TRANSCRIPT
INTERVIEWEE: George Cofer
INTERVIEWER: David Todd
DATE: November 20, 2018
LOCATION: Austin, Texas
TRANSCRIBER: Robin Johnson
SOURCE MEDIA: HD video
REEL: 3482

[Numbers mark the time codes for the interview.]

DT: My name is David Todd. I’m here for the Conservation History Association of Texas. We’re in Austin, Texas and it is November 20, 2018 and we are very lucky to be visiting with George Cofer, who is a rancher, a land conservationist, an environmental educator, an activist, who has been involved with a number of groups—some of the ones that first come to mind is Save Barton Creek Association, SOS Alliance, and, for many recent years, the Hill Country Conservancy. This is just a sample, but I hope it gives a flavor of—of George’s many contributions. And want to take this chance to thank you for spending time with us.

00:00:43
GC: Well thank you, David. I’m looking forward to trying to tell a hundred years’ worth of stories in just one afternoon.

DT: Well we’ll—we’ll just talk fast. So you—we usually start these interviews with some sense of—of your origin story. If—if there’s a place that you can describe or a group of people—family members, teachers, friends—who might have introduced you to the natural world and a love and curiosity about it.

00:01:40
GC: Well, since you first reached out to me, I’ve given some thought about how did I get on this conservation path, why do I love the great outdoors so much. And it—it’s a two-pronged story or—or two tracks, if you will. My grandparents on my dad’s side vacationed in Port Aransas. And so I have fond memories of camping on the beach or we’d stay at the Tarpon Inn, depending on various variables and, nevertheless, would spend all day really on the beach. And grew up swimming in the Gulf. So that was wonderful.
00:02:19
On mom’s side of the family, I like to say I chose my great, great grandparents very carefully and—and blessed to be part of a family that’s had a place on the Frio River since the 1800s. So with weekends either on the Gulf Coast or in the Hill Country on the Frio, I think it was either in my DNA or certainly preordained that I would love the great outdoors from day one.
00:02:47
And, in addition to those experiences, I got very involved and loved scouting—Boy Scouts—and was in Boy Scouts for I’d say fifteen years—Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, Explorer Scouts, and got to go to the Jamboree and camp above the timberline and take some horrendous canoeing trips and hailstorms and all kinds of stuff. So it was all—it all led to I prefer to be outdoors doing things in the natural world.

DT: Are there any—it sounds like a lot of your experiences were on trips, you know, whether you were going down to Port Aransas or if you were at the Annandale Ranch or if you were, you know, on a camping trip with some of your scouting friends—di—are there any st—particular outings that—that come to mind like where—where you had some dramatic incidents—the—the—maybe the hail event.

00:03:52
GC: Well, so—a lot—a lot of drama in those days because, as I think with many folks, we were more focused on the experience than personal safety or group safety. And we would start—we started out on the Guadalupe, for example, one time and—before Canyon Lake Dam. So it was a—a great and fun river. And we would go—I can’t remember exactly, but sometimes Sisterdale and—and down or start above Sisterdale and get out there. And we were I think downstream of there and camped for the evening on the banks of the Guadalupe and it started raining.
00:04:37
And then it started hailing and then the scoutmaster, Mr. Reed, woke us up saying, “Get up the hill, get up the hill.” And so we gathered a load of—of, you know, bed rolls and camping gear, whatever we could grab. And—and he’s shouting the while time, “Get up the hill, get up the hill.” We ran up the hill, put that stuff in some field, of course, quite muddy up and down this hill. By the time I got back to where we’d been sleeping, it was two feet of water. The river was coming fast. And, by then, we realized we just needed to get out of there.
00:05:15
So we managed to huddle up on some farmer’s pasture un—until help could come the next morning. And—and that—nobody was hurt and so that’s a story we can all give thanks for both the experience and—and that we all got home safely. I would say the other one I remember is the first time I camped above the timberline at Philmont Scout Ranch. And we went as a scout troop and I learned something from someone in our—in our troop who didn’t have the advantages some of us had. He didn’t have the equipment some of us had.
00:05:58
And so we got ready to go to sleep for the evening and he built the fire bigger and bigger. Well I thought naturally it was just to stay warm around the fire. And Jeff put the fire out and nobody knew what he was doing and we’re all talking at once. And he put the dead fire over here and then we had a nice warm place to sleep. And I never would have—that was not in the scout manual I don’t think. But it kept us warm.

DT: And tell me—I—I think that—that currently you’re a member of the Central Texas Surfriders Group. Do you remember when you first went surfing?

00:06:41
GC: Gosh, high school. So I didn’t know about surfing until high school or—or at least that’s when I began to go. At Austin High, you could—you could be a jock or you could race cars or—or you could skateboard and surf. And so we would go on weekends and stay with Mr. Ard at the Rock Cottages and, you know, six or seven of us would crowd in there, swearing there was just one of us. And I—I’m still grateful to Mr. Ard for not calling us on that. And we would surf in the winter. That’s when the better surf and fewer tourists and—and reduced rates.
00:07:21
And so we would sometimes stay out there for ten hours and just freezing, you know, but we didn’t know any better. We were having fun. And that evolved into storm surfing, which I did until a few years ago. We would watch the hurricane charts. And—and—and I realize there—there’s tragedy and—and pain with hurricanes so it—it was always sort of weird being out there enjoying that amazing display of nature while we tried to hang onto some of those storm waves. And it—it was exciting.
00:08:02
Sometimes you couldn’t—one time we couldn’t get on the island so we had to paddle across the channel to—to even get to the surf. And the—a lot of Mustang Island was underwater at that time.

DT: Did you also take some trips to—to Mexico or Hamilton Pool when you were a young person or since?

00:08:24
GC: You’ve done a lot of research Mr. Todd. I—yes. So yes, yes, and yes. So my dad, Judge Cofer, drove for one of the touring companies before planes. He drove people who would sign up to see Mexico and he knew a lot about Mexico and got to meet a lot of the small family run hotels. So Bill and I would tag along with him sometime as he would prepare for trips and got to see a lot of Mexico when we were pre-teen and early teens. And—and that was great. We were staying with people who knew dad well and always welcomed us.
00:09:12
What I love about Mexico is that I—I think, to this day, it—to me, it just feels—I relax when I cross the border. It is such a different culture that’s not wound so tightly, in my opinion. And so we can get out in the hillside and get out in the country and—and meet folks and eat simple meals and people who just take time to love life. And that’s been fun. I will tell you that Hamilton Pool started changing from Mexico and coming north to Hamilton Pool, it may sound hard to believe to some folks, but we would go as a family for vacation—everybody load up in the station wagon—five kids, mom and dad—get in the station wagon, go to Hamilton Pool, talk with Mr. Ammers for a few minutes.
00:10:05
Dad might have a—a beer, a pleasant afternoon beer with Mr. Ammers, and then we would go down and camp by the pool for a week and get our water out of that old rock trough I guess—spring fed there by the pool, go down to the Pedernales and fish and have a little fire and maybe see five people at the most. Be there all week long. It’s different today obviously.

DT: So we were talking earlier about surfing off of Port Aransas. And I understand that you also have done some surfing outside of the United States.

00:10:48
GC: We have. We, like many people of my generation, we saw the movie The Endless Summer and we thought well, “Gosh, we need to do our own version of the endless summer.” So I went and bought a Chevrolet truck from Capital Chevrolet and we put a homemade camper on top of it and three of us—off we went aiming for as far south as we could get with no destination. The West Coast of Mexico has some incredible surfing places and we had a lot of fun and made it as far as Sin Sal—El Salvador.

00:11:28
Yeah, we got down there and, not only was the—the dialect different and we didn’t know the word for sharks, so that caused some—some—some of the locals gathered on the beach and they were fascinated that, not only we would surf that particular reef, that point break when there were sharks, but that we ignored their loud shouting to get out of the water you stupid gringos. We—we just didn’t know what they were saying, you know, plus it’s hard to hear when you’re offshore. So anyway, nobody got hurt but we did finally see the sharks to which they were referring.
00:12:08
And I’d never been that close and I’d—I’d read in some book to put your feet up and sit on the board, put your feet out in front of you, sit on the board and be very, very still. And so that’s what we did and got—got away with that. But it was a fascinating journey. And not that—we were definitely not the quality of surfers that one saw in the movie The Endless Summer, but—but we had our share of some pretty awesome—some pretty awesome rides and—and some interesting experiences.
00:12:40
We were driving through the jungle one day and it was just a nice, dirt road through the jungle to some alleged beach break—point break—where we were going to find, you know, you always got to—there’s this magic wave set just around the corner. And some gentleman stepped out of the jungle—it—it was just—I mean, not to sound dramatic, but they were not there and then they were there in full camo, with—with what I remember as being automatic rifles, not necessarily pointed at us and it was an unofficial check stop and they were just wanting to know who was going up and down their road.
00:13:23
And so we—again, the dialect was a little different but we were able to converse with them and they were—pretty quickly, they figured out we were—we were not going to harm anybody. It was just three crazy hippies with surfboards, you know. And so they—they let us go, not even a mordida, anything. And—and we went on our merry way so oblivious—I’ll confess, oblivious that there was, in fact, a little bit of a revolution going on there and we were there to surf, not participate in any—any local politics.
00:13:58
Finally made it to El Cuco. El Cuco—no electricity, no water, no nothing. I—I’ll remember it always as sort of that utopian surf spot, living off the land. We left and headed back to the United States when we computed that we had just enough gas to get home. Now obviously different gas prices then, but we had $34.71 to our names, between the three of us, and bought the cheapest gas we could find and barely made it Brownsville.

