When the Guadalupe River overflowed on July 4, 2025, the loss was devastating. Over 130 people were killed, and the property damage is estimated to be in the billions. Months later, the recovery and rebuild process is ongoing, both emotionally and physically.
The weight of the tragedy still hung heavy in the air at a Texas Water Symposium panel discussion held on Oct. 23 at Schreiner University.
“After the Flood” brought together work-on-the-ground representatives and residents to talk about recovery, with a special emphasis on ecological concerns.
The Texas Water Symposium is a collaborative project of Texas Public Radio, the Hill Country Alliance, and Schreiner University. To listen to the program, use the audio player at the top of this screen.
Panel includes:
- Clinton Carter, Bandera County River Authority & Groundwater District
- Jeremy Walther, Kerrville Urban Trail System
- Suzanne Davis, Wimberley & Blanco River Resident
- Bridget Symm, Hunt Preservation Society
Moderated by Becky Etzler of the Riverside Nature Center.
TRANSCRIPTION generated by Otter.ai and edited by a human (please forgive any inconsistencies or typos).:
Chris Distel 00:00
Good evening. What a wonderful turnout. Thank you all for being here this evening, and welcome to Schreiner University. If we've not yet met. My name is Chris Distel. I'm a biologist here, and I am excited, is not quite the right word, but I am in many ways excited to have this group and this panel to present this evening at the Texas Water Symposium. I have a little bit to say about the Water Symposium itself and panelists. Texas Water symposium is a partnership between the Hill Country Alliance, Texas Public Radio and Schreiner University. Since 2007 the series has provided perspectives from policymakers, scientists, water resource specialists, regional leaders on various water topics. Each session is free and open to the public, and it includes expert panel discussions with opportunities for audience Q and A. The events are recorded and aired on Texas Public Radio. The conversation tonight will last approximately one hour and will hold all questions until the end, and then we'll open it up for audience participation. This is a rather unusual Texas Water Symposium. We don't have a panel of policymakers here. We have a panel of folks who, on July 4 and July 5, were out in the mud, getting themselves dirty and making a difference. And they didn't do it because it was their job. They did it because this is their community, and I'm really glad to have this crew to talk with us. I think if you've been to Texas Water Symposium events in the past, I think it's fair to say these folks deserve some real credit for getting up here, because a lot of this is still pretty raw, and I think it's good to be patient with them if they get a little emotional. That's understandable. One of the people who has been in numerous community conversations about the flood since July 4, has gotten dirty up to their armpits day after day, and has been an absolute champion of getting things handled, both from the administrative perspective and answering folks questions and from the hard work perspective, is the director of Riverside Nature Center, Becky Etzler, who I have seen myself working 25 hour days through July and August and into September, both to make sure that the nature center was available to this community again because it took a lot of damage, but also to make sure that this community felt seen after the flood and educated. So I'm very excited to turn the microphone over to our moderator for tonight.
Becky Etzler 03:26
Wow, Chris, that that was quite an introduction. I appreciate that. Very excited to be here tonight. Chris kind of said everything that I was going to say about this, this panel. You know, we're coming together tonight. We're almost four months out from the July 4 flood event. You know, oftentimes when there's been a big, monumental event, you know, you have people come up to you and they say, you know, where were you? You know, what were you doing when XYZ, you know, happened? I believe that this event is going to be etched in our collective memories, if not, you know, for many, many, many years, if not forever. And so that collective memory, though, is going to be for, you know, many different reasons. It's also going to be for many different perspectives. And so tonight, it's rather unique. As Chris had pointed out, we're going to be looking at this event from a grassroots perspective, and being a kind of nature, botany nerd, grassroots, you know, means a lot to me in many different things, and later on in the program, you're kind of kind of get the little pun there. But anyway, so the panelists, as Chris had mentioned, are not elect officials. They're not, you know, county. Possible. You know employees, these are these are folks, many of like you, you know, who have come together. They're local people. They're invested in our community, and they've worked hard, diligently and tirelessly to bring forth a humane and ecological, beneficial solution to this recovery process. So I'm going to introduce our esteemed panel. I'm not going to go into big, long biographies or anything like that. I think as we're, as we're, you know, answering questions, they can give you a little bit more of their background. But just as a brief introduction, we'll just kind of go down, down the line. Here we have Clinton Carter. He's with us from the Bandera county River Authority and Groundwater District. He is a watershed ecologist and the Field Operations Manager. Many of you may recognize Jeremy Walther, locally born and raised business entrepreneur and advocate, community advocate, founder of the Kerrville Urban Trail System. So this is Jeremy next we have Bridget Symm. She's a resident of Hunt and a long time community advocate as well. Her work with the Hunt Preservation Society has been crucial in this aftermath of the flood. Last but not least is Suzanne Davis. She comes to us from Wimberley. She is a Wimberley and Blanco River resident, and she's going to bring us tonight a unique perspective from her own experiences from the Wimberley flood back in 2015 so that that 10 year long, long range perspective. All right, we've met our panelists. So kind of a long, broad, broad question to start us out interested in what the scope of the environmental damage caused by the flood, just specifically on July 4, if we could, kind of, you know, frame that a little bit, I'd like to start with Bridget and get what that looked like. That impact looked like in Hunt slide.
Bridget Symm 07:58
When they first asked me to write about this, I will say that there were some very simple words that came to mind. It was violent, it was very unpredictable. It was incomprehensible. It was something that we'd never seen before. Many of us that live out that way have been through numerous floods. This was something very, very different when the flood waters actually did recede, some of the things that were very apparent, collapsed banks, uprooted trees, destroyed river crossings, the roads were impassable, eroded land that's still eroding today, big gravel banks, huge trees gone slowly thereafter, and we started to recognize that the water actually receded a lot quicker than normal. It went down a lot faster than what you're going to hear Jeremy say. But the aftermath of just the swath of how big it was was really, really overwhelming. Shortly thereafter, in a disaster such as this, the overwhelming response of people, was the next disaster, which then imploded because it really kept damaging the river banks. It kept damaging the environment, not intentionally, but it was just a very big impact of not only nature, but humanity. At the same time.
Becky Etzler 09:44
Yeah, so we're going to get the Kerrville through Center Point perspective from Jeremy.
Jeremy Walther 09:49
So we were in Center Point that night of the third we got maybe four inches of rain, about four inch. Is so it was a wet rain event that was not atypical at all. When we woke up in the morning, you know, as the sun was coming up, the creeks hadn't risen. The river had barely risen. There was no indicator that anything was, you know, exceptionally unusual until about seven, 7:30 that morning on the river. It was just… it's difficult to describe, but it was a debris field that was floating down the river. And then at that point, the river started rising. And it rose in a way that was surreal. Is kind of the word that I used, because it was completely out of context with the rain event that we experienced that night, watching that river rise when the creeks weren't rising at all, and it kept going and going and going and going behind that initial debris field. And so we had no idea of what was happening in hunt. We had no idea that lives were lost. But there was just this sort of mounting realization that something very, very big and very unprecedented was happening and just sort of slowly unfolding in real time. And then the creeks back flowed. The River got so high that it entered Quinlan Creek and it entered Verde Creek and it entered Turtle Creek and flowed backwards because the river level was so high and those creeks weren't and so the debris field in those creeks was kind of unusual, because in the in the main river channel, you see the trees bend down all the way to the ground, but in the creeks, it was a different type of debris field, something that that many of us have never really seen before. But it's when you look back and you know we in Center Point were experiencing this, and some of us were reaching out to our friends in Hunt just as sort of a neighborly gesture, without having any idea that they weren't getting our texts, that they might not have had their houses, because the destruction in center point was so different than it was in hunt.
