Barton Springs Will Be Closed For Six to Eight Months (But Not Immediately)

Editor's Note: This post comes from a new addition to our staff, Lisa Gartner.

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It’s a site Native Americans came to for healing and—perhaps more awesomely—where Robert Redford learned to swim. But the millions-year-old Barton Springs pool will be closing for six to eight months thanks to something frustratingly man-made: holes in the concrete bypass culvert.

Built 35 years ago, the bypass culvert is a large rectangular pipe that protects the water quality of the pool from run-off contaminants during small storms. “Part of its purpose is keeping the park open,” said Bethany Lott of the Watershed Protection Department. In October, the Barton Springs pool was closed when pool water began seeping into the holes in the bypass culvert. Engineers studying the culvert find that it won’t be structurally sound for long. “Basically, it’s deteriorating,” Lott said.

The City of Austin’s Parks and Watershed Protection directors described three options to repair the pool in a joint memo (PDF) on Monday. At the minimum, repairs will cost an estimated $2.4 million to keep the pool sustainable for 10 years; at the most, a $4.7 million complete overhaul could last 75 years. In either case, the pool is expected to close for up to eight months.

But despite the drought and record-high temperatures, there’s a silver lining: salamanders. Yes, salamanders—they’re the reason the pool won’t be closing this summer. The pool is home to the endangered Barton Springs salamander, a species that exists nowhere else in the world outside of Austin. Its protection allows no such repairs until the water levels are above 54 cfs; the water level is currently at around 20 cfs. People of Austin, cease your rain dances.