DT: So I—I think you also had some experiences surfing out on the California coast when you were in college out there. Is that correct?

00:14:49
GC: I did, yeah. Again, you—you’ve done great research on me. I—I didn’t realize I was so exposed to the world and all—all these great trips. I decided wisely as a senior in high school, that the University of California in Santa Barbara was—would be a fine aerospace engineering school. The other—the other version of that story is that UCSB was on the cover of Playboy that year as the number one party school in America. So it’s somewhere between aerospace engineering and—and the desire to go figure out what California was about.
00:15:23
My little sister was already in the Haight—in San Francisco. She said, “I don’t care what you’re doing, get out here.” And so I have to credit my sister for—for dragging me toward the left coast. So got to UC Santa Barbara and it was—it was very different than Austin High. It was culturally about two years ahead of Austin in—in terms of music and—and anti-Vietnam War and I—I would say, in general, ahead of Austin. Certainly there were people who were hip to all that in Austin, but in Santa Barbara, and in California, it—long hair, surfing, the whole free, peace, love—that was well underway when I arrived in ’66 as pretty close to a redneck from Austin, Texas.
00:16:21
So my mouth was open for—for about a year. I just walked around with my mouth open taking it all in. One can—you could go to class in your wetsuit—wet—they had board lockers and you’d just go put your board in a locker, go to class, just like that. Get out of class, go back to the beach. It—it’s a beautiful, beautiful place. From—one more comment about Santa Barbara and the reason I’m glad I spent a year there and after a year, I was—I was ready to come back to the university—it’s 348 miles from our apartment to Haight-Ashbury.
00:16:59
And I like to say on Sunday night, that’s a brutal 348 mile drive. So we were not always at our best Monday morning, but I’m—I’m so glad I experienced all that.

DT: Well when you came back to Austin, what—what kind of impression do you think you took home with you from California?

00:17:19
GC: The music. So I came home for Spring Break in 1967 listening to the Dead and the Airplane and Janis. And my friends here were like, “What? You listen to that crap?” I mean, it was—it was that fast between when I came—spring of ’67 for Spring Break, my roommate and—at UCSB and I drove to Texas, drove back and, by the time I got back that summer, that music wave had already gotten here. And, you know, the Armadillo was underway by ’69-’70 so it—it moved quickly. Well and before that in Austin, the Vulcan Gas Company on Congress.
00:18:05
So I would say music was different. I’m—I’m drifting from answering your question. The thing I remember most also about California was just the—the different vibe of people then thinking this really was going to be the future, that—that the—the free clinics in the Haight and the—and the communes and free food, healthcare and everyone living peacefully and coexisting together. It didn’t last long but—but it was a real thing for a while.

DT: And did—did you feel like any of that kind of ethic and culture could be transplanted into—into Austin?

00:18:58
GC: I—I was having so much fun I didn’t give it much thought. What I knew was that I wanted to stay in school. I—even though there was a lot of fun happening around me, it seemed like—that it was important to stay in school. And I also figured out at the university, that it was good not to get too involved in any one discipline so I had a lot of majors, managed to stay at the university for seven years. I was—I was trying hard not to leave, but the Classics Department—they—they had great parties. And, of course, everybody needs to study the Classics.
00:19:40
So yeah, I think what I got out of all that was just an appreciation for that—that period of American history known as the sixties. Being right in the middle of it is—is more of an experience that I—I think if it helped shaped me at all, it’s—it’s knowing that—no to sound too much like Hollywood—but it’s not weird enough yet. I mean, it—there was a lot of strange shit going on back then. But now when something relatively weird might happen, it’s like okay. [laughing]

DT: So I—I was just trying to fish for something that may not be there, but it’s—it’s always seemed curious to me that Austin has had a more progressive culture than a lot of its brethren and sistren cities in Texas and—and—and particularly with regard to environmental activism. And—and I didn’t know if you could pen a source for that, you know, if it was people like yourself who were in college and ha—you know, were in touch with people who were listening to music and, you know, were experiencing kind of a new culture that—that other people in stodgier towns were not experiencing or—or if there’s no reason you can really put a—a finger on?

00:21:04
GC: I’ve often wondered myself why Austin—where that mystique comes from, where that—that karma comes from. It—it could be the water and we can talk more about Barton Springs and—and some very interesting experiences there with the Tibetan community. I—I also think the Armadillo has something to do with it. I—I think all the post artists were onto something there. I mean, why the Armadillo? Why did Jim suddenly say okay, this is going to be the city’s mascot and—and it—it got worldwide. I think had a lot to do with the fact that the University of Texas is a liberal arts school.
00:21:47
So that was certainly a—a breeding ground for radical ideas and—and, of course, the anti-war sentiment. And—but still, you asked a great question—why—why is Austin blue in this red sea? Some of the sea maybe not quite as red. And—and I honestly don’t know the answer. I mean, musicians—Janis was trying to get out of Port Arthur and Jimmy Ray and Stevie wanted to get out of Dallas. So maybe it was Austin’s a place to go, let’s see what—what’s happening there. And people were coming from [inaudible 00:22:27], coming up from San Antonio.
00:22:29
So I definitely think the music had a lot to do with it. The environmental activism also when—let’s see who was—Frank Erwin was Chairman of the Board of Regents and decided to bulldoze some trees. And there was an Earth First Chapter and Tim Jones and others said, “No, let’s not bulldoze those trees” and got up there and chained themselves to those trees.
00:22:51
So it—it was both the music, the hippie culture, the anti-war sentiments, and—and the very strong pro-environment all came together and—and somehow coexisted with the cowboys too, which has always been another fascinating part of that, whether it was the Armadillo, the Broken Spoke, Skyline—I don’t know how we all got along. Magic.

DT: You—you mentioned cowboys and before we move too far on, I wanted to just ask you a little bit about your roots in the Annandale Ranch, which is a historic 19th century ranch that’s been in your family ever since and—and I—I’m sure is a big part of—of what’s made you, you. Can you describe a little bit about how your family came to be there and what it’s meant to you over the years?

00:23:45
GC: I love talking about the Annandale Ranch but I—I’ll try and do this somewhat succinctly. So we had been talking about the Gulf Coast and the surfing and—and the left coast and—and Austin and I would say simultaneous with that, I was on the same path but in—in a very different environment—the Annandale Ranch. You’re correct that it’s been in our family—same family owned and operated—since 1889 so it’s what’s called a Texas Legacy Ranch. We’re—we’re proud of that, not that I can take any credit.
00:24:21
My brother, Bill Cofer, is the real rancher and has been running the ranch since 1971. So we got out of college and—and I’ve already talked about my clear hippie surf path and—and Bill said, “I’m going to go run the ranch” and—and Bill and I and—myself and my three cousins all went, “Thank God,” because we were not up to running a big working cattle ranch. But Bill was born to do that. So I’d go out there and help Bill but long before that, we would go on weekends. Dad had a little Cessna because some of his law practice took him outside of Austin a lot.
00:25:02
So we would fly down and—and land in the pasture and spend the weekend and not come back till Monday morning in time for school. Mom—my mom—was the la—and her sister—was last generation to have been born and raised at the ranch. So Bill and I were born in Austin but would go every weekend because that’s where mom had grown up. And so she still, of course, had that—that affinity and love of the ranch. Summers, we would definitely spend at the ranch.
00:25:33
So I got to spend a lot of time there and—and saw the ranch both from a—a working standpoint—I—I learned how to ride and do a little work. Everybody had to ride then. It’s amazing to me that some people don’t know how to ride. It’s just the way it was. And I didn’t gravitate toward being in the saddle all day long. I got to—got to be honest about that. I enjoyed more walking along the Frio River, exploring the hills and—and just really understanding what are these plants, what are these rocks, what i—what is all this stuff, the wildlife, of course, incredible.
00:26:16
One experience that certainly has shaped me is the drought of the fifties and you and I talked a little bit about a book, The Time it Never Rained and Elmer Kelton, a San Angelo boy who wrote this extraordinary Western writing, award-winning book called The Time it Never Rained. And—and it did not rain at the ranch for seven years. So sitting here right now, I have very clear mental images of pastures that were dirt and today they’re grass but—but they were dirt. Mom and her friends used to ride barrels in front of the house and—and that was just a dirt pasture and—and now there’s all kinds of grass because it’s raining again.
00:27:00
And so we would walk up the Frio because it was an easy way if there was no brush and—and it was just an easy path, if you will, to navigate. And I didn’t see any water in the Frio until I was eight years old. I—I mean, I—I knew by the time everybody knows what a river is, even at that age, I—I understood the Colorado and understood Barton Creek and other rivers, the Pedernales and the Guadalupe, but the Frio didn’t have water in it until I was eight years old.
00:27:36
So that was, you know, actually, David, I think it was when I was ten years old was the first time I remember seeing water in the Frio. So it was bone dry most of my childhood. So naturally I’m a little bit nutty about droughts and water.