Becky Etzler 12:27
So we're talking about, you know, the debris. You know the debris fields and the debris, I mean, so many objects of so many different sizes, you know, were moved. Billions of rocks were relocated. Millions of plants broken and uprooted. Tons of river cement sediment were displaced, displaced by tons of topsoil, which became new. River sediment at Riverside Nature Center, we saw this firsthand. We had three inches of just, you know, muck and river paste, you know, just covering everything, and then huge cypress trunk. It was nearly four feet wide, you know, that was brought up, I mean, up the hillside and landed. So, you know, my question, and I'm going to address Clint on this is you, you've been part of this group that's working towards, you know, a resource that's outlining a new approach to Debris Management. And so what? What have you seen, to what extent have you seen owners of flood impacted properties trying to return it to pre flood status. And then, on the other hand, what extent have you seen property owners adopting a new normal? So kind of that, that dichotomy?
Clint Carter 13:53
Yeah, no, that's a great question, and it's, it's kind of hard to answer, because we have such an extensive river reach. So from the South Fork on Hunt, or the South Fork Guadalupe in Hunt down the main stem to the county line to comfort is approximately 30, miles, and we're looking at over 1000 individual property owners within the floodway that were affected in some way or another, but I have seen, in response to this, we've hosted a series of workshops to engage the community and to talk with folks about riparian restoration. And during those workshops, UGRA put up a sign up sheet for folks to sign up for technical landowner consultations and for site visits. And so far we've had about 40 plus landowners who are either interested. In adopting best management practices, or have adopted best management practices. And I know that doesn't sound a lot like a lot when you compare it to 1000 you know different property owners, but it's a great start, and I'm hoping that through continued conversations like this and future workshops that we can continue to grow those numbers.
Becky Etzler 15:26
So Suzanne, did you see, you know, sort of in that sense, in Wimberley, I mean the extent of property owners, you know, what extent were they adopting either that new normal, or were they trying to return their properties to a pre flood status? Were you seeing something similar to that? Or
Suzanne Davis 15:52
The instinct is, naturally, you're, I mean, it's chaotic. You're grieving. It's, it's full of confusion for a while. In Wimberly it was, I would say we were in confusion for a good year, like, a lot of confusion in terms of who is doing what, the bureaucracy we talked a little bit about that well intended, but it's hard sometimes to navigate what you're supposed to be doing. When we had people come on our property, you're in shock, and you have people come on the property that they're well intended, they are from Nebraska, okay? And you're just like nodding because you're just numb. And again, they're doing the best they know how to do. They're often doing what they've been asked to do. This is not their initiative, necessarily, and they cut down things that shouldn't have been cut down. So my 10 year perspective, and I'll be interjecting this, it will heal itself, even the mistakes that were made it. It makes it through nature is unbelievably remarkable, and that's my that's what I'm supposed to be telling y'all tonight. And it's true. You, you, you go through this and it is traumatic, and you grieve the things that are done that are egregious unintentionally. Often, we didn't have as much gravel, but we do have a reference of a gravel bar, and it's full of sycamore trees and full of plants. You can't even all the gravel bars that you all are looking at are going to be full of vegetation. Now it's going to be a new view. And I'll be honest, it took me a while. I remember standing at my kitchen window and I had made the adjustment to the new view. All my cypress trees we're gone. So you all still have your cypress trees. We in Wimberley up and down the river from Blanco we were Blanco down all the way down to San Marcos and but so you've got your cypress trees. And that's a really, really wonderful blessing, because it still looks like Kerrville with your cypress trees? So that's any thing else on that?
Becky Etzler 18:25
No, I think we're going to, later on, we'll get, we'll get a little more intimate with the with the responses, but yeah, okay, so we're talking about the debris still, let's say I'm a property owner, and I ended up with piles of dead trees and branches, all of this coarse woody material on my riverbank. And, you know, I've heard kind of both, both sides of the story, you know, these tree trunks and all of these root balls and things like that becoming potential hazards. I mean, you know, the next flood, are these going to go, you know, rushing down and cause havoc, you know, downstream. But then I hear, Oh, no, you know, this is, this is needed. You need to keep that, that woody debris. So that's what's going to, you know, stabilize the bank. So Clint again, if I can, you know, prevail upon you. Is there any benefit in keeping this woody material? Is there any benefit from removing it?
Clint Carter 19:29
Great questions. I hate to hear this when I speak with ecologists, and I hate to say it myself, but it depends. It depends. It's, it's site specific, right? And a lot of it depends on individual land use goals. What are your goals for your land? But I will say just in general terms, if woody debris deposited from the flood, if it's not posing an immediate hazard, such as suspended or broken trees overhead, and it's not prohibiting you from accessing your area of the stream or anything along those lines. Sometimes, most often, the best thing that we can do is to leave it be, because there are quite a bit of benefits to woody debris and organic material. I don't know if we want to go in that, into that right now, but there are benefits to leaving organic material on the landscape that was deposited by the flood, because this, this flood that that we experienced was catastrophic. It resulted in large scale, system wide flood plain stripping and scraping and removal of centuries old, mature canopy trees. It makes sense that a watershed that produces this much woody material needs much wood to restore itself.
Becky Etzler 21:14
Yeah, please. Jeremy, yeah, add on to that
Jeremy Walther 21:19
Clint has been... Just an incredible resource for us as we approach now, looking at river restoration. And he did a I'm going to totally steal this from you, but he did a geospatial analysis of imagery before the flood and after the flood and right after the flood, NOAA sent out planes, and they were giving us really high resolution aerial photography of the entire Guadalupe River shed. And so you can, you can really hone in on that. And I'm really just stealing this from you. I feel myself doing it, but it's good to understand how much woody debris was actually generated. So what was the vegetation like before the flood? And then what was the vegetation like immediately after the flood? And in your analysis, you're looking at upwards of 50% vegetation loss for the entire 30 mile stretch. So think about, think about that every other tree, every other blade of grass, every other shrub that used to be there before the flood the very next day, was taken down. It wasn't removed. It was taken down. And when you look at things as an ecologist on a geological scale, those kind of things happen long before humans were around in this area. That River is very, very old, and those kind of cycles have happened numerous times. And there is a natural succession that happens that rivers contain the knowledge to recover themselves, and they rely on that vegetation crack and fall down in order to rebuild themselves. So one of the I'll call it horrific, and because that's how I feel, and I'm not the only one, but to watch the response that didn't that didn't stop for months in how we manage that woody debris was very painful and very disturbing to watch, because the very first response to debris cleanup was priority. One is search and rescue. We need to get this debris out of the way so that search and rescue crews can access the water and hope to God we find survivors. Anything you have to do, you do. And as that transitioned, there was no pause. There was no stopping and changing the approach to woody debris removal, it stayed on that same level. It was in 10th gear for months, and the last numbers are pushing 2 million cubic yards of woody debris removed from that 30 mile stretch of the Guadalupe River, completely removed. And so when you're removing those building blocks, you're removing the river's ability to heal itself is our snapshot perspective of humans, because we only live so long. And in my kind of in Katie Graham and Justin Graham over here, we all experience this together in center point of just witnessing the eraser come in, and not from natural causes. It was a man made decision to do that. But then you have folks like Clint, and you have this influx of ecologists, geologists, horticulturalists, people that look at things from a much bigger scale than we folks do us normal folks. To do. And their perspective wasn't, you guys are screwed at all. They said, this is this is okay, as Suzanne says, the recovery will happen. Look, it's already happening. And when you look down close, you do start to see those early succession plants come up. You do start to see colonizer plants, and some of them are invasives. And you fret about that, and you worry that, oh my gosh, the giant cane is going to take over the entire river. The Vitex is going to take it all over. They serve a role as well. Those invasive species can serve a role as well in maintaining the bank to prevent future erosion. We're going to get a rain this weekend. What's going to happen if we get two inches of rain and there is zero on the banks? It's just gravel and dirt. So some of those invasive species will serve a role, a natural role, in protecting the river. And so, as Clint says, and it's not a cop out. It's site specific. What do we do? How do we respond? There is no one answer at all.
