Running for the Board

In addition to deciding whether to dissolve the Barton Springs/Edwards Aquifer Conservation District, some voters will choose between candidates for the District board. Two of the board's five seats are up for a vote: In District 2, attorney Charlie Nettles of Shady Hollow challenges incumbent Don Turner of Mystic Oaks. District 5 pits Austin attorney Craig Smith against Circle C dweller John Stratford. Nettles and Smith are the candidates endorsed by the environmental group Texans for Aquifer Protection.

Turner's support for the District is suspect, owing to his collusion with former board member Alton Laws in strangling the District's budget. Also, his wife's signature appears on the petition to dissolve the District. Turner chalks the latter up to a marital spat. "I told her early on I wasn't going to run," says Turner, "then people started talking to me so I signed up, and she didn't like it, so she signed the petition." Turner says his challenges to the District's budget have put it on a more solid financial footing, and says he'll stand for fiscal prudence in the future. "There's still money that I think should not be spent out here; that's part of the reason a lot of people want me to stay on the board. They want me to hold the law fees down if I can, and be sensible with things." Turner does not support raising pumping fees in the future; he suggests instead a hike in the per-capita charge on Austin water utility customers.

Nettles, whose wife serves on the Shady Hollow MUD board, is a neighborhood activist who worked to pare down a large development in his backyard. Nettles says that aquifer pumpers are getting their water too cheaply, and that the District does not appear to have the resources it needs. Raising the pumping fee "wouldn't cramp anybody's style," says Nettles.

As a Circle C MUD board member and former chair of Citizens for Responsible Planning, a primary opponent of the S.O.S. Ordinance, John Stratford's anti-environmental credentials would seem to be impeccable. Except Stratford says that he no longer has a beef with S.O.S., and that Circle C residents who have attacked the District through brochures are misinformed about what BS/EACD does for them. Stratford says the District's budget seems reasonable, but that pumping fees should be held as low as possible. Stratford would rather the District aggressively pursue state grants for added recharge enhancement projects such as rainwater harvesting. Like Turner, Stratford believes that the City of Austin ought to pay a higher portion of the District's budget in return for all the aquifer water that flows into Town Lake. Stratford says the District needs to try harder to reach the public, or it will continue to create foes. "I think most people would embrace what the District is pushing for... but I don't think many people know what it does.... If the District doesn't do a good job of educating the public about the good job it's doing, they're going to keep creating bad perceptions."

Stratford's opponent, Craig Smith, agrees that the petition to dissolve the District is a wake-up call to the fact that the District's profile has been too low. Smith has served on the policy advisory committee of the BS/EACD since 1990, and is the vice-chair of the Save Barton Creek Association. Smith believes the pumping fee should be raised, "probably closer to 50 cents than to 17 cents," and he would like to see the District expand into the contributing zone of the aquifer's watershed if residents there agree to participate in the fee arrangement. -K.F.