DT: Well let’s see. So we had left off when you—you’ve left college and your brother has gone to—to manage this ranch. And—and you stay in Austin and go into the construction business for a number of years, is that right?

00:28:13
GC: Yeah, I—Bill and I have had a beer joint and—and put some paint on it one day and somebody mistook that for remodeling and so I said, “Okay, I’ll come paint your house.” And—and one thing led to another and I think part of that was being my own boss of—we would work hard and show up every day, but if we wanted to go play on the river or the surf was up or if—if we had to go fishing, then, you know, we could do that. As—as long as we got the work done by the time we’d told the owner we’d get the work done, we evolved from six or eight of us painting houses to building custom homes.
00:29:00
It was either in our DNA or—or somehow we absorbed that because we really had some great craftspeople working on our crew. Some people who got a couple of our projects into Architectural Digest. Hill Country Hays Construction Company was in business from the early seventies to the early eighties and—and we did a lot of work. I mean, it had sixty employees so I learned about business management.

[stop for drink]

00:29:37
GC: So a lot of—I’m not sure where all these different paths converge but I—I think being in that—being in what’s called the construction business, where that finally evolved was I—I wanted to just build high end cabinets. And it all ties back together a little bit—I began doing work for my brother at the ranch and this summer, we will have the 48th work week, Annandale Work Week, the 48th anniversary of Annandale Work Week and it’s two weeks in June where we all take off and go maintain the old buildings.
00:30:13
So knowing how to do things has been very helpful to keeping the ranch going. Also the last job I ever did, coincidentally and—and it fits the story, I put cabinets—solid birch cabinets in a round house in Port Aransas and I kept track of my time and I’m pretty sure I made two dollars an hour that summer by the time I’d finished installing those cabinets. And—and it’s going to sound like I’m bragging but I’m not—I walked into—so that was in ’81-’82, I’m not sure—I walked into that house six months ago and the cabinets are doing just fine.
00:30:58
And I would have bet a lot of money that they would have fallen apart by now in all—all that saltwater and—and that kind of environment.

DT: Couple of hurricanes maybe.

00:31:08
GC: Yeah, yeah.

DT: Well so to maybe connect it to a—a—a conservation thing, I think that—that you served on the Founding Central Texas Board of U. S. Green Building Council and—and I was interested to see that you had an interest, not just in construction, but in green building. What—what—what do you see is the value in that—that way of approaching construction?

00:31:40
GC: Well let me back up and talk about it a little bit broader—the—the story arc that we’re on. In—so I was to the point where I was not going to be able to make a living building cabinets at two dollars an hour. And I thought I would go back to school and get a degree as an architect. And—and that lasted about half a semester. I was—I remembered why I left school. I did not have the patience to do that but, nevertheless, being an architectural student for a while did—I—I could write legibly after that. So that was good.
00:32:22
You want me to—I’m sorry—I should have paused or do—you want me to try and get him to quit barking?

00:32:29
GC: So I remembered why I had graduated from the University and, as much as I loved it, I was glad not to be in school. And architectural school reminded me of that. And it was great. Loved every minute of it but it was—I was not going to get a degree in architecture. And—and I obviously had to do something. I had to earn a living. I had to be doing something I liked and so I went to Shudde Fath and said, “Shudde, you’re involved in this civic arena stuff and—and what does that mean?”
00:33:01
I mean, David, I was that out of touch, having—having been in the beer joint, hippie carpentry business for the past fifteen years, but Shudde said, “Well come with me to a meeting that’s Save Barton Creek Association.” And that was quite an eye-opener that there were people involved—actively involved, passionately involved—in protecting Barton Creek where I’d grown up swimming and fishing and kayaking and did not know it needed protecting. I—I was a little behind in the—in the community conversation.
00:33:35
I also, with my interest in building, I—I understood what the U. S. Green Building Council was and—and I was asked at about that same period of time to help start a chapter—San Antonio/Austin Chapter of the U. S. Green Building Council. And it just seemed to me that the buildings we had built, the work we had done, the cabinets we had done—they were all very good but, for the most part, other than a little rainwater catchment and trying to aim a hole in the right direction to catch the sun, this U. S. Green Building was a new thing to me.
00:34:13
I knew it made sense environmentally and economically, but I didn’t know much about it so I wanted to get involved. Another friend of mine said, “George, you—you need to start something called Earth Share and raise money for all the environmental groups in Texas.” So there was a lot going on there. Save Our Springs was starting. This was all in the early 1990s. So I was—went from not being involved at all—I voted but not on any board or organization to suddenly being right in the thick of things at Earth Share and U. S. Green Building Council and Save Barton Creek and Save Our Springs. It was a big change.

DT: Well it—and it sounds like Shudde Fath introduced you to issues regarding Barton Creek and Barton Springs. And—and I was hoping that you could sort of paint us a picture of Save Barton Creek Association which I guess was one of the most active groups at the time—1990 or so when it was started. Is that—that right?

00:35:14
GC: Save Barton Creek Association started in 1979 and predate the Save Our Springs by, what would that be—thirteen years. So I had—I had some of the same experience of you just said 1990. I did—I didn’t even know they existed. So anyway, I learned quickly good people, former Mayor Frank Cooksey, Jackie Goodman, Jack Goodman, Shudde Fath, Mary Arnold, Bert Cromack, folks from—from Earth First with—I’m losing my train of thought—I apologize—and so there was—they were meeting weekly talking about what can we do to protect the environment in Austin, Texas.
00:36:04
And so Monday night, Save Barton Creek Association. Tuesday night, Planning. Wednesday night, Environmental Board. Thursday night, Council. Friday night, beer drinking. And that was—there were two to three hundred people in Austin going to those meetings and advocating for greater protection of the environment and particularly Barton Springs and the Edwards Aquifer. And that was our lives. I mean, it was—it was very intense in the 1990s.

DT: And what was the concern that you were trying to confront?

00:36:45
GC: I have a different perspective today all these thirty years later, but we truly believed that the only tool we had was to stop some of the growth in the watersheds. The city ordinances certainly would not stop the growth. And so we thought that activism—stronger ordinances, trying to educate developers, although we should have done a better job on that front—would be a good way to have less development over the Edwards Aquifer and therefore, less pollution from human activities.
00:37:22
And I think it’s important to keep in mind that whether one believes in engineering structural controls or not, or believes in what the efficacy might or might not be of those controls, in the early 1990s, it was very rudimentary. So if somebody built a highway, the solution was you put a big concrete box at the intersection and the rainwater runs in it and that catches all the bad stuff. That didn’t work very well we learned. So absent the technology that we now have today to address—to mitigate those human activities, we thought less development was—was our only recourse.
00:38:12
And won some battles, lost some battles. And it was very litigious. It was personal. It was pretty much consumed the community of Austin, Texas for at least six or seven years.

DT: Can you mention some of the people who were involved? I think you mentioned Frank Cooksey and the Goodman’s and Shudde Fath—who were some of the others that were involved in that very early period I guess when you were starting maybe—was it the late eighties? When—when were you first…?

00:38:45
GC: 1989?

DT: Yeah.

