Hill Country Development And Stewardship: Living Off Savings

By Jack Hollon

The citizens of Wimberley and Woodcreek who gathered April 17 to oppose the True Ranch development plan were exercising their stewardship responsibility to the Hill Country, and they may even have done the Rincon Group, LLP and their prospective customers a favor. (The plan has been withdrawn and is being reconsidered.) We do indeed live in “interesting times” as in the old Chinese curse: May you live in interesting times.

This proposed development was an extension of the continuing scramble to capitalize on Hill Country popularity – to take advantage of the area’s rich history, rough topography, and visual appeal.

Questions about water resources were central, but there were other important issues as well. These include the cost of community services (roads, schools, fire, EMS ) – how these are borne by new and old residents – and a steadily increasing awareness that growth comes in healthy and unhealthy forms. Those whose mantra is “You can’t stop growth” need to recognize that we are moving beyond the growth-at-any-price stage. Growth of the malignant sort, growth that does not pay its way, growth that sacrifices quality-of-life for those who live here…such proposals will not receive a hearty welcome. Property rights are dear to Texans, but they no longer are a sufficient cover for predatory investment schemes.

The hard scrabble nature of Hill Country land meant the region could never support a dense population on agriculture. Ranchers (and a few farmers) who settled here soon learned that they lived on the edge of the Great North American Desert. Drought is endemic, alternating with years of good rainfall, and the area’s flash flood record even attracts documentary film makers.

So, periodic water scarcity and the general absence of deep soil have combined to preserve open space and limit population density. And that has kept the area hospitable to wildlife, at least to species compatible with ranch management. As a consequence, area streams and vistas have been preserved as most population centers grew along the coast and along the railroads and rivers in flatter terrain.

Now, however, we have a completely new kind of threat to this rough but fragile place. Financial institutions with large bundles of money see it as an investment opportunity. We find ourselves in line with some very strange company: the dot-com bubble, sub-prime mortgages (bundled and sold as collateralized debt obligations), hedge funds (who understands?), and immigration scams that funnel cheap labor to build and service McMansions, the second, third or fourth home for beneficiaries of the new wealth.

This trajectory, an aspect of globalization that threatens to take us all over a cliff, is encountering at least two kinds of obstacles here in Central Texas, phenomena that must be considered before winners and losers are finally tallied.

First, we find that those who have a long history here have joined newer residents, also appreciative of the area’s natural beauty and rugged charm, to create a powerful and well-informed citizen movement to protect against over development, to preserve the clear streams, the spaciousness, the rugged vistas, and the wildlife that make the area appealing and also healthy in an ecological sense. Ignoring all aspects of Carrying Capacity and turning the Hill Country into another example of urban sprawl would destroy all that. Those who now live here understand this and will not watch passively from the sidelines as their treasured home place is overwhelmed by money and greed. If they lose, it will be after a struggle. These folks are organized. And they vote.

The second consideration that may slow the juggernaut of change is more global in scope and is related to ideas already mentioned. As we follow world events, especially those related to natural resources…land, water, fossil fuels, forests, fisheries, etc., it is clear that humanity is facing challenging and difficult times. The present confluence of energy-water-food has our attention as prices for gasoline and grains spiral upward.

The key question is this: Are we encountering a truly fundamental turning point for the human economy and culture, or is this just a bump in the road that technology and our clever substitutions for depleted resources will solve for us?

My own study of this question points toward a rather sobering conclusion: We are almost certainly entering a new era in resource availability, costs, and management – the sort of change that may make long commutes from a remote “True Ranch” (to jobs, shopping, and friends) costly and unattractive. Selling such properties may not be as easy as former market studies predicted.

The arguments for this are long and many; books on the subject are coming out faster than one can read and absorb them. But the basic argument is fairly simple and may be illustrated by an analogy: Consider our rich western civilization (particularly us in the US) as a hard-working family with many skills and strengths. Suppose this family “inherits” a fortune (discovers oil) which opens up countless easier and more seductive ways to spend its time. Instead of hard work, a life of ease, travel, and pleasure opens up. Entitlement to this new life is easily accepted; the old skills and ways of working are gradually forgotten or lost; the strengths and toughness that flowed from the former struggle gradually atrophy.

This family is living off “savings” instead of earned income, just as our economy is living off the savings stored in fossil fuels, metal deposits, aquifers, deep fertile soils (which have been eroding to the seas or paved over), the rich biological treasures in plant communities (forests, prairies) and animal populations (buffalo herds, passenger pigeons, cod and salmon fisheries). The family grows rapidly as marriages expand the kin and children are born. Without having to work, the children are mostly over-weight and soft.

Then one day, the banker informs this family that the funds are nearly depleted. It becomes painfully clear that the usual “way of life” will no longer be possible.

You may finish the story. That is where we are, in my opinion, and the need for sound study, planning, leadership, and cooperation has never been greater.

The path we are on does not lead to a happy place. We need to get cracking on moving to a new, more promising path…one based on a new awareness, on “reality” grounded in the best analysis and respectful give and take, not in ideology or wishful thinking, on better study and understanding of what is happening, and on new standards for self-discipline, work, and the prevention of waste and destruction, on stewardship and sharing. (The distractions and unchallenged falsehoods of much advertising and popular media are a major obstacle.)

Moving from an economy and culture based on “Living off Savings” to one based on earning our way and living off Honest Income will not be simple or easy. This is truly the fundamental challenge we face in the new century, and we are all in this together.

Long time Wimberley resident Jack Hollon serves on the board of directors of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District.