Holy shit, that'd be a bad one if she WASN'T a big shot politician! In this case, almost unfathomable.

City council shd require retailers with surface parking lots within 1 mile of a mapped creek to GPS-tag their carts. This already exists in some cities and the hardware cost is modest (~$10–20/cart). Retailers recover costs through reduced loss. Just endlessly punishing the homeless hasn't worked.

I feel like the whole shopping carts in the creeks thing is an example of big grocery stores foisting negative externalities onto the public. Some cities are holding THEM responsible for keeping track of their carts, and Austin should too. HEB can afford it.
www.phoenix.gov/newsroom/nei....

Between being on the Path of the Pioneers, Gov. Hogg having a homestead there in the 19th century, and it being the site of the town's first hotel for black folks during segregation, with the eastside's only spring-fed swimming pool, Oak Springs is an underappreciated historical site.

History of Travis County and Austin, 1839-1899 : Barkley, Mary Starr : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive 388 p. : 23 cm

This is confirmed by Mary Starr Barkley's account of the path, coming in on what today is Webberville Road then entering town at 7th Street. So Oak Springs would have been the last watering hole before the final 2-mile leg into town.

Turns out, Oak Springs was on the "Path of the Pioneers," the original "road" -- at first, not much more than a marked trail -- from Bastrop to what would become Austin in 1839. See the 2nd map in this blog post -- you can scroll in and see the path goes right past the Oak Springs tract.

My late mother played in the no-more-than-two-dribbles era and complained a lot during my childhood ('70s) about too much hero-ball dribbling and the lack of ball movement. "Why doesn't Pete Maravich pass more, nobody ever touches the ball but him," etc.

These TXDOT Indian tribal histories are pretty darn well done -- quite solid, w/ great bibliographies. Odd that they're from TXDOT, but a couple of times now I've found them quite useful, especially for the good maps and detail under Spanish rule.

Sign hung on a tree in a photo says "Small-Pox Camp."

Very informative if depressing article about Travis County "Pest camps" where people with smallpox were quarantined, 1881 to 1938..

I don't believe the industry can or wd destroy the city. What're they going to do, re-site multi-billion dollar oil refineries? I don't buy that for a second. Just raise their rates.

Abbott keeps siting even more industrial water hogs there, too; I blame the state more than the city.

Well, here's one I know you're familiar with: bsky.app/profile/grit...

Your mom, ofc, is subsidizing those O&G users, they'd have plenty of money for a desalinization plant if those guys paid the same rates she does. So she's sort of supporting capitalism, I guess, but in a rather self immolating way. bsky.app/profile/grit...

More I think abt it, this is East Austin's biggest creek challenge: Getting ppl to think creeks here matter as much as Barton's (which is dry as a bone, save the recent rain). Our creeks on the eastside still run, mostly, but they're not as loved or supported. Here's some data on the trash problem:

The latter will stop with a little pub ed and giving ppl reasonable alternatives. The construction firms will routinely and blithely break the law until somebody stops them under threat of physical force.

You know, if you see it yourself, are there to physically document, it probably makes sense to snap a pick. Esp once you've given it some thought. It can be a bit jarring to run up on such a site out of the blue. To me, the construction firms are a VERY different problem from avg ppl doing it.

Ugh. That's terrible. Hope you reported it to 311. :(

Old Manor Road, btw, like Springdale, mostly runs along a quite ancient Indian trail.

The good news is nature is resilient and creeks/springs can be revitalized. It's not too late to improve things.

Construction firms that dump garbage into creeks to avoid dump fees aren't punished NEARLY harshly enough. That's a rare situation when I'd probably support incarceration for nonviolent offenses as a deterrent, when commercial operators behave that way for profit. It's just about the $$$.

That's been true of East Austin creeks as long as I've lived here. When Brigid Shea ran for city council in 1991, I got her to run on the city stopping dumping garbage from their fleet services site on E. 12th into Boggy Creek; it was a sickening mess. Fixed at that one site, but it's a bigger thing

Sweet! @jessicawluther.com, I'm very much looking forward to reading this. It's all been such a stupid red herring, and SO many cowards have waffled on the topic, I'm glad to see a reporter w/ some IRL demonstrated courage assigned to cover it. Texas doesn't have many anymore. Or certainly, enough.

at least 4 locally important, historic springs -- Oak, Pecan, Tannehill, and Coleman Springs -- are in its watershed. That's doing a lot of work for a 4-mile-long waterway!

The Tannehill Branch in East Austin is only 4 miles long, but it quite a little creek. It's the hydrological centerpiece of Bartholomew Park, Givens Park, the J.J. Seabrook greenbelt, and the Morris Williams Golf Course, and ... 1/2

Tree Folks just did a tree planting project at the site in February in partnership with the city. www.austintexas.gov/watershed-pr...

This stream doesn't follow the same path as in Gov. Hogg's time bc drainage from Oak Springs is now routed under the street through a culvert coming out the other side of the Willie Mae Kirk library branch. But the project shows, at least 9 years ago, Oak Springs was on the city's radar screen.

South of Oak Springs Dr, the city recently did remediation on the drainage channel bringing water from Oak Springs to the retention pond across the street, eliminating an old concrete culvert w/ materials encouraging infiltration.

Final report on the project is called "Daylighting A Buried Stream."

Mind if I dm you on this topic? I've got kind of a crazy idea on this and it potentially cd involve some folks in your shop (Jackson School).

From Gunnar Brune's report to the Texas Water Development Board, Travis County subset. Spring listed at Oak Springs School. Wasn't flowing Sept. 20, 1972.

One more factbite, just so I'll find it again. Gunnar Brune listed a "spring" at the Oak Springs School, which implies there was a spring south of Oak Springs Dr.. But the table included a note that it wasn't flowing September 20, 1972. See Table 5 here: texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/m...

I guess that's it, but if they're closed, how're they checking out 2,000 physical books? It's confusing.

BTW, thanks to @nevindurish.bsky.social for turning me onto the city's property profile tool that let me ID these and started me down this rabbit hole.

So between the downward curve on kids starting to turn around and quite a few old folks still there, I feel like a library branch there should do better. But it needs to be promoted with more intentionality, and probably w/ some dollars attached to an outreach plan.

The branch hasn't changed w/ its market. But now, all those millennials who moved in are starting to have babies, and programming aimed at young kids might help. At the same time, the older generation who didn't vacate remains well represented. The library hasn't found ways to engage them, either.