Becky Etzler 26:10
So do you real quick? Yeah, I was going to say Bridget. Let's get the perspective from Hunt.
Bridget Symm 26:14
Well, okay, so I have they are, like, exponentially smarter than me, everybody here, in regard to all of this type of stuff, but the humane, the humanity aspect of this that I think is really important to keep in mind. I mean, Jeremy hit the nail on the head. As far as like the immediate response was targeted for a specific purpose, which left out the thought and prioritized what was important at the time, the first time, Clint came in to talk to us about the need to do these things and to have some patience, we no one was ready to hear that. And to be very honest, in Hunt, no one's ready to hear it right now, it's going to be something they're going to have to reintroduce over and over again and to to that point, it should have been introduced way before the flood, numerous times, and people should have heard it and understood it, because what happened was not intentional. Nobody intentionally said, To hell with my river. I don't care, as a matter of fact, when the flood happened, people gained a lot of respect for that water, and they were in awe of what it could do, the power behind nature. And there was a glimpse of time right after that happened that people cared about protecting themselves and their land from this happening again, but there was no education available to them that was going to work at that time. It wasn't the right time. They were not in a head space to take it, to understand it, and it was just so overwhelming. I mean, the amount of things that not only happened to the land, but that happened to your neighbor. I mean, we were just trying to walk through that together before we could even think about the cypress trees. So other than just being a vehicle of destruction, honestly, so I think moving forward, hearing the explanation of what is best to do is going to be so important, and hearing it over and over and over again, but the problem is going to be not just the education of it, but one of the things that at in Hunt is trying to find a balance between what was there and what will be there in 10 years, and what the best thing to do for the land is to regenerate, to a certain extent, the respect that was the awe that we had right after the flood, to make sure that we build on that and to find a way to restore the land to its best benefit, but also returning what we had. I mean, many, many landowners, and part of that is like Clint spoke to. I mean, if this were all public land, it would have been a completely different response. These are private landowners, and it's going to have to be through education and a sense of compassion that we approach these people to do the best thing for the land and themselves.
Suzanne Davis 29:40
Yeah, so we did leave our wood and with really one of the best positive things for me is I got myself attached to people like that. So go to every thing you can possibly, emotionally and physically. Go to you get free seeds, you get free books and. One of the things early on, fortunately, was to leave the wood here. Was the wonderful thing. There was no pressure. There was no it was just, it was education, and you could leave it right at the river's edge. You could leave it 15 in which is what we did, we chose to do, which for us, was a really excellent choice, because we had a lot of vegetation come back. The other thing I learned is that the sediment collection, you've got to have something there for the sediment. When it does rain and you have a little bit of rise in the river. This is a really healthy thing that happens. And because our river, the Blanco widened, and the effect of that is a warm river. We had a cold, sort of a chilly river before, and we have this wide river now, and which is not healthy. So we're gradually seeing the building back of our banks, which is a very, very good thing for us, because we get a chilly river again, and it's also excellent for the river itself. So I do encourage you to pick out. And another thing that came up early on was, how do we get into the river? If we leave all this stuff by the river. How do we get in it? Well, I got one grandchild on one side and one grandchild on the other, and I said, the river can have the rest. And that was my those were my steps, about 12 feet. I didn't I learned I really didn't need the whole river bank. We weren't using the whole river bank. And so, you know, it was time for me to share back with the river what really belonged to the river in the first place. And then we had our little space, we got it, we picked it, we got in and out, and 10 years later, it's just, it's good, it's good. And we have all sorts of plants coming back, cypress trees, etc. So
Becky Etzler 32:01
Jeremy, did you you've got a lot to say.
Jeremy Walther 32:11
So, a lot of different responses, you know, we're seeing, you know, Hunt is in a very, very fragile state. At this point, Kerrville is looking a little more, you know, progressive. They're, they're wanting to move, you know, a little faster. Perhaps, you know, center point is, you know, working with, with the Lions Park right now, and trying to, you know, redesign their, their community park. So we're seeing different processes along the same river corridor. And I don't think that that comes as a surprise, you know, to anybody, Clint kind of coming back to you, though, and Jeremy was, you know, talking about your analysis and the vegetation, you know, are we seen? And I think we probably know the answer. But if you could describe it to us with your analysis of the loss of vegetation along that 30 mile, I mean, it can't be even we, are we seen that, you know, in pockets or what?
Speaker 1 33:18
What are you What share with us.
Clint Carter 33:22
Okay, yeah, that's your analysis. No, that's, that's wonderful. So it's the destruction was widespread, right? So I would say system wide, flood plain, stripping and scraping. But we certainly see pockets throughout the River Corridor that's experienced much more destruction. And so when you look at the vegetation loss analysis that actually quantifies the loss of what was there, you don't even need those numbers. You can just look at the high resolution imagery from that flyover that Jeremy was talking about. What we've seen on, well, on the whole scale, right? The 30 mile reach, we're looking at about a 52% loss, which equates to about 820 acres of vegetation that was lost within the floodway. But when you start zooming in Downstream of large structures and impoundments, we see upwards of 90% canopy cover loss. And we're looking at what's known as macro turbulent bed scour, where that that energy is increased as it's falling down that elevation difference from those impoundments, and it's completely wiping away everything that was downstream of that location, and conversely, upstream of the impoundments seem to have been affected much less so. Then, of course, we have our meanders and our point bars and our cut banks that all have different responses to erosion. We see a lot of aggregation degradation processes that are picking up material and transporting them downstream and depositing them so it's not uniform. And so when, when, when I, when I talk about 52% loss, some folks are surprised by that number, and they think that it should be way higher. And in it, and I agree, because we've all seen the river channel, and as we drive over our bridges here in Kerrville, it looks like a lot more, and in pockets, it is a lot more. And I think hunt definitely got it the worst where we didn't need macro turbulent bed scour from impoundments, we just saw full flood plain stripping, resulting in 95% canopy cover loss just on the South Fork Guadalupe.
