Tag: Cape's Dam

Cape’s Dam is complicated.

1. The Woods

In the early 2010s, City Council was very beholden to developers, and approved a bunch of very controversial apartment complexes. This is when the The Cottages and The Retreat were approved, and most contentiously, The Woods. (Which now has a different name – Redpoint – but everyone still thinks of it as The Woods.)

The Woods was built on property where the San Marcos River meets I-35. It would have made prime, beautiful park land. The city had the opportunity to buy the land a few years before this controversy, and declined. (That makes me angry every time I think about it.) But in 2013, City Council allowed approved The Woods to be built there.

The Woods was to be long and skinny, and was to be placed between the Blanco Gardens neighborhood and the river. It would completely block residents of the neighborhood from being able to walk over and access the river. Blanco Gardens is an old neighborhood – traditionally poor, Hispanic neighborhood, just east of 35, and historically has been neglected due to racism. The Woods was going to be marketed to college students from families who could afford the newest apartment complex. The racism, classism, and riverfront destruction massively angered the city.

Here’s a map of Blanco Gardens, and the addition of the apartment complex.:

There was a huge outcry and wave of activism against the Woods, and council approved it anyway. (There was a second complex right at the headwaters that was barely defeated at roughly the same time.) As a result, that city council was mostly voted out of office and replaced with more progressive councilmembers. (Thomaides and Scott were both voted out in this wave.)

But the apartment complex got built, and currently exists.

2. The Flood

THEN! In 2015, the Woods was partially built when the Memorial Day Floods happened. The Blanco River rose 40 feet. 11 people died in Hays County. Homes and property were destroyed. The community was traumatized. It was a mass natural disaster.

Along with several other neighborhoods, Blanco Gardens had several feet of standing water. The town uniformly believes that The Woods caused Blanco Gardens to flood.

Is that true? It’s hard for me to say.

• The flooding came in from The Blanco river primarily, not the San Marcos River.
• The San Marcos River does meet up with the Blanco River just past this intersection, so when the Blanco floods, the San Marcos River backs up.
• Apparently in four hours, the San Marcos River went from 700 cubic feet of water per second to over 70,000 CFS.

So, the water came in from the north part of the neighborhood, from the Blanco river. The issue is whether or not The Woods prevented Blanco Gardens from draining into the San Marcos river.

I saw an engineer’s presentation to the city claiming that The Woods did not cause Blanco Gardens to flood – and I frankly didn’t buy it. It smelled like computer modelling bullshit to me, with too many simplifying assumptions to be worth anything. Furthermore, he kept trying to use The Woods as if it were already built according to plan, as opposed to a messy construction site with sand bags over the drains to keep construction detritus from entering the waterways. He seemed to feel that the null hypothesis was that The Woods wasn’t a problem, and the analysis was too hard and complex to decisively disprove that.

At the same time, the amount of water that came down on Hays County that day is beyond comprehension, and it’s also true that it would have been a mass catastrophe no matter what. But Blanco Gardens might have had less damage.

The net result: The Woods still exists, but there is a lot of anger that is loosely divided into political camps, focused on this stretch of the river.

3. The damage to Cape’s Dam

What does all this have to do with Cape’s Dam? Behind The Woods, the river splits. This is manmade, dating to 1866. The river was dammed, and a cement channel was built to power a mill. The dam holding the main river is Cape’s dam, and the this cement channel that goes to the left is the Mill Race. The Mill Race is 1/4 mile long, and then they meet up again.

(Honestly, the geography of this thing is difficult to figure out, because it’s so hidden from the public view. And there are other nearby dams and channels that make it tough to figure out from Google WorldView. But I’m pretty sure this is right.)

Before the flood, the Mill Race was used mostly by a private company, Olympic Kayak Company, to rent out kayaks and such for recreation. In theory, it’s public land, but it’s never been publicly accessibly in any way, except via this private company or insider knowledge. I think both parts of the river were used – under the dam on the main river, there’s supposedly a beautiful swimming hole, and the mill race channel was nice and calm for people learning to kayak. But I’ve never seen any of this for myself.

In the 2015 flood, Cape’s Dam was severely damaged and the area was no longer safe for recreation. I remember hearing that it would cost millions to fix it and the Army Corp of Engineers recommends removal of old dams, not repairing them, so that the environment can return to its pre-existing state. At the time, there was federal disaster money available to remove the dam (but not to repair it). In 2016, City Council voted to remove the dam.

That’s when the owner of Olympic Kayak Company, Ben Kvanli, got involved, because of course this might affect his business model, along with another guy, Sam Brannon.

My opinion is that they approached this in bad faith. The legitimate position might have been, “This portion of the river is wonderful for recreation. We are going to advocate that it benefits the community to have these opportunities. Let’s balance the environment and safety with the benefits of recreation.” But they did not. Instead they threw everything but the kitchen sink at the problem. They formed an organization, Save the SMTX River (which you can google and find their link), and launched a campaign. My memory is that they had scientists saying that the science was not so clear cut – that the 100 years of growth had meant that endangered darter fish now thrived and their habitat would be destroyed if the dam were removed. But as of 2021, I can’t find any trace of who this might have been. Links are broken, citations aren’t there, so I don’t know who this counterpoint is.

The other major argument they made is that this dam has meaningful historical significance. Again, what? It’s old, but no one can seem to find any name or any event, or any architectural significance, or anything that merits more than a plaque saying “Here be ruins of ye old mill.”

One thing that clouds this is that Kvanli and Brannon are vocal rightwing Trump-style supporters (although this drama slightly precedes the most aggressive of Trump’s wave). As my URL suggests, I’m positioned on the opposite end, and it’s hard not to let that color my perception of these events. It certainly affected the lens that I saw this through as it was unfolding.

4. The current holding pattern

The federal money to remove the dam expired, and Council caved and agreed to not-decide quite so quickly. Commissions were organized.

The Historical Preservation Society tried to get it designated as a historical landmark, but they were denied at by the Planning & Zoning commission, and my memory is that the meeting was entirely about the subtext: that the designation was a farce in order to force the dam to be rebuilt and privilege recreation above the environmental concerns.

As of 2021, a long slow planning process is playing out. How will we balance recreation and the environment? What are the different options and how much will they cost? This is probably the appropriate way to proceed. “Proposed rehabilitation of the dam” shows up in the vision documents, but I’m not exactly sure what that will end up being.

October 6th 2019, at the Visioning Study Work Session:
Rockeymoore supported removing the dam
Marquez supported restoring the dam.
Saul Gonzalez wanted another opinion
Prewitt supported removing the dam
Melissa Derrick supported removing the dam
Mihalkanin supported restoring the dam
Jane Hughson said she was on the fence.

(Gonzalez, Derrick, and Hughson are still on the council.)

My personal opinion is that the recreation is important, the environment is important, and the historical significance is bunk. Remove the dam, and fund a solution that balances public recreation with environmental protection.

One big caveat: going forward, recreational uses need to be available to the public. It’s total bullshit that this one really cool stretch of the river has only been available through a private company, or people with insider knowledge.