Barton Springs and the Salamander That Stopped Development

The water in Barton Springs Pool holds at sixty-eight degrees Fahrenheit year-round, summer and winter, regardless of what the Austin air temperature is doing above it. That temperature comes from the Edwards Aquifer, the limestone karst system that underlies the Hill Country and much of Central Texas. Rainwater sinks into the aquifer through the permeable rock of the recharge zone to the west and eventually resurfaces here, at Barton Springs, at the same temperature it held underground.

A blind, albino aquatic salamander lives in these springs. It measures about two and a half inches in length, has small, reduced eyes adapted to a life spent mostly in darkness in the limestone fractures below, and exists nowhere else on earth. In nineteen ninety-seven, after years of legal battles between Austin environmental advocates and the real-estate development industry, the Barton Springs Salamander was listed under the federal Endangered Species Act.

The listing effectively halted impervious-cover development in the Edwards Aquifer recharge zone for an extended period. Impervious cover, pavement, rooftops, parking lots, any surface that prevents rainwater from soaking into the ground, threatens the aquifer by reducing recharge and increasing runoff contamination. A seven-inch amphibian had become the instrument of Austin land-use law.

The Save Our Springs Alliance, founded in the early nineteen nineties specifically to fight this battle, became one of the most effective local environmental organizations in Texas. The salamander case was the anchor of that fight. The pool is still here. The water is still sixty-eight degrees. The salamander is still alive, somewhere in the limestone below your feet.