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Groundwater Awareness Week - March 9-15, 2008  In celebration of National Groundwater Awareness week in Bastrop and Lee Counties, Texas, the Opportunity Bastrop County Citizens Advisory Committee and Environment Subcomittee along with Environmental Stewardship sponsored a County Resolution. The resolution was adopted by the Bastrop County Commissioners Court on Monday, March 10, 2008. Opportunity Bastrop County and Environmental Stewardship are also working on a program to signs on roadsides to identify key aquifer recharge zones in the County. Learn more about the valuable groundwater resources of Bastrop and Lee Counties and how they are being managed by visiting our Groundwater Stewardship page.
$125,000 Awarded in Grants from TPWD and LCRA for Recreational Trails Project
 Bastrop County Water Control and Improvement District #2 was recently awarded two grants totaling $125,000 to implement restoration efforts for the Lost Pines Recreational Trails project, a 30 acre tract of land along the Colorado River. The first grant was an LCRA Community Development Partnership Program/Bluebonnet grant for $25,000 and the second a Texas Parks & Wildlife National Recreational Trails Grant for $100,000. With community matching, the funds for the project total nearly $200,000. The land to be improved adjoins the 60 acres known as the Colorado River Refuge located on Riverside Drive past the golf course in Tahitian Village, owned and operated by the Pines & Prairies Land Trust. The funds will be used to improve and rehabilitate existing trails and develop 1.7 miles of new hike and bike trails. Environmental Stewardship was selected to administer the grant and is providing project management.
| One Earth - One HomeMankind has only one home, the Earth. We have a stewardship responsibility to restore and maintain the Earth and its resources to a level that will sustain life both now and far into the future.  Our activities are having an impact on critical processes that balance the biotic and abiotic components of the ecosphere. Natural laws that govern environmental conditions on earth are being pushed to threshold points; triggering natural corrective events. Whether we will continue to enjoy the abundance of the earth, or endure the extremes, will depend on how well we manage our activities relative to the earth’s resources. To manage the earth’s resources to the sustainable benefit of its inhabitants, we must work on a local-global basis to solve the problems that challenge mankind. There are many examples where vision, knowledge and resources have been brought together to reverse recent trends. We have the opportunity to accept this responsibility and join together to return our communities to a path of sustainable stewardship. | The Lower Colorado River Basin and Bay System "We came to the river, which has a guard on either side of luxuriant trees, nut trees, ash trees, poplars, elms, willows, mulberries and wild grapevines much taller and thicker than those of Castile. It has sand banks which mark how high it rises, a quarter of a league wide. The water is of the best we have found" — The Espinosa-Olivares-Aguirre Expedition of 1709.  The Colorado River is the largest river entirely within the state of Texas. Almost 600 billion gallons of water flow through the Colorado's 900-mile course from its source in the Texas Panhandle to Matagorda Bay where it flows into the Gulf of Mexico. The river's drainage basin spans more than 42,000 square miles — about 16 percent of the total area of Texas.
Though we will never return to the El Monte Grande we have the opportunity to manage the Colorado River system in a manner that restores the luxuriant forest and provides access to clear, fishable, swimable water that once again attracts people to the river and to the region. The rivers, streams, aquifers and land resources of the basin and bay system are the lifeblood of Central Texas.
Learn more about the lower Colorado River |
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