Posted: Tue, 10 Aug 2010 09:28 AM - 10,316 Readers

By: Asher Price

SOS Alliance, Sierra Club say governments not living up to commitments to set aside enough land for Balcones preserve, refuge.

Two environmental groups said Monday that they would sue the City of Austin, Travis County and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service for what they claim is a failure to fully protect endangered songbirds.

The Save Our Springs Alliance and the Austin chapter of the Sierra Club say the governmental authorities have not lived up to their commitment to set aside land for the songbirds and protect caves that are home to other endangered species.

The land they have set aside, known as the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve and the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge , is meant to mitigate the destruction of the songbirds' habitat in western Travis County but is still thousands of acres short of goals.



The proposed lawsuit is part of a broader effort by the environmental groups to prevent the construction of a $500 million water treatment plant near Lake Travis.

"We are taking action now because the city's move to build Water Treatment Plant No. 4 in the middle of both cave and warbler habitat will make existing permit violations worse," said Roy Waley, vice chairman for the Austin chapter of the Sierra Club.

Under a 1996 permit issued by the Fish and Wildlife Service, the city and county can allow developers to build in endangered species territory as long as they assemble a minimum 30,428-acre habitat in western Travis County to mitigate the development's impact. The city and county also have to protect a series of caves and rare plants and provide ongoing maintenance, research and biological management on the preserve land.

The permit agreement, which involved environmental groups, government agencies, developers and landowners, closed the door on a hugely contentious period in environmental protection and conservation in Central Texas. In the early 1990s, landowners argued that the federal government was robbing properties of value by suffocating their development, leading to death threats against some Fish and Wildlife officials.

So far, the county and city have assembled a system of more than 28,000 acres of land, some of it fragmented. But the permit was issued on the premise that the federal government would expand its own refuge, established in 1992, to 46,000 acres. Today, it's approximately 24,000 acres.

With land getting more expensive and development eating at the fringes of the preserve and refuge land, the environmental groups say there is no chance the plan will come to fruition.

A developer who wants to build in prime golden-cheeked warbler habitat must pay $5,500 per acre into a pot that buys preserve acreage. But land in western Travis County typically goes for more than $20,000 an acre.

Bill Bunch, executive director of Save Our Springs Alliance, said he wants a judge to put an end to these mitigation agreements, known as certificates of participation, until the permit can be fully reviewed. More broadly, he said he wants the overall permit revoked if the government authorities cannot fulfill its terms.

Last month, Save Our Springs filed suit claiming that the City of Austin is violating federal environmental law by building the treatment plant before doing required environmental studies.

Officials with the Fish and Wildlife Service, Travis County and the City of Austin had no comment because they were still reviewing the letter of intent to sue, which must be filed under the Endangered Species Act at least 60 days before a suit.

The challenge by the environmental groups has legs, said Melinda Taylor, executive director of the Center for Global Energy, International Arbitration and Environmental Law at the University of Texas. She also represented the Travis Audubon Society during negotiations to create the Balcones Canyonlands Preserve.

"Do we want to blow up the Balcones (plan) in this region? I would suggest not. But if it results in positive pressure on the government to complete (the preserve and the refuge), that's a good outcome," Taylor said. "But I don't think we want to go back to the days of fighting over a single permit, making it hard to make conservation happen on any meaningful scale."

*  Story Contributed by: Asher Price