00:38:47
GC: Yeah, so—so the new kid who came along—I say tongue and cheek, Bill Bunch and—and his wife at that time, Helen Ballew, were not only highly educated about the environment—Bill, brilliant lawyer and Helen a—a great biologist with a lot of training. I think Helen went to Yale, maybe had a master’s degree. So they brought a lot of knowledge to the Save Barton Creek Association meetings that—that there were some scientists, but I don’t think with the ad—advanced training that Helen brought to the conversation.
00:39:27
I’m sure people would disagree with me—some folks who were there. Certainly we did—I’d never seen in my short time of involvement—I’d not met a lawyer like Bill Bunch, who said bullshit; we’re going to stop this. You know, Bill’s pretty clear about where his line was on—on that stuff. And so at Save Barton Creek Associam—Association meetings, there were—it, in my opinion, became two schools of thought—two people who wanted to work with developers—negotiate the best deal they could and Bill and Helen and others said, “We’re—we’re losing this battle.
00:40:05
We’re giving away too much. We need to take a harder stand.” And some of the Save Barton Creek folks and Bill and Helen started Save Our Springs. So you had people in both organizations working well together, but two different organizations. And so I guess SOS started in ’90-’91 and there were different iterations of Save Our Springs. So I may get this wrong but the Save Our Springs Coalition then became a political action committee to gather the signatures on—on the ballot to get the Save Our Springs ordinance voter referendum to the citizens in August of ’92.
00:40:48
Then there was the Save Our Springs Legal Defense Fund because we knew that the ordinance the voters voted yes on would be challenged in the courts. And now I think the Save Our Springs Alliance—I may have left out a step. Meanwhile, you’ve got Sierra Club and Save Barton Creek Association and Audubon and a lot of good groups doing—all working together toward the same goal of protecting the springs.
00:41:17
So it’s hard to articulate that entire six-year story succinctly, but what we learned from it was that—what I took away from that six years of activism is that I needed to be on a different path. I—I’ll forever be grateful to Bill and others for—for starting that conversation. I don’t think we were having a conversation in Austin, in my opinion, about what’s it really going to take to protect the natural treasures of—of Central Texas. We were talking about different regulatory approaches that weren’t working.

00:42:01
And so by having voices in the community who—who were able to say let’s have some truth in the room and—and let’s talk about what the caring capacity of the aquifer is and is not and why it’s not appropriated—appropriate to build dense developments out here—that caused some hard feelings in a lot of areas in the community, but at least we had that conversation. And the science became very, very important. You had people like Raymond Slade at the U. S. Geological Survey come out and, for a federal employee, Raymond—Raymond was courageous, in my opinion, of saying here’s what the science says.
00:42:47
And had people at the City of Austin doing water samples at Barton Springs. So you had Nancy McClintock and her team from watershed taking grab samples that showed the springs were being polluted by human activities. So that was a big learning experience for the community. Nobody had ever said the springs are threatened. And then finally the famous cover on the cover of the Chronicle right before the all night hearing that had Barton Springs and the skull and crossbones and—and Daryl Slusher and Louis Black and others said, “If you don’t come testify tonight at this hearing, the springs will die.”
00:43:30
And so the all-night hearing—when was that—June of 1990 I think—that went eight hours and we were still testifying when the sun came up about eight hundred people. That was the big awakening that came from that. So, in my mind, it really wasn’t so much about winning or losing. It was we’d gone from a couple a hundred knowledgeable activists at most. In all of Central Texas, you had maybe two hundred people to suddenly hundreds and hundreds, more than a thousand people participating. That was a good thing.

DT: So it seems like part of the—the education about the need to protect Barton Springs—the creek, the watershed—was in the work that USGS was doing and the City of Austin was doing, but it also seems like it came through, you know, development cases, permit cases. Are there any particular sort of landmark cases that led up to the, you know, the City Council event in—in 1990?

00:44:39
GC: I think—I think it started before that with Barton Creek Mall and I was not involved then but, in my mind, and what I’ve been told, that was the genesis or the catalyst for Save Barton Creek Association starting in 1979. Here’s what I do know, that when they took the top off that hill to—to begin to create a flat spot in the Hill Country, [inaudible 00:45:06] at 364 Barton Creek Mall, the pool would cloud up within hours if it was raining. That was the first time that non-scientists said, “Oh, there is a connection here.”
00:45:22
Bulldozers four miles away, the water’s running somehow into the earth and here it’s coming out the springs. And cloud the pool to the extent that the lifeguards would close the pool from a safety issue. So that was—that was a real eye-opener, that connection between development—big development—in the Barton Springs Watershed and—and the impact on the pool. And—and everybody was smart enough to know, okay, well if that’s happening in Austin with Barton Creek, it’s going to be happening elsewhere.
00:45:58
So it was a laboratory for—for other communities as well. The big development in my mind was the Barton Creek Properties Proposal to build five thousand homes, which they did ultimately out on BK Road. That was what the all-night hearing was about, that planned unit development application. And—and talking about it today, of course, we know how that played out. But going into the all-night hearing in June of 1990, we had maybe one vote—seven a mayor and six council people at that time and it was a unanimous vote to turn down the application for that planned unit development.
00:46:44
And that—that caused two years of umpteen rewrites of various ordinances. There were so many ordinances and rewrites and—and interim ordinances. And so, without getting bogged down in that, the voters did approve the Save Our Springs ordinance August 8, 1992. The voters also voted to tax themselves 42 million dollars for a thousand-acre wilderness park in Barton Creek and the Balcones Canyonlands Plan. So I said a lot of people were getting involved.
00:47:19
Just from 1990 to 1992, not only were all the—what we then called the environmental community becoming better educated, better informed and more involved, but suddenly you had 68 percent of the Austin voters saying yeah, this is what we want to do. We want to protect these assets we—from a regulatory perspective and—and we’re going to—we’re going to pay. That was big in Texas. That had never happened before. No community had ever said we’re going to tax ourselves to protect the natural environment.
00:47:54
And that led, of course, to many more—many more bond elections. My learning experience from the Barton Creek properties and then seeing three years of hard fighting to stop that and seeing all those rooftops get built. That’s, again, what led me to think I’ll respect that always, that work, and the work that some people are still doing, but I had to find something else to do. So I began to build the proverbial bridges at the Chamber of Commerce and the Real Estate Council.

DT: Well, talk about the effort to build these bridges and—and the—and, you know, create some sort of confidence and trust with the business community.

00:48:35
GC: Well it—it may sound disrespectful but it’s not meant to be. I excommunicated myself from Save Our Springs over some philosophical differences, again, not that I thought they were doing anything wrong. It was just not what I wanted to do. I joined the Chamber of Commerce I think in 1993, had no idea what a Chamber of Commerce was. The Real Estate Council of Austin was just being created by then and I wasn’t joining to join an organization. I wanted to meet the developers and the bankers and the real estate attorneys like David Armbrust and I are very close friends.
00:49:16
At that time, there was a lot of distrust. And so I wanted to know who those folks were. And—and I had a little bit of an advantage having gone to Austin High with—with some of the bad guys and I hope they get to see this piece. So—so people like Scotty Roberts who was on the Planning Commission. And never met a project he didn’t like. Scotty would not agree with me. He, you know, they—he and Ed Wendler and—and they were trying to protect Austin. I mean, they’re old Austin people.
00:49:49
They weren’t voting yes for every development so I was being a little sarcastic there. John Lewis, who—who is a developer. There were other close friends who were involved in the development world. And yet I was over here, the ragtag hippie environmentalist—activist—and I thought huh, these are my friends. How do we bring all this together? Scott Storm who, at that time, was developing a lot of different projects—Storm Development Company. Well now Scott is one of our primary ranch conservation partners at Hill Country Conservancy.
00:50:30
Well I didn’t know that story would ever have that beautiful ending back then. I just knew my friends in the development community—I could talk to them. So I went, “Okay guys, why are you doing this in the aquifer. Le—let’s talk about going elsewhere and how does your math work? What is it—can you cut density and still come out economically okay.” So that was a lot of things I had to learn about the development world.
00:51:00
Saying all that sounds a little bit boring to me, but in order to build tho—those relationships where I could just go be in room with—with not only the developers but the people who financing those projects—the lawyers who were permitting those projects and, of course, the elected officials. It just seemed like something I wanted to—to do—get to know all those people, figure out what they’re interests were and—and then figure out, okay, is—is there a way forward where everybody can get what they want. That sounds a little naïve but—but that was my thinking.

DT: And so how—how did you build this entente, détente, you know, this understanding between yourself as a representative of the environmental community and then the—I guess the—the business and development industry here in—in Austin?

