and security, who brutally suppressed dissent.
The city's population was growing faster than it had since its founding. Between 1982 and 1987, more than 100,000 people moved to Austin. These people needed houses. In 1983, developers received permits to build nearly as many homes and offices as they would four decades later. It was a fear that seemed to have already materialized. After the Barton Creek Mall was built in the early 1980s, the water quality in the springs began deteriorating, and the city formed a task force to see what it could do.A woman sings in opposition to a proposed development in Southwest Austin at a City Council meeting in June 1990.
But after more than 12 hours of impassioned testimony, the council voted against the development. Just before 6 a.m. on June 8, 1990, the council chambers erupted in applause. Attendees blew whistles. Someone yelled, “And now for a swim at Barton Springs!” But once the initial excitement over the victory waned, the environmental coalition that had defeated the Barton Creek PUD faced a problem.
“Phosphorus and nitrogen just can't get very high in the [aquifer] water. It just goes wild with algae, which isn't just a nuisance, but actually can really kill the aquatic life in the system,” Hollon says. Throughout much of Austin, the impervious cover limit is 45% of a piece of land. But, after looking at how development would impact the aquifer in West Austin, city staff proposed impervious cover there should be limited to 15% to 25% of a lot.
The council played for time. It delayed adopting these new restrictions and then it proposed a different set of development rules, these far friendlier to builders.“We needed to pursue some kind of action to protect Bartons Springs, because it seemed pretty clear that the council wasn't going to do it," remembers Brigid Shea, a Travis County commissioner who was an environmental activist at the time.
S.O.S. set up public events and talked to people on street corners and outside polling places. Members were greeted by a sympathetic public. It was hard to find people against protecting Barton Springs. But that’s not all council members did to try and squash the S.O.S. ordinance. In Austin, the City Council is required to vote to either accept a citizen-backed petition outright or put it on a ballot. But council members refused, time and again, to vote on the petition, effectively pushing the proposition from a May ballot to an August one.
Shea says she believes her phone line was tapped by the opposition. Bradley says someone shot a rifle at his house. Both say their cars were constantly vandalized. But one thing the ordinance did not do was stop people from moving to town. Between 1990 and 2000, Austin’s population grew by 41%, the fastest population growth since the 1950s. The question still remained: Where were all these people going to live?
In an interview, she said many who supported S.O.S. did not come out equally as strong for ballot initiatives to fund projects in East Austin, including money to build a Mexican-American cultural center.