Posted: Sun, 6 Dec 2009 11:50 AM - 8,535 Readers
By: Sarah Coppola
City plans to toughen review process on trams, bulkheads; landowners defend structures.
Alan Roddy remembers when Lake Austin was a quiet refuge lined with small homes and dotted with canoes and kayaks.
His family built a one-story home 100 yards from the shore in 1964. Today, multimillion-dollar homes sit on cliffs nearby, and on hot summer days, the 22-mile lake hums with speedboats, wake-boarders and personal watercraft.
Along with the growth have come trams that shuttle homeowners from cliffs down to the water. Roddy worries that the trams are marring the beauty and environmental integrity of the bluffs, which serve as bird nesting areas and help filter pollutants from rainwater before they reach the lake, a source of Austin's drinking water.
"Everyone who lives on the lake has a responsibility to protect it," said Roddy, pointing out several trams during a recent tour of the lake. "Just as we wouldn't put trams on Enchanted Rock or Mount Bonnell, we shouldn't destroy the beautiful cliffs on the lake with ugly, man-made structures."
At the request of Austin's parks board, the Watershed Protection Department is reviewing the City of Austin's permitting rules for trams and bulkheads, walls along the shore that some residents also fear are disturbing the lake's ecology.
The department plans to toughen the review process for both features but not outlaw them.
Some lake residents and a group called the Lake Austin Collective began complaining to the city last year that trams were being built without permits or oversight from the many government agencies that oversee the lake.
"There are so many jurisdictions, property owners don't know who's in charge of what. The City of Austin should be taking a leadership role in stewardship of the lake, and it hasn't done so," said Marceline Lasater, the collective's president.
City officials surveyed the trams by boat earlier this year and counted 22. Until now, the city has viewed trams as minor accessories to homes that did not require a permit, said Pat Murphy, an environmental officer at the Watershed Protection Department.
City staffers plan to propose that the city treat trams as major projects, as it does boat docks, and require property owners to obtain a building permit and a site plan — a detailed construction plan the city must approve — before installing them, Murphy said. The city doesn't plan to regulate trams' aesthetics, only ensure that residents who install them follow environmental and building codes, he said.
Builder Hal Engelhardt said he's put in 30 trams on Lake Austin over the past 25 years at a price of $80,000 to $250,000 each.
He is the leading tram builder on the lake, and he builds home and commercial trams on the other Highland Lakes as well. Modern tram designs are unobtrusive, he said — which is why the city counted only 22 from the water. Newer trams travel on tracks beneath tree canopies rather than high in the air, and they eliminate the need for footpaths or staircases that would be far less safe and would erode the bluffs more easily from constant foot traffic, he said.
Engelhardt said he builds tram tracks with hand-held tools rather than big, invasive equipment, installing 2-inch-wide posts that follow the contours of cliffs rather than digging deeply into them. Because the tracks sit a few inches above the cliffside, they don't ruin caves or other sensitive environmental features, he said.
"With the addition of a tram, we can get people to the bottom of a hill without disturbing vegetation or wildlife," he said.
Lakeside homeowner Larry Wood had a tram built in 2000 over an existing stairway that runs about 80 feet down to the water. He said he had the tram and other outbuildings painted green to blend in with vegetation.
Carol Lee, a member of the lake collective and parks board, said that even if trams look unobtrusive, they often cross critical environmental features — including, in some cases, the bluffs themselves.
The city normally requires landowners to build away from such features but has not done so for trams, she said.
The trams can disturb vegetation, wildlife habitats, fragile soils and rock formations and can increase erosion and sediments traveling into the lake, she said.
Murphy, the Watershed Protection environmental officer, added that some of the cliffs contain paths and crevices from which groundwater emerges before trickling into the lake.
"You don't want to disrupt that natural water flow," he said.
City officials say half of the Lake Austin shoreline has bulkheads — concrete, stone and metal walls that property owners build to stop their shorelines from eroding. Parks advocates say the walls redirect and in some cases worsen erosion.
Especially problematic, they say, are vertical bulkheads perpendicular to the water that repel waves back into the lake, creating choppy, dangerous conditions on days when the water is already packed with boats. The redirected waves erode the lake bottom, eating away at plants and soils, said environmental scientist Andrew Clamann of the Watershed Protection Department.
The walls also displace natural, stepped vegetation that serves as bird and animal habitat and filters and absorbs pollutants from rainwater runoff before they reach the lake, he said.
The increasing number, size and variety of watercraft on Lake Austin are also corrosive forces, parks board Chairwoman Linda Guerrero said. The recent drought drove some boaters who normally frequent Lake Travis to Lake Austin, which city officials say is about 600 feet wide and has a fairly constant water level. The waves stirred up by so many boats — in particular, boats that owners weigh down to create surf-worthy wakes — cut away the shore, Guerrero said.
The parks board will be looking at safety issues on the lake in the near future. For now, the city is considering requiring property owners who want bulkheads to use designs that absorb waves better and function like natural shorelines, with sloped or stepped walls, Clamann said.
The city already requires permits for bulkheads, he said, but does not have sufficiently clear or strict rules about what types are best.
Engineer Bruce Aupperle, who designs bulkheads and helps residents seek permits for them, said sloped designs can work well in some cases, depending on the shoreline and homeowners' wishes. Bulkheads cost about $150 to $1,200 a foot and are a practical way for homeowners to keep their lakefront safe and intact, he said.
"Some of the boats generate 2- or 21/2-foot waves that are eating up the shore. People see that and are trying to stop the waves from eating up their lawn," he said.
"Most people use the lakefront as an extension of their house. That area becomes a part of their living space, and if you have kids, you want it to be safe. The defined edge provides that," he said.
photography by Ralph Barrera