00:51:54
GC: Well, again, different people might answer that question differently, but it was relatively easy for me to—to build trusting relationships because the Chamber of Commerce, for example, is not getting a lot of outreach from the environmental community. So I was a little bit unique when I would go and say, “Let’s go have a cup of coffee, I want to get to know you.” As—as a dear friend of mine who will go unnamed—one of the—one of the—the—the brain trusts of SOS Alliance—he said, “George, we can’t tell if you’re an ambassador or a traitorous sonbitch, but just stay at it, you know.
00:52:35
And so I—I think my friends recognized that—that I was on a different path, but—but with the same interests in mind. I was still protecting the environment. So I think the way I was able and the reason I created those friendships was so that when something difficult came along, I—I could pick up the phone. And—and others were doing it. I was not out there by myself. Craig Smith and—and Mary Ann Neely and John Beal and—and Mary Arnold—we all had to learn how to go and talk with developers. It—it couldn’t be just fight, fight, fight all the time.
00:53:14
When HEB built their new store, that—at William Cannon and Brodie—and I’ll segue a little bit because the HEB stores brings several of these threads together. So the U. S. Green Building Council—that store has rainwater and that store has—if you go in today and look up—just look up, there’s not all that fake ceiling and all that paint. In 1993, that was a big deal to leave all the infrastructure exposed and—and have a bare concrete floor and have rainwater and—and have more energy friendly lighting.
00:53:51
So that brought the U. S. Green Building Council sort of—that was a—where I could weave several other things I was doing together. Certainly the SOS Ordinance was at play in the HEB store. They set aside sixty acres of juniper that are still there today. I’m still not convinced that that hundred percent compliance with the Save Our Springs Ordinance made sense in every instance, but it was the first fully compliant SOS project. So, David, a good bar bet. So SOS is the law of the land, right? August 8, 1992, law of the land, upheld by the Texas Supreme Court two years later.
00:54:38
You know how many commercial fully compliant Save Our Springs Ordinance projects there are? Two—the HEB store at William Cannon Brodie and the old Temple Inland Headquarters at BK Road and Mopac. So we don’t have time today to talk about the lessons learned and—and why are there only two compliant projects when it was the city and state law, but it was interesting. So that was one—my point really was that was one thing that drove—that realization drove me to realize we’ve got to have some voluntary compliance.
00:55:16
We’ve got to have developers who realize the green building and protecting the environment is good for the bottom line. And so that was—that I think was where the U. S. Green Building Council came in and began to play that role. And people who truly understood that a developer could put a product on the ground and not have as severe an impact on the environment and have different transportation systems and—and that whole big school of thought. You and I have mutual friends with Gail and Pliny at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems.
00:55:56
They began to get hired by development teams. The spinoff organi—the spinoff company from Barton Creek Properties, Stratus Properties, was one of the first—and HEB—one of the first companies that reached out to people like Gail and Pliny and said, “Okay, we get it. We need to build greener buildings, a lighter footprint on the aquifer, tell us how.”

DT: So what was it that when you would come and speak to these developers or builders, contractors, bankers, real estate attorneys and lobbyists—where did you sense there we—there might be some—some places for understanding and—and cooperation? And maybe you can segue into talking about the Peace Treaty of—of ’98.

00:56:54
GC: Yeah. So a—a short answer is we—to get back to the—the love of the water, we began to host kayaking trips down Barton Creek. And we would take City Council members, state representative, legislative representatives, developers, and they, to a person, did not realize how beautiful and—and unique it—it was. I had elected officials tell us—not just me but people who were—who were helping guide these tours—Wayne Gronquist, Joe Riddell—we would all go get as many rafts as we could and John Mackey and Deborah at Whole Foods, would donate box lunches and off we’d go.
00:57:42
And they would all say, “We had no idea.” I—I’ve had elected officials back then say, “George, I now understand why y’all are so crazy about this.” And—and so we—we gained a little respect there I think because, for the first time, they understood why we were proud environmental whackos. And we began to then be able to talk—once they could see our perspective, we would say, “Okay, now educate us about why you feel the need to have that kind of building there. What—what is driving that site selection?” And, at the end of the day, it’s all about site selection.
00:58:20
Do you really have to build that close to the creek? Why ca—why can’t you move back five hundred feet and—and have that natural vegetative buffer at least help filter some of the runoff that’s going to happen from that parking lot. So that’s an example of where we began to have what I would call—what we called then “common ground”—we knew it was trite but we called it common ground—was the developers understood why—why we cared so deeply about our—about the environment and about our positions and why we were willing to fight for them.
00:58:57
And we began to understand that they were willing to—to be more sensitive in where they put their buildings and build a greener product but, at the end of the day, the investors want a return on investment. And—and that—that was—that was hard for us to have to acknowledge that, whether we liked it or not, they were in it for a profit and we weren’t. And—and that was the big tension there. That was a very different approach to—to how development might happen.
00:59:32
We, with help from Kirk Watson—I call Kirk the Godfather of Hill Country Conservancy—so I’m—I’m moving along our story arc here now from a love of nature to—to an environmental activist, to figuring out some other way I could be involved in conservation. And Kirk Watson was mayor and he put the Chamber of Commerce, the business community and the environmental community—I have to pause and think about this once in a while—that was a long time ago. He said, “Enough.”
01:00:09
And we had what we referred to as the “peace talks” and we all got in a room—David Armbrust’s conference room. And what’s fascinating to me about this, in addition to all the—the hard work that people like Lauren Ross and Paul Monahan did on the engineering and—and the science and figuring out what we could agree to on a building and what we disagreed about—was the one common ground we found was preserving the Texas Hill Country. I—I remember vividly with Gary Valdez, who was then Chair of the Chamber of Commerce and Gary was going to chair the—or mediate or facilitate the peace talks.
01:00:55
And we started with the proverbial big, white board—a big white piece of paper, you know, the flipchart. And Gary said, “Okay, let’s put down what we do agree about.” And, David, it was quiet for an hour. There was nothing we agreed about. It—it—to tell this story properly, one—or to understand it—one has to understand the severe distrust. We didn’t even like being in a room together. Bill Bunch got up and left. He was physically unable to be in the room with those folks. We’d been fighting that long and it had gotten real personal.
01:01:30
And so we had a second meeting and Gary said, “Let’s try again. There’s got to be something we agree on.” And as simple as it sounds, we agreed that preserving more of the Hill Country—the scenic vista, the springs, the creeks, the wildlife—it’s good for the environment and the economy. I know that sounds so basic now, but those peace talks led to the Peace Treaty. And we called it that. I—I know it sounds like a Hollywood story but the peace talks never made the press. The powers that be kept that story—kept the fact that we were meeting out of the press.

01:02:04
Austin was a smaller town then. People of influence were able to—to—to cause some privacy to happen. And—and there was a paragraph at the end of that seventeen page agreement that I wrote that said, “Okay, we’re going to preserve some open space.” And we began to try and figure out how to do that. And I know I keep talking about two paths here, but simultaneously at the Annandale Ranch, 165 miles away, I’m learning about conservation agreements with the City of San Antonio and the Nature Conservancy for our place.
01:02:42
So mid-1990s, it’s both the conversation in Austin about there’s got to be a better way than suing each other for the rest of our lives and, at the ranch, learning how our family could put the ranch in the conservation in perpetuity. We did the first agreement in Uvalde County in 1999, the same year Hill Country Conservancy got started.
01:03:13
So we’re having these peace talks and—and had come up with the Peace Treaty and went to the Texas legislature in the spring of 1999 and I like to say, God rest his soul, Governor Bullock may have said words—I was not in the meeting but Governor Bullock apparently thought huh, what a nice little agreement and y’all are all singing Kumbaya, now get the hell out of my office. What are you doing here in March, because, as most folks know who work the land, you got to start that work a year early?
01:03:46
So we had really hoped to codify—we, the Chamber, the Real Estate Council, the environmental community, again, we used those words—the business community and the environmental community. Today it—it’s hopefully not that kind of separation in most in—instances. But Governor Bullock was right. No matter how hard we had worked to resolve our local differences, we—we were too late to get that peace treaty codified at the legislature. What did come out of the peace talks, even though all that work never really made it into the regulatory environment, it was that we—we all got a peace pipe.
01:04:29
And so everybody who was involved in the peace talks got—got a peace pipe. They don’t work. We’re not going to smoke the peace pipe today, but it is—it is a very in—it is a very nice memento of those times I think. And it—it’s really beautiful. It’s got beadwork and each one of them is unique and handcrafted and the agreement, as I said, that we would start working on land conservation. None of us knew what a land trust was. We certainly did not know what a conservation easement was, other than my exposure to it simultaneously in Uvalde County.
01:05:12
And so we thought well, let’s start a non-profit common ground land trust. Thankfully, EnviroMedia, a company here in town said, “George, that’s a really beautiful story, but let’s call it something else.” Great story. You can talk about the common ground land trust, but anyway, Hill Country Conservancy—thankfully they steered us to a—a name with more lasting value, a little better shelf life than the common ground land trust.
01:05:43
Our first website had the old—oh what was it called—flash I think—had two bubbles, a bubble that was the environment and a bubble that was the development and they came together and the springs started flowing and the birds started chirping. That was the—the home page of the first website. So it was all very much Kumbaya there. We were so excited about agreeing on one thing and starting Hill Country Conservancy. I thought I was going to be on the Board of Directors, got the phone call from Robin Rather and—and I’ve not mentioned Robin.
01:06:25
Robin was key to a lot of this—dedicated more than ten years of her life as a volunteer to—to protecting Barton Creek and—and the broader Hill County. And Robin’s still involved. Robin called me and said, “George, you’re it,” or at least that’s my story. I’m sticking with it. I got hired in September of 1999 at Hill Country Conservancy and I’m still working there. Shall we try and stop old Murphy?

