If you follow Community Not Commodity, you’ve heard how CodeNEXT would be bad for Austin’s middle-class families, bad for our local schools, and bad for the city’s already-congested traffic.

It could also hurt Austin’s natural environment in irreversible ways.

That’s why Save Our Springs Alliance (SOS) has joined Community Not Commodity in demanding that the City of Austin hit “pause” on the CodeNEXT process, as the Austin American-Statesman’s editorial board recently suggested. It’s time for our city council members to step back, speak to their constituents, and come up with a smarter, more environmentally sound plan for growth.

Unlike CodeNEXT, that plan must be designed with Austin residents in mind, not profit-driven land developers.

Austin already has large-scale flooding problems in the Onion and Shoal Creek watersheds, and localized flooding spread all over town.  Our pipes and drainage ways cannot handle a greater burden than they shoulder now—but that’s exactly what may come with runaway development in Central Austin, which is what CodeNEXT will foster.

CodeNEXT has a handful of environmentalist supporters, but their logic is upside-down. Walkability and bike-friendly development can obviously benefit the environment, but not if sprawling subdivisions continue going up at a breakneck pace in the suburbs—and not if it displaces thousands of longtime residents in our city’s central core. CodeNEXT will encourage both.

We can’t afford to get this wrong. Look to Houston: The catastrophic flooding and toxic runoff that we’ve seen in that community was caused by that city’s infamously inadequate zoning laws, and City of Austin officials have openly admitted they do not have enough data to know whether the densification plan built into CodeNEXT carries the same risks.

Our city staff and council need to study these issues before moving forward with any code rewrite, and they need to provide residents and stakeholders additional time for input.

SOS stands with Community Not Commodity, with Austin’s families and neighborhoods, and with those who want to protect our natural environment. We hope you will join us!

Bill Bunch is the executive director of Save Our Springs Alliance.

 

About Save Our Springs Alliance

The Save Our Springs Alliance works to protect the Edwards Aquifer, its springs and contributing streams, and the natural and cultural heritage of the Hill Country region and its watersheds, with special emphasis on Barton Springs. For more information, see sosalliance.org.