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Creek and Cave Cleanups Creek Cleanups Join the City of Sunset Valley and the Barton Springs/ Edwards Aquifer Conservation District as we collect trash from Williamson Creek on March 31, 2007. This event is held in conjunction with Clean Sweep Austin Day. Click here to learn more about this year's Williamson Creek Cleanup. The District strives to schedule a creek cleanup every year on a local creek. Past events have targeted a section of Onion Creek near Buda along Cole Springs Road, a branch of Williamson Creek above a large sinkhole near the intersection of Brodie Lane and William Cannon, and a section of Williamson Creek near Sunset Valley. Staff contact local schools, scouting troops, neighborhood groups, and place ads in local papers to request volunteers for the event. Typically held on a Saturday morning in the fall or spring when temperatures are comfortable, volunteers meet and are given safety information and bags and gloves and head off in groups of two to three to pick up what they find. Large items such as old tires, lumber, metal signs, fencing, and appliances are collected by adult volunteers and District staff for special pick up and disposal. You'd be surprised what you find in a creek! Cave Cleanups Cave cleanups are less frequent and require a special team of volunteers depending on the type of cave. The largest cave cleanup event the District assisted with in recent years was that of Midnight Cave in southwest Austin. This striking cave features a 60-foot drop at the entrance and a large example of a flowstone formation. Staff from the City of Austin initiated the cleanup in 1996 and diligently revisited the cave when possible to remove debris. Since the cave partially fills with water during periods of significant rain, volunteers could enter and remove debris from this cave during dry periods once water had receded. Removal of debris was labor and time intensive, using a hoisting system created by Mark Sanders of the City's Preserves staff. Volunteers at the cave bottom would fill a 5-gallon bucket with debris that was then pulled up by volunteers at the surface and put in a dumpster-like container for removal. Cavers volunteering for the project have since estimated that 8 feet of debris was removed from the cave. Final phases of the cleanup removed sediment laden with broken glass and containing leached chemicals from the debris. How did it get so dirty? Previous landowners, unknowing of the cave's function relative to the aquifer, merely saw the hole as a danger. Also, this area of Austin was quite rural even as late as the 1960's, and there was no weekly trash pickup. Faced with the time consuming task of hauling garbage and farming refuse to the city miles away, landowners did what many may still be doing in rural parts of west Texas, filling up holes in the ground - out of sight, out of mind. Education is the best way to change this behavior. After learning about the importance of caves and sinkholes to the aquifer, the landowner who, as a boy, had the chore of throwing the garbage in, helped pay for costs to cleanup the cave. |