DT: So, we were talking about the origins of the Hill Country Conservancy in 1999. And I was hoping that you could explain how the group got started and some of the early board and staff and projects, how it works and so on.

01:07:09
GC: It was a lot of fun. I think I suffer from a desire to be involved in startups and not knowing quite where it’s headed but that’s okay. It’s—it’s the path that we’re on and—and it was a lot of fun bringing all those good people together, being part of that. We had six—it was very formal. There were going to be six founding board members from the business community and six founding board members from the environmental community. And—and I know I won’t be able to name everybody’s name.
01:07:43
We had Mary Arnold, Susan Reiff, Robin Rather, Mary Afaller, and some other folks. Oh and—and our ringer, Nikelle Meade. I knew that Nikelle, a lawyer who—real estate lawyer, who permits a lot of projects, but also represents neighborhoods. And I knew Nikelle was on the City of Austin Parks Board. So she was my—my secret green vote and worked hard to get her chosen as one of the business—the six business people so that we could count on Nikelle as the tiebreaker, but it was very consensus based.
01:08:21
David Armbrust, Pete Winstead was the founding board member, Paul Bury, Kirk Rudy from Endeavor. So a good group of smart people who had developed trust through the peace talks and finally able not only to be in a room and be friendly, but to really work on creating a great nonprofit called the Hill Country Conservancy. We obviously needed money. And so the Stillwater Foundation and the Real Estate Council, Save Our Springs with help from Perry Lorenz, and yeah, that was—and—and Endeavor.
01:09:02
So we got some seed money, so to speak, and the board was very clear that I had to get out of my spare bedroom and get a real office. And Paul Bury was kind enough to give us an office. And then I never intended to be this sneaky, but Gary Valdez, the Chair of the Chamber of Commerce, had a wonderful lady working with him, Ann Sanders, had been Executive Secretary at the Chamber of Commerce for 25 years. And Gary said, “Now, George, she’s going to help you organize the office and get started and do not steal Ann from me.”
01:09:37
So I stole Ann right away and—and Ann came to work with me to start Hill Country Conservancy. David, I—I tend to focus on money and I think I learned that from my mentor, Jeff Francell, at the Texas Nature Conservancy. Jeff taught me early on, without money, it’s just talk. And so I—I wasn’t going to go out into the Hill—was not going to go out into the Hill Country and say to landowners, “Let’s talk about preserving your land” until we had a little money to help those families transaction—transacting and executing and closing on a conservation agreement is a very expensive proposition.
01:10:26
I hesitated a moment there trying to explain that. And so, again, without the money, I didn’t want to start those conversations. I wanted first to—to build—help build a stable organization. We had a great Board of Directors. We had a little office, but not a lot of staff. And so, in a very I think non-traditional move, I hired former Ann Richards’—former governor Ann Richards’—I’m going to call him her ninja—so Fred Ellis was actually her Director of Appointments.
01:11:05
And so Fred knew a lot of people and was able to go to Albuquerque U. S. Fish and Wildlife, go to Washington and secure some significant U. S. Fish and Wildlife funds. I mentioned Albuquerque because that’s the regional office. He and one of our family board members, Bob Ayres, went—went on that little journey and got more than a million dollars. And so we had some money and then we could begin to talk about a deal. And I thought well, huh, looking around the watershed, the biggest ranch I see is Scott Storm, my high school buddy.
01:11:41
So we began to talk with Scott about a conservation agreement, known as a conservation easement, and agreed to the terms to protect that 6,000 acre ranch in perpetuity. That’s—that’s the kicker for families in these agreements. They—they’re perpetual in nature. It is a big, big decision. Our family in Uvalde County talked for eight years before we signed those documents. So it—it’s a big deal, which it should be. I often find myself encouraging landowners to be more thoughtful before they jump into one of these agreements.
01:12:20
So Scott and I and his family talked and we had a big press conference out at the Wildflower Center and Andy Sansom was there and Carter Smith and Senator Watson and bunch of people were there. Mr. Storm was still alive then. And there’s some great pictures of us holding up the agreement and—and we were all very happy. And the next day, the tech bubble burst and, excuse me, our plan to raise ten million dollars—this is public information—to pay the Storms ten million dollars to extinguish all their development rights on that 6,000 acres.
01:13:00
They—they were perfectly positioned to do a master planned community south of Dripping Springs. And—but they didn’t want to do that. They wanted to preserve the place. And—and that’s why land trust and conservation agreements—that’s—that’s the perfect nexus of that family’s desire to preserve the land but, at the same time, they needed some money to operate the ranch. And so we were able to buy those development rights. Well, our grand idea of raising a lot of money quickly did not work when the tech bubble burst.
01:13:36
And, as you may recall, the Austin cotomy—economy took a dramatic shange—change. So we already knew about other avenues to raise funds. In 1998 when Kirk Watson was mayor, there had been a bond election where the voters approved 65 million for open space and 120 million for a Convention Center expansion. That bringing together, again, of the—the two sides to talk about okay, what’s the win-win here? And the voters approved that. The voters voted more than 60 percent to tax themselves.
01:14:15
That 65 million—some of that was available to help with the Storm Ranch, but we had to find additional funding. So subsequent bond issues—as I mentioned, Fred Ellis had joined our team and—and knew how to get federal funding. U.S. Department of Ag. We had to figure out how to go to Washington and advocate for the U. S. Department of Ag funds. And it—it’s ancient history. It was eighteen years ago, but all in, I would say Hill Country Conservancy, the Nature Conservancy, the City of Austin voters—to give credit where the credit’s due—it’s the folks paying the taxes—it’s close to 300 million dollars in just twenty years invested in conservation.
01:15:03
And—and it—it is a lot of money, but, again what we’re doing is purchasing development rights. Families who voluntarily give up those development rights and did not get reimbursed, that happens. But when you have ten or twenty people on it, a property in the greater Austin area that might be on the books for 20, 30, 40 million dollars in value, it is a rare family indeed that says we don’t need any money. Families need money to run their ranches. They got to keep the buildings repaired. They’ve got to keep the fences up. They’ve got to pay taxes.
01:15:44
So what we often find ourselves doing is on a—on a property that is appraised—it’s a very strict appraisal process—maybe—maybe it’s a 30 million dollar deal—we’ll wind up giving the family 10 million dollars, but they get to keep the ranch. So it—it takes a lot of money. When I say the community has invested 300 million dollars, it’s a big number, but, again, matter of public record—some of these—mo—more than one of these deals have been north of ten million dollars—the very complex real estate deals. And I loved learning all that stuff.

DT: Could you give an example of maybe one or two other real estate deals that you were involved with? I—I think there was one called the Bo—Barton Creek Wilderness Park?

