CSE Coughs Up Dirt So Your Momma Don't Have To

Like most attendees, our biggest frustration with last year's Austin City Limits Festival was the wretched dust cloud blanketing Zilker Park after the first day. With tens of thousands of people milling about and the daytime highs between 98-107 degrees, everything was worsened by the fact that the park was already suffering from drought-like conditions.

But not anymore, if Capital Sports and Entertainment (CSE) and its massive coffers have anything to say about it. Perhaps realizing just how much they could stand to profit in the long-run, they've decided to go halfsies on the Austin Parks and Recreation Department's plan to install a gargantuan sprinkler system throughout Zilker Park.

All told, the total budget for such a ridiculously huge venture (we're not sure if they'll end up digging up the park to install the irrigation lines) is estimated to run between $500-700k, though we're guessing the actual number is going to skew slightly higher if they're planning on retrofitting most of the 350-acre land. And, c'mon, at $115 a pop for three-day festival passes, we're sure this hardly affects CSE's bottom line.

The project is to be completed in three stages over the next three years, with the main irrigation lines installed this year and the pipes and sprinkler heads put in sometime in 2007. Assuming things proceed as planned, perhaps by late 2008 the system will be able to draw from Town Lake to water the lawns, and utilize a separate fresh water source to supply the park's drinking fountains. From the looks of it, though, this won't be of much help for this year's ACL.

The full ACL lineup, by the way, is slated to be announced next Thursday the 18th. So far the ACL wiki page has the following acts confirmed:

Son Volt, Los Lonely Boys, The New Pornographers, The Shins, KT Tunstall, Matisyahu, Ben Harper, The Flaming Lips, Massive Attack, Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers, Peter Dawson, Elvis Perkins in D, Melissa Reaves, Eli Young Band, Robyn Ludwick, Nickel Creek, Son Volt, Asleep at the Wheel, The Flaming Lips, Jack Ingram, Buckwheat Zydeco, Kasey Chambers, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, John Mayer, the BoDeans, The Subdudes, The Valiant Taste Death But Once, Cameron Dodd, Massive Attack, The Black Angels, Centro-Matic, Marah, Calexico, Kings of Leon, Nada Surf, Phoenix, and Ted Leo and the Pharmacists.

For more updated information, check out the ACL Rumors blog.

* Photo by chrischappelear on flickr