Becky Etzler 36:07
So the vegetation loss that you're that you're seeing and are describing, is that purely flood water damage, or is that a combination of cleanup process as well as the flood.
Clint Carter 36:25
I think primarily it's going to be damage from the flood water, but it's hard to differentiate what was caused by the flood and the scour and all of the erosion versus what was caused by machinery, because the high resolution imagery that the analysis uses was taken two weeks after the flood. So there, there may be some machine, you know, responsibility for that, but it's, it's hard to differentiate.
Becky Etzler 37:01
Okay, well, thank you. You know we talk a lot about, you know, the response and recovery and clean up. Why? Why? Why should we? Why should we even care about this. Why? Why are we, all, you know, saying that you know we need to do this. We need to do this now, when you know we're also hearing, you know, if you talk to ecologists and stuff, Suzanne said it, you know, earlier nature heals itself. I mean, in time, if we were patient and we would, it would take care of itself. As humans. We're not good at that. We're not We're not patient. We want everything done yesterday and so kind of in that response, you know, why? Why the push? Why? Why this immediate and gut need to restore the river?
Jeremy Walther 38:14
Okay, I think I mean the day of so many of us had this kind of tribal, primal need to help our neighbors, but we had no clear idea of how that should be done, or how it even could be done. We were told to stay away. And when you think about this level of catastrophic damage, as all of us and you said it, I mean, I think there's no question that this event will stick in our minds and in our fabric as a community for probably passed down to generations. I think so that's a that is a traumatic event. Even if you didn't lose your home and you know, you didn't lose a family member, there still is a trauma that we all experienced in our own ways, on some level, and if we don't take some kind of if we're not given an opportunity to take an active role in the healing of that, then we aren't going to heal properly as a community, as individuals, and we're not search and rescue folks. We weren't able to dive into that river and help save people, but we do have an opportunity to begin thinking about our river as one of the most important assets that we all have as a community. And you can look at it from an economic development perspective, you can look at it from a tourism perspective, you can look at it from a spiritual perspective, however you want the river we are tied to the river, and unfortunately, for 200 years of existence, the river has taken a back seat. It's in the it's been in the trunk, actually, for a lot of existence of this community. So there is this opportunity to. Change that, to make the river front and center, as Bridget said, to respect its power, you know, to respect its ability to for us to connect to things that are larger than ourselves. But the need, the need to fix is number one, we don't want to see destruction, and we don't want to see reminders of this traumatic event, we want that erased, and I think that's natural, but how we go about after that like that is where the opportunity lies. And so it's slowly building a culture around the river to recognize that the river is important. And so why it matters is we all love the river trail. We all love the river trail for different reasons. We like to recreate on the river trail. But if you look at the function of the river trail as an ecological asset, before the flood, it had kind of a limited function. It was a concrete path that goes through the woods, and those woods are suffering from previous disturbance, other floods, compaction, foot traffic. I mean, you name it, there was not a ton of management and resources devoted to managing those lands around the river trail. So what if, in our need as a community to be a part of the healing process? What if we could all jump in and be a part of bringing the river trail back, not only to its original function, but to a much higher function, in the way that we use it, in the in what we experience as we're using the river trail, but also the ecological function of the River Trail. If we add a higher biodiversity of plants that extends what was there before the flood, we are improving that River Trail. We're improving the function. If we think about the way that rain and water flows after a rain event, and what it's picking up and what it's doing to the river. That River Trail is a corridor that allows us access to think about that slow down that flow, help it penetrate, help it get into the groundwater, help filter all of that runoff and protect the most important asset that we have.
Bridget Symm 42:25
I'll speak to that a little bit too, and I think in a much simpler way, is the flood was a complete loss of control for us. We had no control over what was happening. We had no control over the response efforts. So a part of I feel like people's need to clean up things is control of their environment and being able to make decisions on what happens on their own land. And those are things that in the aftermath for us and hunt. It was extremely overwhelming. I know I see people's faces out there that were with me at the hunt, volunteer fire department after and I'm talking, you know, July 5, there at one point we were, we were experiencing around 500 volunteers a day coming through there. There's one road in, one road out. We didn't know these people. There were over 10 food trucks at one time in hunt. There's ever only been maybe two places to eat there for years. And it's all scripted. You know that this, this disaster response thing, is all scripted. And there are people that make a living doing this, that they know what's fixing to happen. They know how this thing plays out. We had no idea. And so our desire, I think, a lot of people's desire coming out of this to have some sort of control of what of their environment and what's happening, but I think the disconnect is the lack of education on what to do with it. And so that's where people like Jeremy and Clint are so beneficial, because they can help us to understand how to best control it without being damaging.
Suzanne Davis 44:21
And again, I was really, really lucky. Wimberly was really lucky, and I think you all are too by having this group begin to organize and give you vision for the future. Because that was what helped me. I remember sitting in my yard and, you know, just melting, just crying many times at the loss. But then when I'd go and get that little seed packet that they would give me, I'd go back to my land, my little property, and it was all St Augustine, because that's what I bought. I even called Texas A&M and asked them if I should dig it all up, which was really stupid. But they said, of course not, you know, but, but I was able to spread that seed along the river bank, among the wood that we had chosen to leave, the amount that we chose to leave. And then I got to watch it. And then I learned about bushy bluestem and all the different plants and how they're going to wrap around the roots of my new little cypress trees that I saw two or three years later. It takes a little bit for the cypress trees, but that that was therapeutic for me, that was really helpful to me, to be a bit, to be able to be a part of that, because, I think instinctively, we want to be a part of healing. We want to be a part of healing our neighbors. We want to be a part of heal. It gave me energy to be able to participate, and it was small, but our whole little neighborhood is now riparian. We have riparian, and it's all different. Some people have a lot of St Augustine left, which is fine, but they we all have about 10 or 12 feet, and that was not existent. So we had an opportunity to change that river bank, and it's different. It's way different throughout Wimberley, actually, and the attitude toward it.
Becky Etzler 46:26
So, you know, taking control and having some control over of a situation that that seems to be, you know, really out of out of hand, you know, played a big part in our initial response. And I think we saw group of people getting together, Hill Country Alliance, Clint and the Bandera River Authority, UGRA, Jeremy, Riverside Nature Center. I mean, it was just... Schreiner University, just a whole community organizing and realized immediately, we need to get information out to these landowners. So, you know, some of you were joined us with three kind of pop up workshops that were immediate and had what is the beginning of September, I think we, we were, we were rolling out, yeah, yeah, yeah, the first ones. But, you know, had it in Hunt, had it again, you know, it's in center point, and then in Kerrville proper itself as well. And just getting information, real quick information, you know, rough and dirty information about, you know, what do you do with the woody debris and things like that? So, you know, these landowners had something. And I think Suzanne, you know, is she's talking about, you know, seeds being given out and resources and things like that. We weren't there yet, not at that point and but we are now. And so workshops have been, you know, put together, and we're going to be, you know, talking about, you know, we were talking about diversity of plants and what, what to do with our property. And I think people are now able to kind of breathe a little bit, maybe, and take in that information. Bridget said again, you know, you have to hear these things time and time and time again. So here we are tonight, talking about again, time and time and time and so the more you hear it, the more it sinks in. Suzanne's, you know, she's, she's talking about the similar situation in Wimberley back in 2015 that you know, Hill Country Alliance and several of your organizations, Texas Master Naturalists, Texas Parks and Wildlife have been integral in all of this, you know, coming in and having workshops and providing information. So I think we're seeing, you know, similarities between, you know, our communities. Suzanne, if you can talk just a little bit about kind of that, that gradual building of relationships between our grassroots folks. It's you folks, you know it's, it's other people on the on the ground. It's all of these people up here and your local officials, county, municipal, and business owners as well.