01:16:31
GC: So the Barton Creek Wilderness Park—1,000 acres—before Hill Country Conservancy but—but certainly I was involved in helping get those bonds passed. Ted Siff was the Director of the Trust for Public Land, a national land trust organization. And we met with Councilmember Beverly Griffith. I—I call it the muffin meeting. Beverly said, “Y’all come over to Swedish Hill. I got—I got an idea.” Crazy idea, but anyway, she was right. It worked. Beverly was smart enough to get the National Park Service involved.
01:17:04
And the National Park Service studied Martin Krieg, studied the archeolo—archeology, studied the cultural resources, studied the water, studied the wildlife habitat. And before the world of digital—I hope some of the viewers can believe there was a world without digital at one time—we had acetate. So you had a clear plastic sheet that showed where all the wildlife habitat was and then you had a clear plastic sheet that showed where all the springs were.
01:17:38
And as we kept laying these layers, the old historic ranch homes, the thousand acres’ long Barton Creek from Zilker Park westward up Barton Creek became this darker and darker—those acres are important. It was really obvious when the science of those days did it manually, so to speak, proved up those thousand acres were real important, not just for Barton Springs, but there—there’s just some incredible history along Barton Creek. Without getting into the details there, we—we took that story to City Council and they put it on the ballot in 1992 and the voters said yes to twenty million.
01:18:23
Then I’ve talked about the 1998 65 million and actually there were two elections in ’98. And 2000, another election—2006, 2012, and the voters just two weeks ago approved 72 million dollars. The voters of Austin said yes, we, once again, vote yes to keep—keep the Hill Country green and dark skies and scenic vistas—by the highest percentage of approval ever. So, of all the ballots on the November 6th City of Auction Bond election, Open Space, 72 million was the highest vote getter. It really speaks to the community’s values, which is why I’m in this business. It—it’s great to have that support.

DT: Are there other projects that you could describe that would, you know, give us an example of—of the kind of efforts that the Conservancy’s been involved in?

01:19:21
GC: Yes, and—and I—I tend to—to geek out a little bit but I’m—I’m going to be trying to be very succinct here about the Dahlstrom Ranch and this is all public information. I—I’ve said that a few times, but it’s important to note that. The Dahlstrom Ranch is 2300 acres, six miles west of Buda. And as—as—as you said, a—a case study, so to speak, in how the land trust world works, how these deals get done, what is it that causes a family ranch to go from a potential development track, west of Buda in a very busy I35 corridor, to be preserved in perpetuity as a working ranch.
01:20:06
That—that’s a five-year story, but here hopefully is the short version. We began to talk with Mrs. Dahlstrom in I would say about 2005 and she said, “I want to preserve this ranch. I got it from my dad and—and I want it to be just like this.” Twenty three hundred acres, no development. And I said, “Mrs. Dahlstrom, that—that is one of the most beautiful visions I’ve ever seen but you might want to reserve the right to maybe build a few homes or you’ve got kids—her son and daughter were sitting there and maybe someday, you know, they—they might want to parse.”
01:20:49
“Mr. Cofer, what part of this conversation are you having a hard time with? If those kids want them a ranch, they can get them a ranch.” I said, “Yes, ma’am.” And so we had—we had a very quick and—and—and unsual—that’s a very rare opportunity to work with the lady who owns 2,300 acres who was so clear in her vision. It is usually I want five homes but I don’t know where I want them. So the Dahlstrom Ranch is a case study that’s been used both statewide and nationally because we started out with a very clear vision and all the family members said, “Yep, that’s what we want.”
01:21:31
All the family in sync from day one. Working cattle ranch. The biggest quarry in Central Texas. I’m talking about a rock gravel quarry. So monstrous trucks coming in and out all day long. Archeological sites that are extraordinarily important and Onion Creek running right through the ranch. And it’s an exotic game ranch. And so you had a lot going on. So we began to look at where does the funding come from? The ranch itself—the development rights—we’re not talking about—it’s very clear to unds—very important to understand, we’re not appraising what—what you might want to buy the ranch for.
01:22:12
What we’re appraising is the development potential. That is a—there are only a few appraisers who do that kind of work well. A lot of real estate appraisers can go out and say here’s what the ranch is worth in a—to be a master planned community or to be a hunting ranch with a fancy lodge. There are not a lot of appraisers who can say and here’s what the family could make off the development rights. So think of it—we talked about a bundle of sticks. Properties have water rights. They have hunting rights, recreational rights, they have mineral rights—especially in Texas, they have mineral rights—and they have development rights.
01:22:56
And so what land trusts do is separate out those development rights, have them appraised, and then purchase them. And we don’t move those right—we—it’s not moving concrete around the aquifer. They’re extinguished, in perpetuity. So, again, a big decision for a ranch. Once we agreed on the price, 9.9 million and it’s important there to stop and that’s a big number, but folks who are going to watch this and try and understand this—it’s important to understand that the—the development rights were actually appraised at 22 million. Again, not the ranch.
01:23:34
The ranch is worth 30, 40 million dollars. Just the development rights, 22 million dollars. Mrs. Dahlstrom said, “I need money. I’ve got estate issues. I don’t need that much money.” And we negotiated. So she was the biggest donor of the whole deal. She, instead of getting the 22 million in cash and this is the part where I try not to geek out, she got 9.9 million. The remaining 12 million, that’s a charitable contribution.

DT: It’s like a bargain sale?

01:24:08
GC: A bargain sale. It is as if she had, in addition to getting the 9.9 cash, she also had a 12 million dollar charitable contribution and there are tax advantages of that. Let me stop there. I’m not a tax lawyer, but it is a significant incentive to families to protect their land wh—beca—if they can use that tax tool. So then we knew the price, 9.9 million. The City of Austin said we’ll put in a million. We said no, that’s not enough. And they were pretty firm with that answer. So we began to look elsewhere.
01:24:50
The U. S. Department of Agriculture made the largest grant in Texas that it had ever made—4 million. And so that was a big deal. That triggered additional review in Washington—very stringent review of every document—the appraisal, everything. That took about two years. We were still about 5 million short and so went to Hays County. The ranch—Dahlstrom Ranch—is in Hays County. And they said, “We don’t have 5 million dollars.” So we said, “Well let’s do a bond election.” And it sounds almost crazy to sit here and talk about it, but we put together a bond election.
01:25:34
So we did some polling and it turns out Hays County voters felt just like Austin voters. They, “Yes, we—if you ask us if we’re going to vote yes for some money on a bond ballot to tax ourselves, we’re going to vote yes.” And so we took that credible polling to the Commissioner’s Court and the court understood that and so we put it together with a transportation bond. So those two—those—30 million for open space and I can’t remember how much for transportation—was approved by wide margin by the Hays County voters. That was a countywide vote.
01:26:14
Travis County’s done similar things. So then finally we had the money and—and we negotiated the deal and then Mrs. Dahlstrom, in the best way possible, said, “And, oh by the way, I want 400 acres to be truly open to the public.” Well I’d never heard that in, you know, you’re from Texas, David, that’s pretty rare for—for a family to say yes, you may put a gate up there on the highway and people can come in. This is not by appointment only. This is real live public access.
01:26:47
So we stopped and got the National Parks Service again—they’re very good at that kind of master plan and got the LCRA to convene a group of stakeholders and say, “Okay, what’s that 400 acre—what is that going to look like? What does public access on the 400 acre hal [01:27:04] pasture on the north end of the Dahlstrom Ranch—what does that mean, public access?” Excuse me. That yearlong stakeholder process led to a land plan and Hill Country Conservancy and the Dahlstroms and Hays County have an agreement that, again, runs in perpetuity where people can come in and hike on nature trails and learn about the environment.
01:27:34
It—it’s all about nature learning. There’s some extraordinary caves where the Barton Springs Edwards Aquifer District has put non-toxic dye in the caves on that Austin Ranch 30 miles from Barton Springs. Barton Springs is right there in Zilker Park. That dye, when it’s raining and—and there’s a good flow in the aquifer under the ground, that dye comes out at the springs in a couple of days from 30 miles away.
01:28:04
When we began to tell that story to people in Hays County, they really—intuitively they voted yes on the bonds, but as we began to tell the story about the family history and about the importance to the aquifer and—and the importance, frankly, to Texas and I’m hesitating only because there’s a really big story. So an infamous tangent during President Eisenhower days when we built the roads in America, a lot of gravel and the rock came out of that quarry on Dahlstrom Ranch—a lot of it—to build the road system in America in the ‘50s.
01:28:41
So this was a very important ranch even back then. Preserving that family history, in addition to the environment, is what—one thing that makes it—makes us proud to be a part of that. There were a lot of partners in that project.

DT: I—I’m intrigued by this—this story you told about the dye transfer, you know, passing from the cave all the way up to Barton Springs and—and—and showing the connection between, you know, a point far south in the—in the watershed and—and the springs because I think that—that Hill Country Conservancy has also been working on other ways to connect, you know, a pretty disparate parts of the watershed through the Violet Crown Trail. And I—I was hoping you could talk about the efforts to build that trail.

