NEW BRAUNFELS RESIDENTS APPROVE TUBING CAN BAN 
By a wide margin, New Braunfels residents voted to uphold an ordinance passed by city council over the summer that will prohibit Comal and Guadalupe River tubers from using disposable containers within the city limits. Supporters of the beer-can ban, which takes effect January 1, hope it’ll limit pollution from visitors; layers of tossed aluminum cans have been found lining riverbottoms after peak tubing season weekends. A group of local business owners has already filed suit to block the ban, claiming it violates state law. [San Antonio Express-News; previously on Swamplot] Photo: Lelombrik
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Tag: Bayous and Waterways
Part of the $50 million plan to turn the banks of Buffalo Bayou west of Downtown from Sabine St. to Shepherd Dr. into a single, continuous linear park: a new entry plaza on Sabine St. at the city waterworks station (near the skatepark, above), a small lake at the end of Dunlavy St., and 3 new pedestrian bridges. One of the bridges is planned for a site just east of Shepherd; another across from the police officer memorial; and the third at Jackson Hill St. Also: lighting, new water features, public art, renovated trails, and a dog park. A separate, $5 million project funded and run by the Harris County Flood Control District will attempt to return the bayou to a more “natural” configuration — by removing sediment and invasive plants and building in bluffs, sandbars, high and low banks, possibly some additional twists and turns, and other more genuinely bayou-ish features. Here’s a plan of the whole thing (turned sideways to fit):
NEW BRAUNFELS CANS THE BEER CANS As expected, the city council of New Braunfels voted last night to prohibit the use of any type of disposable container within city limits — including the beer cans that regularly pile up underwater on stretches of the Guadalupe and Comal Rivers popular with tubers. The new ordinance is scheduled to go into effect next January: “The ban was approved – on a 5-1 vote – after one protester had been arrested, another had thrown a volleyball-sized wad of dollar bills at the council, a lawsuit had been promised, and citizens had paraded to the podium for an hour to express their support or opposition.” [Herald-Zeitung; previously on Swamplot] Video of Comal River bottom after Memorial Day: Texas Bottle Bill
TUBING IN NEW BRAUNFELS WITHOUT THE CANS The New Braunfels city council is scheduled to vote this evening on an ordinance that would change the face of Guadalupe and Comal River tubing as we know it, by banning all disposable containers on those popular waterways within city limits. The same body already voted 5-2 in favor of the beer-can ban earlier this month. The vote has been moved from city hall to the city convention center to accommodate expected crowds. “[Don’s & Ben’s liquor store assistant manager Brendon] Keith and other retailers are scratching their heads over what devices tubers might employ — the proposed ordinance doesn’t specify. A Thermos or canteen wouldn’t keep carbonated beverages fresh on an hours-long float, and you’d have to have a nondisposable cup . . . Another potential problem is that any beverage delivery device that’s not sealed would be, strictly speaking, a violation of the state open container law.” [Statesman] Photo: Lelombrik
THE MISSING LINK IN THE BIKE TRAIL FROM OAK FOREST TO DOWNTOWN 
After surveying a stretch of land mostly along White Oak Bayou from 11th St. to Lawrence Park, Chronicle blogger Martin Hajovsky says he doesn’t see any traffic problems that would stand in the way of a connection between the Katy/MKT hike-and-bike trail and the White Oak Bayou trail. A bayou-side hookup, which would create a continuous off-road path from Downtown to Oak Forest, is just one segment of grander bayou bikepath plans contained in the Bayou Greenway Initiative, which the Houston Parks Board is working on piece by piece. Adding the longer chunk planned along White Oak Bayou north of the current trail would extend the Downtown route all the way to Jersey Village. [Home in the Heights, via Off the Kuff; previously on Swamplot] Proposed Bayou Greenway map: Houston Parks Board
Ah, the life of a roadie/curator on a little Houston showboat. . . . Squeezed into this short video: the weeklong White Oak and Buffalo Bayou popup cinema debuts of the good barge Tex Hex from late last month, documenting the rides and drifts of Houston’s first and only solar-powered waterborne movie projection system.