Suzanne Davis 49:35
Yeah, and that's huge. It's just huge. And we've had an opportunity to talk about that in terms of your recovering economy, you really, really need each other, and you need to form a true community. And we are at a place now that our mayor, I can go to Jim and I can talk with him about riparian. That's huge, huge. Nobody even knew what that word was, practically before the flood, you know. And we talked about today, Ripa means bank, by the way. We looked it up today, I didn't know either. And it's just the simple things, and then being able to talk with them, they have their priorities. And then gradually we started, we stopped talking about they and us and the environmental groups have their priorities. I was a master. I was a new Master Naturalist, thank goodness, because I had moved from Houston and knew nothing, and it was just wonderful to be able to go to these resource meetings, and our city council people were there as well. And then Hill Country Alliance, they have participated in a cohort that was huge. Encourage your, your administrative people, your city people, encourage them to learn about these issues, because in the end, I'm going to I'm going to say this, we are now really, really well placed to work together to face our next challenge, which is water. You see, we've come through the flood, and the flood was our thing that really brought us together and helped us learn about the land and how important, as Jeremy said, You've got to you need that river for this community. And that, that really became clear in Wimberley, we wouldn't have the shops without the river. There is no economy without the river. It's just a little place, you know. And I think that that the dawning of that for both the environmental groups and the city administrators both have goals, and being able to begin to make those goals go in the same direction and honor each other's priorities and begin to work together to help each other meet each other's needs. Am I saying that in a way that makes sense? And we're there? It's not perfect. We've got people, and so it's never perfect as long as you've got people, but we're able to have conversations because we now have a new language that we are speaking together. If that makes sense.
Jeremy Walther 52:31
In I think it was August central revisions in Center Point had a program called Coffee and Kayak. Coffee, and Kayak and Coffee... is that the order? And this is before the flood. It was just inviting people to come down on a Saturday morning, meet at Lions Park or meet at Monkey Island. Bring a kayak, and if you don't have a kayak, we have a kayak rental store here in Kerrville, because we're a river town. dammit! Come hang out. Let's go be on the river together, and then let's go have some coffee. And so it's just a social event around the river. And Katie was like, we need to restart that. We need to restart that right now. And the response that she was getting from some people was, it's too soon. We shouldn't be on the river. We shouldn't be celebrating the river right now. But a lot of us needed to be on the river. It wasn't a celebration, it was just reconnecting, and it is, to this day, it is still a very powerful experience to be on the river right now, especially in areas that you might have had some familiarity with before the flood, you see roads that you didn't realize were that close. You hear the car tires, and you're like, there's a road right there. That's insane, but it allows you, number one, to understand how close the river is to all of us. Like, physically, it cuts through town. But when Katie and Beth at Central provisions relaunched Kayak and Coffee after the flood, they invited Clint. You did the first one right? They invited Clint and said, Hey, we have this aquatic ecologist. Let's experience the river together, but hang out with this guy that can speak to us about what he's seeing. And Clint was just phenomenal at finding little things to celebrate. That day, we'd be floating down the river, and he would stop and say, this is something to celebrate. Look at this. And at the end of that day, there was almost this. It was this little community of people that have never really hung out together, necessarily, but we were all hanging out together for one reason, the one thing that brought us together was the river, and that was something to celebrate that day. And there's been two or three since then, and each time, a different ecologist has led it, Ryan McGillicuddy from Parks and Wildlife Inland Fisheries Division led the second one, and that guy, he lives in San Marcos, he works statewide, but to have somebody of that talent and that knowledge and that experience in Kerrville and sharing that and really utilizing his experience and resources to help us, we got to milk that guy. We got to milk all of those people that are in town, the Texas Forest Service, Parks and Wildlife. That's opportunity. And so we get a chance to hang out with Ryan on the river and find those things to celebrate. And then the third one was recently Travis Linscomb At UGRA. Does anybody know Travis? Does anybody you do? Because you were probably on the river. Travis, his entire job every day is to go to the 40 something monitoring sites that UGRA quietly takes care of, and he goes into the water, and he makes sure that that water quality is what it needs to be. He's monitoring the water, right? So like, but he's a very quiet guy, you know, but he's really smart and he really knows his stuff, and so how powerful to be on a kayak trip with Travis Linscomb from UGRA, and have people say, I wouldn't be here today if this event wasn't being organized, and that's just such a small gesture that a business, it's this is a business decided to do to say, look, we want to celebrate the river. We want to build community around the river. Let's just invite people to come and hang out with us on the river and have coffee and kayaks, and in that people got to connect to these extraordinary people that teach them something and give them a perspective of the river that they might not have ever had before. And what we're starting to see in that one little example is more and more programs like that as we look for more channels, as we develop more channels to heal as a community and to be physically a part of that rebuilding and restoration, and that's exciting. It's hopeful. It's, I don't know, it's goose bumpy, you know what I mean? And so, you know it's, and we have, I mean, there's lists of programs that are coming up and that are in development that otherwise probably wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for the flood. And if do we want to have Clint talk about maybe some of those I know you were working on. You know, we look at, you know, our river steward organization, our trusted organization, is UGRA. They've been around for a very long time. They do very quiet work in making sure that the river is functioning the way that it should. We should all be inspired to support our river steward organization, UGRA and Riverside Nature Center, who are doing those things to protect those critical assets. And so we think of, well, what does UGRA need? What does RNC need? And what can we just citizens who care? How can we help your programs and really enhance the things that you're already doing? And that is a direction that many more of us than just at this table, are moving forward together as a community, and it's, it's exciting times.
Becky Etzler 58:49
Well, thank you for the plug. Jeremy, no, it is. It is. It is very exciting times. And the opportunities were you going to expand on some of the programs? Clint...
Clint Carter 59:00
Well, yeah, so just, just speaking to some of the programs looking at volunteer monitoring, we all have this need to try to want, you know, to be involved in some way right, to help with the restoration and to be a part of what's going on. And so in response to that, we've developed some new programs, one of which is a community photo monitoring program. I think that's incredibly important and incredibly powerful to be able to document the ecological succession and natural regeneration of our river, whether we're looking at active restoration through tree plantings and plantings of grasses and seeds, or we're just leaving it alone and letting it recover on its own. Restoration programs have happened. Often rivers flood, often disturbances happen. But one of the biggest components that's missing from these restoration projects is long term monitoring, being able to determine what was the outcome of all of this effort and all of this energy that went into this restoration project. It seems to start out with a lot of momentum, and a lot of you know, everybody's on the same page, but then after a while, it kind of slowly fades off, and it and the monitoring component seems to be lacking. So in an effort to help in that regard and to empower our community to be involved, to have a voice of the river. We've developed this, this photo monitoring program. It's, it's a free survey. You can scan it, but with a QR code. And the idea is to go to your favorite spot on the river or creek or wherever you like to go and be immersed in the environment and take your photos, preferably over time. But it also has a field observations portion to where it asks you a series of questions and prompts that kind of puts your mind in the environment, looking at species composition, or looking at ground cover, or looking at the color of the water, right, or trying to look out for invasive species and document those so It's... it's engaging, it's educational, it's immersive, but also that data is going to a centralized location, to be stored and to be used by researchers and practitioners to assist in the recovery process. So I say all that to say this, be on the lookout for that photo monitoring program. It'll be coming out very soon.
