve and update the code in 2017 inadvertently rendered the trail noncompliant.

While critics delivered impassioned pleas and demands to reject the proposed changes, few speakers were as fired up as Andy Austin, who is a Conservancy board member, immediate past chair and a retired federal judge. He told Council that the Conservancy has no intention of paving and widening the trail.

“I’m trying to keep my patience here,” he said. “We do not support changing the surface or the width of the trail. Despite that, we have been inundated, y’all have been inundated, for two weeks with social media that says the Trail Conservancy is going to pave the trail. There’s no truth whatsoever to what you’ve been hearing. So, if in some hypothetical world we wanted to pave the trail – which is crazy, we don’t – we’d have to come with a park improvement agreement as part of a capital project and get y’all’s approval. This hysteria you’re hearing is nonexistent. It’s based on a nonexistent concern.”

Bobby Levinski, speaking on behalf of the Save Our Springs Alliance, reminded Council that Lady Bird Lake was listed as an impaired waterway in 2022, an unfortunate fact that makes the lake’s riparian area even more critical.

“We’re not here to protect the trail – we’re here to protect the water,” Levinski said of SOS’s opposition to the rule exemptions. “If you want to make the current trail in conformance, all you have to do is pass something that says any trail built prior to X date shall be considered to be in conformance. You don’t delete the code to make something in compliance with the code; that makes no sense.”

Council Member Paige Ellis, who sponsored last year’s resolution for code changes to allow for trail upgrades, was the only Council member to speak before the vote.

“We’re very fortunate to live in a city where our parks’ nonprofits partners routinely take it upon themselves to enhance our public space for everybody,” she said, noting that the projects still must go through the permitting process. “Our Parks and Recreation Department just simply cannot keep up with the demand on our parks by themselves. We need our nonprofit partners to step up to make sure that we can be the best that we can be … in making sure the trail is safe and accessible for everyone.”

Photo by Daderot, CC0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Austin Monitor’s work is made possible by donations from the community. Though our reporting covers donors from time to time, we are careful to keep business and editorial efforts separate while maintaining transparency. A complete list of donors is available here, and our code of ethics is explained here.