- Previously on Swamplot: Banks Report: Tex Hex Graduates from Buffalo Bayou Movie Scene, Gets Ready for Official White Oak Bayou Premiere, Bayou Theater: Houston Research Boat Will Have Movies on Sail
Video: Be Johnny
COMMENT OF THE DAY: HOUSTON’S GIVE AND TAKE “. . . COH is required by very clear and strict regulations to treat sewage to standards which make the effluent suitable for discharge into a waterway which can than have water extracted for purification into drinking water. A huge number of communities get their drinking water and discharge their sewage effluent into and from the same body of water. Think of the Trinity River. It’s no big deal.” [Spoonman., commenting on Comment of the Day: Bayou Overlook]
COMMENT OF THE DAY: BAYOU OVERLOOK “Everyone I know thinks I’m crazy, but I canoed Buffalo Bayou from Highway 6 to downtown a few years ago, and it was surprisingly clean and natural. The best part was the stretch through Eleanor Tinsley Park, at the end of the trip, where the downtown skyline suddenly pops into view. In April of this year, a friend and I took a ride on the little-known public pontoon boat ride offered occasionally on Buffalo Bayou near the Sabine Street Bridge. It was a really, really neat experience, and there were only 4 people including us that were there for the ride. The city is so different from the water. They even show you the ruins of a family tomb that was used as a foundation a bridge that still exists, and there is a point where a heavy stream of clean water pours into the bayou from an uncapped artesian well under a street a few blocks away. The weather was perfect that day, and I was shocked at seeing only a few dozen people utilizing the landscaped trails and green spaces along the bayou. I’m sure on the same day, Memorial Park and Hermann Park were packed – why not this place? I wish the Bayou had a more prevalent place in Houston’s image and culture.” [Superdave, commenting on Banks Report: Tex Hex Graduates from Buffalo Bayou Movie Scene, Gets Ready for Official White Oak Bayou Premiere]
Here’s a showboat custom-made for Houston’s bayous: an aluminum pontoon deck outfitted for exploring inland waterways . . . and screening videos along the way. Assembled by a design-build sculpture collaborative called Simparch, the Tex Hex has its official maiden voyage scheduled for May 21, the night before Houston’s Art Car Parade. The boat will dock in front of the concrete steps where White Oak Bayou spills into Buffalo Bayou, behind the loft building at 1011 Wood St., for a program of films about — what else? Car culture. They’ll be projected onto the Tex Hex’s onboard rear-projection screen. Downtown skyscrapers are expected to hang out in the background, just for effect.
HOW TO PREPARE SAN JAC RIVER STEW What’s the local recipe for that San Jacinto River fishin’ favorite, toxic redfish? “The dioxins come from submerged waste pits north of the Interstate 10 bridge. McGinnes Industrial Maintenance Corp., which is no longer in business, owned and operated the pits in the 1960s, filling a 20-acre site on dry land with waste from a now-closed paper mill near the Washburn Tunnel. In the bleaching process, paper mills generated large amounts of dioxins, a family of compounds so toxic that scientists measure them in trillionths of a gram. The EPA says there is no safe level of exposure to the chemicals, which are known to cause cancer and disrupt immune and reproductive systems. The San Jacinto River began to run through the waste pits by the early 1970s because of subsidence — the sinking of soft soils as water is pumped from underground. With the McGinnes pits under water, the dioxins spread into the river and worked their way through the ecosystem, becoming more concentrated at each step in the food chain. For more than a decade, the Texas Department of Health has warned that fish and crab caught along this stretch of water, north of the Lynchburg Ferry, are tainted with cancer-causing dioxin, pesticides and PCBs. . . . In July, the EPA identified the International Paper Co. and McGinnes, which became part of Waste Management through a series of mergers and acquisitions, as the firms responsible for the dioxins problem. Under the Superfund law, the two companies will be required to evaluate and clean up the contamination. They paid about $65,000 for the fencing and roughly 50 warning signs in English, Spanish and Vietnamese, a McGinnes spokesman said.” [Houston Chronicle]
Architect and Swamplot reader Jeromy Murphy sends in a construction update on the house he and his wife — also an architect — are building for themselves at 502 Archer St. in Brookesmith, “not too far from the container house.” How’s the family project going?
Lori and I designed it together, proving that a husband/wife architecture team can succeed (as long as the husband just agrees to everything his architect wife wants).
One of those design decisions that came so easily: the 8-ft. Isis Big Ass Fan that’ll hang from exposed rafters on a porch overlooking a new retaining wall. The fan isn’t installed yet, but you can see the rafters in this photo:
ANOTHER RIVER RUNS THROUGH BAYTOWN Oil spill on the bayou: “The spill spread from an oil storage tank in the Mont Belvieu area, leaking into Smith Gully then on to Cedar Bayou. Mont Belvieu’s Emergency Management Chief Bruce Oliphant said best estimates put the spilled oil at 200 to 300 gallons but said a reason for the leak had not been determined by Tuesday afternoon. ‘We’re not sure why it leaked,’ Oliphant said. ‘We couldn’t see where it was coming from the tank and maybe it was coming from somewhere underground.’†[Baytown Sun]