Becky Etzler 1:02:02
That's very exciting. One thing we didn't do, and I wish we had done this at the very beginning, sort of, we're going to go back to, you know, grade school, just by a show of hands, how many of you are actual river property owners, or you were directly impacted your property and such, directly impacted by the flood. Okay? So quite, quite, quite a few of you. So tonight, you know, we brought this panel together to, you know, to bring, to bring a unique, you know, perspective. And I think that, you know, we're hearing a lot of different emotions, you know, from everybody, which you know is reasonable and understandable, but there's an underlying theme that I hope, I hope, you guys were picking up, and that's, that's opportunity. This is, this is a great opportunity for our communities to and I hate to use the word reimagine, but you keep hearing that over and over again. But you know, along the river trail, majestic cypress trees all along, you know, the whole river corridor, they are still there. But you know what was missing all of these years were that next generation? So all of these ancient, ancient trees, you know that we did lose, we don't have that next generation yet, exactly yet. So this is our opportunity. It's not only opportunity, but it's hope and so nature does heal itself, but we can give it a hand, and we can help it along, and we can nurture it. We're going to do that through doing monitor the monitoring network. Those are that raised your hand. Look out for that, because you are who we need on, on this network, you know, citizen science, that's, it's we, it's, it's just integral, and it's critical to our recovery. Upcoming workshops we've got specifically, these are, these are land owner workshops. Suzanne was talking about in Wimberley, you know, they were held Hill Country Alliance and several other organizations you know, have come together and are developing these again, in the three, three locations, in Hunt, in Kerrville, and also in center point out front, you would there was cards with QR codes that you can go up, you know, just use your phone, and it takes you straight to the registration. So again, specifically for landowners, we're going to be providing key information on what you can do for your property, as well as providing you with some tools. Materials and materials, seeds and plants that you can get yourself started. You know, on recovery Kerr together, we, we've got a river long term recovery group, oh, gosh, and it's huge, what Jeremy, there's got to be 30 people sitting in that at any one time,
Jeremy Walther 1:05:21
I think at one point there was, I think, 16 committees that were developed through together, each focusing on an area that could be housing, it could be tourism, arts and culture, businesses, and then there was one dedicated to the river. And I'm told there's something like a total of 80 something volunteers across those 16 committees. I swear to God, half of them are on the river committee. I think it's that I feel like it feels like it's too big of a group, but it's been incredibly active the last couple of months. One of the really cool projects that is happening as we speak, the San Antonio Botanical Garden has committed a multi million dollar project where they're coming into Kerr County. They're collecting seeds from cypress trees, from sycamores. They wish they could find more cottonwoods and more diversity of mature trees, but they're identifying trees that they can safely collect seed from. They're taking those seeds and sending them to 14 or 15 different regional growers who are propagating those seeds into saplings, and then they're bringing those saplings back to within a very close range of where those specific seeds were collected from. And so this is their way of, kind of maintaining the genetic integrity of the trees that do remain, and get a jump start on making sure that they have a chance to regrow. And they're committing over 50,000 trees to be replanted. They have arborists. They were there, here today, in Hunt climbing trees to harvest seeds that are ripening right now. And they have a project manager and a dedicated monitoring team that once those saplings, those 50,000 saplings are planted, they will come and monitor them to make sure that they're doing everything they can to increase the survivability rate of those trees. That is an outside group that is San Antonio botanical garden that really probably doesn't I'm not sure if there's a return on that investment or not, but that is how important they felt. That organization felt they could do something and something needed to be done. And that's just one of many examples of not just local groups, but outside groups that really recognize the need and want to help. And it's they're involved in that river committee. It's good to have that kind of centralized communication source, really, so that that group knows what trees for Texas is doing, which is another group from Houston, which is committing to plant over 200 trees in Louise Hayes Park alone. And these are big trees, and they're committed to buying those trees from local growers first, which is pretty much just Mosty Brothers Nursery is one of the only local tree growers in the county. So they're giving that business, Mosty Brothers Nursery the business which landscapers aren't doing a lot of work right now. You know that's, that's, that's businesses kind of struggling right now. The trades can be struggling right now in Kerrville and Kerr County, until rebuilding really starts to launch again. So that's a way of injecting some money into the community. It's a way of replanting Louise Hays Park, and it gives people an opportunity to be involved in that as well, either through financial donations or figuring out how we can volunteer to help those help those guys help us.
Becky Etzler 1:09:08
So I just want to bring to your attention, if you saw out front some information healing in the hill country, a guide to flood recovery. This is a brand new hot off the press brochure, Hill Country Alliance, Steve Nelly and Kevin Wessels. Kevin's here this evening somewhere. Yes, authored this. If you get a chance, grab one of those. There's also Kerr together river Working Group. Katie and several other people have put this together, some, you know, just real, real hard and fast information on what you can do to help recover your private property. We've talked at you long enough, and so I think we need to open this up to some questions on. Um, and Marissa, we've got, what? How about 10, 20, minutes for questions? So, yeah, if you've, if you've got a question, come on up to the mic. This is your chance to you've got some folks here that that can exist. Brian, I'm not surprised.
Speaker 2 1:10:21
I'm not surprised. That's great. Thank you. Okay.
Brian Hummel 1:10:25
Brian Hummel, I have a quick question. Jeremy talked about slowing down the flow and helping the water infiltrate, and then we had Suzanne saying water was their next challenge. So I'd like to reiterate a point, that surface water runoff leads to flooding and infiltration leads to groundwater and replenishing the springs that are the economic engines of these communities. So Could any of you talk about ways that we can slow, spread, sink, soak and store water into the uplands and help replenish the spring flow, which are so valuable to our communities. Thank you.
Clint Carter 1:11:08
Okay, so I won't be able to speak to the uplands as much, but you bring up a great point, and I'm glad that you asked that question and said what you said. So slowing down runoff water is key, and we cannot do that without functioning riparian areas. Riparian areas, we're all familiar with what that is, but specifically it's these ecologically significant zones where soil, water and vegetation come together and work together to promote water quality and enhance long term water availability, reduce erosion and all of those great things, but we can't. We don't see that function if we don't have a robust, a robust community of diverse riparian plants, we can also do the same thing with woody material. We can use woody material to trap overland flow, trap that sediment from entering straight into the stream and promote that groundwater infiltration, and by doing that, we're helping to build up soil health. We're helping to increase natural recruitment of our native seed banks. We're also providing cover and protective cover from herbivory from deer and other predators. So in my mind, what this gentleman is talking about, I see exactly the functional components of a healthy riparian area for that.
