Oral History and Environmental Justice: The Save Our Springs Movement of Late Twentieth-Century Austin

• In Event: Environmental Justice Case Studies from the Past and Around the World

Abstract

Several important projects have been undertaken to capture oral histories with the stakeholders of environmental movements in Central Texas. However, few have featured in-depth scholarly analysis of the interviews to identify themes and questions that cut across their findings. Starting in August 2019, I conducted over thirty oral history interviews on the Save Our Springs (SOS) Movement of the early 1990s, when activists and everyday citizens in Austin, Texas, coalesced to force a vote leading to stricter water protection standards.
In 1988, a Louisiana-based oil exploration and mining company proposed a massive real estate development over the Edwards Aquifer, an underground reservoir that is highly sensitive to pollution and development. Any water pollution in the aquifer travels through its porous bedrock downstream to Barton Springs, a spring-fed pool in the heart of Austin. The proposed project comprised thousands of homes and apartments in addition to commercial space and three golf courses. The project’s potential impact on Barton Springs triggered a groundswell of grassroots opposition, which culminated in a dramatic all-night hearing before Austin City Council in 1990, where hundreds of citizens spoke. The opposition also spurred the city’s eventual adoption of the SOS Ordinance in 1992, which strengthened water protection rules.
SOS’s highly visible opposition to the development has had a long-lasting effect on Austin’s identity as an environmentally-minded city. However, my oral history interviews with environmentalists and community leaders show that the legacy of this environmentalist victory is more complicated, with differing views of its impact that vary by neighborhood, race, and class. Through analysis of six of the interviews in my study, three with SOS leaders and three with leaders hailing from Austin’s communities of color, I investigate the impacts of SOS on different communities within Austin and the ways that these narrators understand the effects today.

Author

• Mary Closmann Kahle, self