Land acquisition, leaving Fayette power plant among environmentalists’ priorities for Council plan

With City Council set to consider a host of green infrastructure projects later this spring, environmental proponents want the city to commit to green space acquisition, curbing motorized vehicle use and converting all municipal energy generation away from carbon fuels.

Wednesday’s public hearing at the Joint Sustainability Committee meeting featured more than a dozen speakers weighing in on the city’s environmental investment plan, which was initiated by a February resolution that committed to a net-zero carbon goal by 2040, along with several other goals and initiatives.

In addition to the carbon emissions reduction, the city is aiming to decrease water usage and improve overall community resilience. The early discussions on environmental priorities were intended to avoid concerns over funding options, though there is a goal of prioritizing projects that would trigger or leverage federal aid programs.

The Joint Sustainability Committee is expected to vote on a recommendation to Council next month that would give its guidance on the projects and concepts to pursue. City Council is tentatively expected to hold a public hearing on the plan in late May.

During the hearing, speakers such as environmental consultant Ted Eubanks said Austin’s rapid development is creating pressures and dire consequences in most aspects of local environmental health.

“To ameliorate Austin’s expanding and intensifying urban heat island, protect water and air quality, increase water quantity and conserve biodiversity, Austin must balance green with this densifying gray,” Eubanks said. “Austin is not going to address these climate issues with new programs, managers and (full-time employees). This is pretense, not action. We need measurable action. Acres purchased, acres restored, wetlands preserved, riparian buffers created.”

He also pushed for an inventory of all publicly owned land to assess their conditions and potential for conversion to green space.

Bobby Levinski, staff attorney for the Save Our Springs Alliance, said state laws limiting the city’s ability to regulate development – including drastic cutbacks in parkland dedication requirements – make land acquisition even more important for the city to protect local water quality.

“Land and wildlife habitat are limited resources,” he said. “It is a proven strategy to protect water quality, protect water quantity, mitigate flooding risk and combat sprawl development. I would encourage you to include in your recommendation language to City Council to leverage those funds with state and federal resources, as well as the Austin Water utility revenue. It’s getting harder and harder to regulate development within the county areas in our (extraterritorial jurisdiction). We really need to get back on to finding out more funding resources to protect land.”

Levinski also touched on the need for the city to shut down its portion of the coal-powered Fayette Power Project as soon as possible.

Speaker Ted Siff, president of the Austin Outside coalition of environmental groups, echoed those sentiments, arguing, “If you close Fayette in the next two years, you’ve accomplished a substantial percentage of all of these plan goals.”

In addition to pushing for land acquisition, Siff supported converting the city’s entire vehicle fleet to electric motors, planting more trees and substantially investing in battery storage infrastructure.

He also said supporters of the plan need to have spending limits in mind while assembling the priorities because the city almost certainly won’t pursue a bond funding vote this fall but could use other financial tools to cover the costs.

“Bonds in November of 2024 is not a choice. It’s not an economic choice for the city. The city finance director and the current city manager have said that a year ago, and they recommend general obligation bonds not be presented to voters until November of ’26 at the earliest,” he said. “They already issue revenue bonds that could but do not require voter approval, and those could be initiated sooner than ’26. All of the things that I’ve proposed can be funded through revenue bonds or utility rate adjustments.”

Photo made available through a Creative Commons license.

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