Austin Kelly (A&M) [audience] 1:12:54
Suzanne, you wanted to add,
Suzanne Davis 1:12:59
yes, please. So this actually excites me a lot, because one of the things we now have our let's assume that we all have our riparian we're still working on that. It's still 10 years later, but it's really healthy. It's the riparian areas are growing. One of the things that we are now looking to address and through our Master Naturalist program, we have a program called Helm, and I forget, I'm sorry I forget the initials, but I'm terrible with that. But it's a group that goes around to properties that are in the uplands, and one of their goals is to teach people there how they are affecting the flood, because I live on the river and it is full of sediment. Guess where the sediment comes from? It comes from up there. So it's it. We're gradually expanding our whole ecological conversation to try and include the whole community, not just people living by the river, so that people can understand that everybody, everybody, whether you live in the hills or by the river or whatever, you are impacting that body of water, and you have certain things that you can do. So our house, in particular, the house next door to us was not there the next day, and we ended up buying the property about a year later. It just became clear that and we have a meadow, and that meadow, and we've had lots of people out, and you're all invited. If you come to Wimberley, figure out my phone number and come see our property. I'll give you a tour. And Ryan actually was my teacher in my backyard. He and Daniel came and we did tours for people up and down our property. And you too can do that. You can have friends over for coffee, wine and cheese is preferable, and you can say this is what it looked like. Have pictures, and then you can just lead little tours of your property. You don't have to be an expert. I was not. I was just enthusiastic and convinced. But the uplands is absolutely something that Wimberley right now that is our next frontier. But because of the flood, we're able to begin to have those conversations. And people are getting it, they're kind of, Oh yeah, that might be a problem not to have grass on the hill, you know, and all that water rushes down. And when you have the deep rooted grasses, the water slows down. Help me with this glint, and it sinks down. That was my little memory thing. It slows down and it sinks down, and then not as much goes in the river. The river gets what it needs, right?
Jeremy Walther 1:15:49
Yeah. And then, if anyone has other questions about maintaining uplands using very low tech, easily accessible resources. Talk to Mr. Justin Graham at Zanzibar farm, he can talk to you for hours about it. Yeah.
Chris Hansen [audience] 1:16:09
Chris Hansen, just to mention a couple of other resources. Pete Van Dyke at drop proof, Texas and Hill Country Alliance has a great publication called hillside stewardship, if you live in the uplands and you want to slow down and sink water, he's got it right there. That is an excellent document, so it's a good resource.
[audience member unk] 1:16:35
I just want to add another consideration on slowing the flow of water. Think about impervious cover, especially Upland. If you're rushing that water down, take away as much of the cover that doesn't absorb any water a short point that something that all of us can do wherever we live, think about that.
Becky Etzler 1:16:59
Thank you, Diane, that's a that's a great point. Do you have a question?
Austin Kelly (A&M) [audience] 1:17:08
Hello, I'm Austin Kelly. I'm a plant ecologist and watershed specialist, and through A and M and arc ecological consulting, and I worry about one of the main things I've seen along the river being an issue that I foresee it growing is the fact that there's so many invasive plants coming in, and like you mentioned there, they do sort of have a place working with invasives. I know they don't have a place here where a native one could do so much better. But I see it as a problem, because this It's unprecedented how much invasive plants we're getting. And every year we get more and more invasive cover, and this has been the only thing I've seen growing back at this speed on this river. So are there any plans in place to to fight some of these invasives, or what sort of monitoring is taking place beyond what you mentioned, so and what are we going to do to stop them?
Speaker 1 1:18:10
Well, I do know that just this week and Shelby's leaving, but UGRA has the healthy creeks initiatives, and the there was a run do donak spraying that was going on, at least I knew it was it down below Riverside Nature Center and so, so the, some of the invasives, yes, are being addressed. But, you know, as Jeremy pointed out, and I know that, you know, there's, there's several other people and stuff. Steve Nelly being one of them. You know, it's a fine line, young man, it's a fine line as to, you know, if we need to get plants, you know, stabilizing those banks now. And if that's already growing, you know, we can plant beyond it, around it, and then pluck out as these are starting to come in. So, I mean, I hate to be the person to say, you know, oh, if you've got, you know, some of this growing that you're going to come in and take everything out, but you need to be able to put something in its place. I think that's, you know, we're kind of all in agreement of that.
Suzanne Davis 1:19:33
I mean, it was just nothing but invasives, and it's very discouraging. And we had just solid almost. It felt like solid Johnson grass. And I love plants. I do not like that plant. And over time, I read a research project. You all disagree with me, if this is but it kind of worked. We planted the gamma grass. It. Eastern Thank you. Thank you. Yes, we planted that that will eventually it's tall and it'll compete, and so we would just plant you just go in and you just start planting that in and amongst it. And then when it rains, because it's tough to get out, otherwise you can go out and just pluck it out around that gamma grass. The gamma grass throws out these seeds that are absolutely phenomenal, and eventually the Johnson grass just kind of, we don't have any Johnson grass along the river. I still have little bits here and there. It's been 10 years. So when I'm talking you all need to understand this was, this didn't happen in four months. You know what I'm telling you, is over time, and I would say it was two or three years before I really took a breath. And that's not really true. That's not true. I took a lot of breaths before then, but it was two or three years before it was not on my mind a lot, and we were not really, I don't know it was. It's shifted about two to three years it was, but it was good all along the way, because we had a lot of help, yeah, but there are invasives, but you can control them, but you have to pay attention.
[audience member unk 2] 1:21:20
Janelle, yeah, my question is the Hill Country Alliance looking backwards as to what was done, like Bridget talked about being invaded by all these people, and Jeremy talking about these trucks going back and forth and feeling out of control over your property, and like who made all these decisions to do these things? And I just wondered if there's a committee that's looking backwards for the next time.
Jeremy Walther 1:22:02
That's an excellent question. Yes, the answer is yes. So it's important to understand that the resources that were just came pouring into the county after this flood were coming from far and wide, and it was mostly driven by the Texas Division of Emergency Management that was, we're told, basically planning on reimbursement funding from FEMA and so the county and the city and landowners. Nobody has that equipment, nobody has that budget. Nobody has, you know, the ability to lift 60 foot trunks, you know, and move them out of harm's way, or, you know, 12 Foot root balls. And so it was received as thank you for that help. We like this help, but we didn't know what. We didn't know when the state showed up and all of those out of state contractors that do this for a living came from Florida. You saw, you saw those license plates from all kinds of states. They're very efficient. They're very, very good at what they do, but their job is one thing, and that's to clean up. So how do we prepare for the next flood? How do we get in front of the Division of Emergency Management and tell them, hey guys, there's more than one way to do this. We might want to consider better approaches. And so with all of those great resources that are in town, the Texas Forest Service, Parks and Wildlife, and then those existing resources that have been here for a very long time, like the Hill Country Alliance, there is an effort to begin exploring what is the best way for TM to change its policy. So when the next flood does happen, not only in Kerrville, but anywhere in the state, maybe there's a little bit different approach that does occur, and that is definitely on the radar, and definitely something where time and energy is going into that's a great question.
Speaker 3 1:24:12
I think I'll add a little bit to that, because it's something that Susan brought up earlier, is the other thing that there was allowances made by the county to allow those things to happen because of lack of education and uncooperative behavior. So I think that is another thing that has to happen. County officials have to get on board and understand the importance to everyone, private property owners and the public lands, and they have to understand how important it is to their economic development as well as the just the overall success of our area.
