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Bee Cave faces lawsuit over potential new road plans

Residents of Bee Cave are suing the City over the potential road plans that would take away green space.

BEE CAVE, Texas — Bee Cave, a suburb of Austin, is growing fast. It's about a 30-minute drive from Central Austin, with State Highway 71 as its major roadway in and out. 

Surrounded by the rolling Hill Country, City Manager Clint Garza said the City has tried to keep the environment at the forefront of its decision-making. Recent headlines about the city include, "Bees declared 'honorary residents' in Bee Cave" and "Bee Cave designated dark sky community." 

"Our ordinances for light pollution and our water quality ordinances are some of the most stringent and strict in the state," Garza said. "We do what we can to protect our wildlife with flora and fauna and everything else. And so I think that we – if you were to take a look at all of our activities, you would see that we're actually great stewards of the environment."

But a recent lawsuit shows not all residents agree. 

"It really is that kind of last little diamond in the cave that they picked," Bee Cave resident Mary Smith said about a place called the Brown Property. "It was a private residence. The Brown family lived there until they sold it to the city in 2017. And then we were all told, those of us in the neighborhood were told, well, you know, the city really wants to turn it into a nature preserve – an open space and perhaps get children in and do educational projects with them. And we thought, 'Oh, that's great!'" 

Smith and her husband, Walter Stewart, have lived in Bee Cave for 20 years. Their land borders the Brown Property. 

"Then they kind of stopped letting people come onto it, and then they kind of made clear that they were going to build this road," Smith said. 

Their neighborhood has formed a nonprofit called Citizens for the Preservation of the Brown Property. They are challenging the City of Bee Cave's decision to build an access road through the land.  

The preliminary plan is to take 10% of the 45-acre property and build a road that connects Great Divide Drive and Hamilton Pool Road. 

"It goes over the most ecologically sensitive part of the property, which is the karst, band of rock. And it affects the drainage and everything like that. And the other thing is a road doesn't – its influences don't end where the road ends," Stewart said.

According to residents, environmental consultants of the City said the development of the road would pose a threat to native wildlife, increase the risk for invasive species and deplete the preservation value of the land. 

"We have a real concern about the runoff from the road filtering down through the karst into the Edwards Aquifer and also into Little Barton Creek. Even though, you know, it may be, quote-unquote, far away from the creek, obviously that stuff travels through the karst. And that's a concern," Smith said.

Smith and Stewart want to preserve as much habitat as possible, as they've now spent 17 years restoring their adjacent property with native plants and host purple martin and chimney swift colonies. 

But outside of their oasis, the City is in desperate need of a traffic solution. 

"We have significant traffic problems, and we don't really get to control what happens on the state road system. In our conversations with the State, they encourage local roadways as well to supplement the state system," Garza said.

In April, a tractor-trailer crash on SH 71 had Bee Cave traffic at a standstill for several hours. There was no alternate route for movement. 

"There's nowhere else to build it [the road] – to connect the road on the east and west sides with existing infrastructure or proposed infrastructure," Garza said. 

However, residents believe there is an alternative, and that the City did not follow Chapter 26 of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Code, which requires the city council to exhaust all options to preserve the environmental value of the protected land.

While the lawsuit will play out over the next several months, a larger question is at hand: At what point are environmental preservation and the growth of a community forced to meet in the middle?

Boomtown is KVUE's series covering the explosive growth in Central Texas. For more Boomtown stories, head to KVUE.com/Boomtown.

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