[audience member Shelby] 1:24:58
Okay, hi, I'm. My name is Shelby. I'm from UGRA and I just want to say two things real quick, because they've been mentioned while I've been here. The first thing is, like Becky was saying, if you have Arundo Donax, giant cane, giant reed on your property, please reach out to either Texas Parks and Wildlife or us. There's a program where during the summer, we spray it and we treat it, and we can get you involved in that. It's a totally free program, and we're always looking to sign people up so you can visit our offices, give us a call, shoot me an email, and we will definitely get you signed up for that. And the second thing I wanted to add real quick was Jeremy mentioned that the North Fork and the South Fork are both on the impaired list, which is definitely true. I just wanted to clarify, they're on there not for bacteria, but for fish community and macro benthic community, which is pedantic, but I'm here, so I had to say it.
Speaker 4 1:25:46
Thank you for the correction. That's what I mean we should are already know that.
[audience member unk 3] 1:25:53
Hi guys, great program. I'm sorry, I'm short. What have we learned from the past? I mean, this is not this flood was the latest flood. We've had floods for hundreds of years. The one that nobody even remembers was still the most recent memory. Was supposed to be. The worst was 1932 there were others in the 70s and the 80s. What was happening then? Did people come out the way they did this time to help? Did we learn any lessons? Are we better than they, or have we forgotten? No one is alive, not even Clarabell Snodgrass, who lived to over 100 who might have helped us. You know, I'm just asking, and I love what's happening. I think this is incredible, but I still wonder, are we learning anything from the past? Is are there lessons from the past that we could be learning that we haven't talked about or we were better than they are? I just want to know the history of it all.
Suzanne Davis 1:26:53
Wimberley in 1929 my house was built to the flood of 1929 and it was not in the flood plain when it was built in the 60s. It is now in the flood plain. There were no houses. The river could do whatever it wanted to do and enjoy all the space, because my house wasn't there to flow through. And so that's a huge change. Is population, and that affects things and people. We really are relatively young at all of this, and it's happening more often, and we're having to adjust. That's why we're here, having this conversation is trying to figure out some of the things that and that's a great question, but I know in Wimberley, there just weren't people there. There were ranches and there were not houses as many as there are now. The other thing is, is that people built little houses where they could go spend the night in a screen porch. They lived up the hill. They didn't live on the river.
Speaker 5 1:28:10
Okay? Hi, I'm Vicki Cobb, and I live in a little town between hunt and Kerrville called Ingram. How we live on the river. My question is, with all this debris removal and the shredding of all the debris that's been going on in Hunt particularly, what's happening to that the material that is being shredded. You talk about how it would be good to have some ground cover or some cover along the stones along the river. Our riverfront is scoured. It is there's very little material left. Some of us have made sure that we keep it, not everybody. But is there any chance that some of that material can be distributed to lay down on the river bank so that it might prevent some of it, or is that, too...
Speaker 4 1:29:14
That might be the most logical question that anyone could possibly... Good job. We've been asking that same question for months, and the answer is, always, you don't want that it's trash. The answer is that's unclean and that it's contaminated. And when the question was, well, what is it contaminated with? What tests do you have to show that contamination, those answers never came. And so we did take some samples to a lab in San Antonio, and this is not a scientific test, because we only took two or three samples, not 1000s of samples that would be required to really, truly test this. Yes, and there was, in our little, tiny test, no indication that there was contamination, but there's still a chance for that. There's a chance for all kinds of nasty stuff to be in there. Is it manageable? Absolutely? Is it valuable? Absolutely? But that's one of the policy changes that we feel is really important, that needs to happen on the state level. So to answer your question, the there's not much mulch left. They move so fast, and we're so quick about it, but the rest of it is going to the exact same place that the first 1.5 million cubic yards went, and that is to a commercial compost facility, actually, a variety of them in the San Antonio and Austin area. They'll be processed. Somebody's going to make some Sure, but good for that business, and maybe, as we're replanting over the years and we need mulch, we'll go buy the mulch back that was sourced from that same woody debris material, and maybe they'll donate it back to us if we ask nicely.
Speaker 1 1:31:00
Okay, did Lee, you have one real quick question? Okay,
Speaker 6 1:31:08
Hi, I'm Lee Burton with save Texas dreams, and I had, first of all, my uncle's 101 he remembers the 32 flood. He grew up here. So I'm going to ask that question tonight. Yes, he knows everybody. Everybody knows him. In any case, I have a question just given nature of my job, and we're trying to research this, that if you look on the radar without getting into weeds here, but the North Fork, South Fork, got roughly the same amount of rain in the watershed, somewhere 1214, inches. But obviously the damage was far worse on the South Fork. Is there a reason why, in terms of hydrology and what we could look for in the future to protect that is, Did it come down faster? I know it's a smaller watershed on the South Fork, but it's just it's excessive the damage there compared north fork. And then secondly is, I think the answer this is no, but we work on helping people maintain riparian areas to mitigate flood damage, just like you were talking about. I wouldn't think in this case, that had much to do with the damage because of the development along the river, but I wanted to hear your comments about that, if you think it by chance, made it worse in any areas.
Speaker 7 1:32:24
I wish I could speak more to the difference in flooding that occurred on the north and south fork. Since my involvement with this, it was obvious that the South Fork received so much more damage. And honestly, that's where my that's where my head's been. I'm not sure exactly how much rain fell in each one of those headwater watersheds, but I do know that quite a bit of rain fell on the South Fork, and it's got a largely confined Valley. I would imagine it would be similar on the North Fork, but I don't have that information right now. Maybe Shelby from UGRA could talk to that a little bit on the North Fork differences. But then in your second question about the riparian… Can you repeat that?
Speaker 6 1:33:15
Well, was the kind of development, I hate to call it urbanization, still very rural out there, but in terms of impervious cover, or, you know, some areas that had, sorry, St Augustine, or whatever, did that, in your estimation, contribute at all to the damage, or not really, in this case,
Speaker 7 1:33:34
I think any time that we alter the natural state of our watershed, whether we're in A riparian area or in the uplands, we're going to have some influence over the way the water sheds from the landscape. It's going to affect the hydrologic regime in some way or another. And we are in a headwater style, Hill Country watershed, but we have low development, but we still have significant development, and in my opinion, yes, it would absolutely affect the hydrologic regime and the streams response to heavy rainfall events. Yeah,
Speaker 6 1:34:12
you can see, example that on Ingram dam, like just above it, there's not that much damage, but right below it, it just got destroyed. Yeah. So thank you very much.
Becky Etzler 1:34:22
Well, I think we're going to wrap it up, folks. So I hope we answered some of your questions. I hope you know, you gain some insight, and you're going to walk away tonight knowing, you know, after hearing Suzanne, you know, there's hope 10 years down the road. Wimbley, you know, looks, looks great, but remember this, it's going to be a different view. It's going to look different, but that new normal is just on the horizon, and we're going to get there, and we're going to get there together. So I thank you for coming with us tonight. And like I said, Go out there, QR code if you and join us in our next workshops for recovery for the private landowners. All right. Thank you very much.