01:29:27
GC: So Hill Country Conservancy had done—let—let me answer that question this way. We had done several conservation proj—conservation easement agreements with families. We—we did finally get together some money and work on the Storm Ranch and do part of that—we—and the City and the Nature Conservancy—about 40,000 acres, again, with strong support from the—from the whole community. But what we realized in 2006—so we’d been in business six years in 2006 and we realized that, at that time, the Dahlstrom Ranch was—was not a conserved ranch.
01:30:07
So we realized that, in order to get more folks out on the land, give them the opportunity to spend time on the land that—that they were paying for the conservation through the property taxes because that’s the big source of funding—the City of Austin voters. Yes, Department of Ag, yes, Fish and Wildlife, some other sources, some creative fundraising, but it’s mostly local bond issues. Well, we didn’t have to be brilliant to understand that folks are going to want to get out on those lands. With private lands, that’s challenging.
01:30:40
If you’ve got a working ranch and you’ve got hunting season going or you’ve got a prescribed fire or whatever, you’re rounding up cattle, it—it’s not a good time to have—have a bunch of folks out there even—even on a guided tour. And so we realized that it needed to be on lands that the City of Austin owned. The voters approved the bonds, whether it be a Conservation Easement Agreement or the City of Austin go buy the land. So the city had been buying land—fee simple we call it. City of Austin owns a lot of land, even down in Hays County.
01:31:16
And, as we looked at the map, we realized well, one way to get them out on the land would be a trail, the Violet Crown Trail. It was called Walk for a Day back then. That was our cute little placeholder name. So a few key board members and I went to see Mayor Wynn and Mayor Wynn said, “Sure, love the idea. Let’s build a 30 mile hike and bike trail and oh, by the way, you’re going to maintain it because we’re never going to have the money to maintain it properly.”
01:31:48
The Board of Directors thought long and hard about that and it’s interesting to me that the reason we decided—HCC decided yes, we’re going to be responsible to maintain it and program it forever, unlike all the other trails in Austin. All the other trails were maintained by the City of Austin Parks Department. I’m not—I don’t mean to sound critical of the Parks Department or the City Council, but you and I both know they never get much of a budget. They’re always under budgeted at the Parks Department. People want to be on more trails.
01:32:27
We didn’t want to fight that budget battle every year. We said we’ll build this 30 miles. We’ll go raise the money—private capital—and raise it and build it and maintain it. It was a huge leap of faith for the Board of Directors and I’ll always be grateful to them. We saw that as being critically important to our mission and our viability and being relevant to the community. In fifty years, yes, we will have preserved a lot of land in the Hill Country, but most folks are not necessarily going to get to go out and enjoy that land.
01:33:04
So we had to provide some access to nature. We had to provide that learning opportunity for two million people who are going to be living here. We’ve got to get more people out—recreational benefits obviously. I’m—I’m stating all the reasons people love to get out on trails. What we’ve learned that—that we did not see then is that it’s way beyond that. So we’re seeing neighborhoods now say this is the greatest thing we’ve ever seen. Is it okay with you if we maintain it? We’ll pick up the trash. We’ll mow it. We’ll make sure it’s safe. We’ll patrol it.
01:33:43
And so that neighborhood ownership of segments of the Violet Crown Trail has been a wonderful thing. A couple of neighborhoods said oh and if you’ll put a butterfly garden here, we’ve got master naturalists in our homeowner’s association and—and we’ll take care of the butterflies. So we have a—as an example of—of something unexpected in my mind about the Violet Crown Trail and—and to give Mrs. Johnson credit where credit is due, she had talked about beautifying Texas highways and she did and the Wildflower Center.
01:34:15
We’re creating a thirty mile pollinator corridor and we’re going to have Monarch butterfly gardens, pollinator gardens, as often as possible along that thirty miles. So we’ve already got two of them and they’re beautiful. Up until the cold front last week, there were a lot of flowers and butterflies. So the Violet Crown Trail has become a equally important in our mission of land conservation and access to nature. It’s important also to say that our partner in the Violet Crown Trail, formal partner in addition to the City of Austin, is the Austin Parks Foundation.
01:34:54
So the Austin Parks Foundation, they get people out in the parks. They do programming and they sign all the documents that I’ve signed.

DT: So, George, we—we’ve talked about the—the origins of the Hill Country Conservancy and—and some of the work that y’all have accomplished in protecting lands and—and—and—and connecting people with those lands. And I was hoping that—that you might be able to maybe tail off with maybe a closing story about the Hill Country Conservancy and then talk about some of your other efforts. I—I know that you’ve been active in the Earth Share of Texas and—and a project called the Beverly Sheffield Environmental Education Center. And if you could cover some of those topics, that would be great.

01:35:43
GC: I—I love talking about all those topics. Let’s see how much of it I can remember and—and—and state coherently. It—it is interesting that so many things, so many conversations, so many good projects, focus on Barton Springs. A lot of—a lot of good thinking emanates out of Barton Springs. For those who are familiar with Barton Springs, you know about the Philosopher’s Rock and—and you have Webb and Dobie and Bedichek and—and just that communi—that sense of community.
01:36:17
And certainly when Hill Country Conservancy started, we were thinking about—I mean, the big discussion then with Barton Springs and Barton Creek and the Edwards Aquifer, not the broader Hill Country. Now, today, Hill Country Conservancy certainly works in the broader Hill County, [inaudible 01:36:34] San Saba and Llano, Blanco, Burnet, Marble Falls, but, you know, and we’ll grow. We’ll continue to grow and there are other land trusts out there doing good work. But it—it was all about Barton Springs in those days.
01:36:48
One interesting thing that happened back then to show the power of Barton Springs was about 1995 and that was during the time when, and I’m not a student of World History, but it’s my understanding that China was taking a very aggressive stance in Tibet and—and there were some refugees—Tibetan refugees—coming to Austin. There was a Tibetan refugee settlement in Austin. And I’ve still got the t-shirt. It was one of those times where I learned there was a whole community of Tibetan monks right here in Austin, Texas.
01:37:28
And somebody—I can’t take credit—but somebody came up with a brilliant idea of getting the springs blessed. And so we thought great! Let’s get some Tibetan monks and bless the springs. I mean, I—I really had no idea. Long story short, sometime in the summer of 1995, we had elected officials, we had activists, we had swimmers, right—right there by the diving board.
01:37:56
And someone from the Tibetan commu—and—and television cameras—somebody from the Tibetan community came—I—I’m—I’m going to say a monk or a priest—I’m woefully ignorant about exactly what—what that culture is—came and looked at the springs—stood there—one man stood there and looked and he looked up to maybe fifteen or twenty of us and he said, “Oh, you didn’t tell me. Wait right here.” Well nobody had said this is a truly powerful spiritual place to him. What—whoever reached out to him said come and bless the springs.
01:38:41
He felt it immediately. And, David, I’m not exaggerating and the television cameras—I mean, the way he said it, nobody left. An hour later, he comes back with twenty or thirty Tibetan monks in full regalia and these, whatever you call those horns that are fifteen feet long and take several people to carry and they did the whole ceremony right there at Barton Springs. It—it was—it—it gives me chills and good feelings to even talk about it today but yeah, he said, “Oh, I get it. I didn’t know.”
01:39:21
So out of that strength, that spirituality of that place, Beverly Sheffield, being the much loved Director of the Parks Department and—and the man who is known for swimming to Hawaii in—in Barton Springs pool by going back and forth and back and forth and—and he said, “I’m going to swim to Los Angeles” and he logged those miles. And said, “Now I’m going to swim to Hawaii.” And—and so everybody loved Beverly. And Beverly was another good example of a guy who—who understood you had to be involved in—in all segments of the community.
01:39:56
Beverly would—would not leave John Beal and me alone until we joined Rotary, the Austin downtown Rotary. So Beverly touched—touched my life in a lot of ways. And when—when Beverly died, we—we thought we need to do something in his honor. We need to really name something after him but more than just the naming, create something that would leave his legacy because he loved to be out there with the people. He’d go chat with the lifeguards and he’d go out to the parks and—and talk about—talk with the people of those neighborhoods, “What do you want in your park?
01:40:35
Let’s design a park that works for you.” After Beverly died, I was with Lois and I would still talk—I’d go by her home on Bowman Avenue and she would, you know, make me a sandwich or whatever. In one of his desk drawers were the hand drawn plans for Northwest Park that’s also named after Beverly. I think it’s now Northwest—Beverly Sheffield Northwest Metropolitan Park. The original plans that he drew were just lying there in his desk drawer. I said, “Lois, we need to get these to the History Center.” So Mayor Wynn did a ceremony.
01:41:13
But even more than—I mean, that was a park .We wanted something bigger than that. So somebody came up with the great idea of the Beverly Sheffield—you said it, now I’m going to—I’m going to stumble on the name—but the Beverly S. Sheffield Environmental Education Center there at Barton Springs pool. And—and as a testament to his legacy, so many different people came together—the Junior League is what I would call an unexpected partner with SOS and Save Barton Creek, and we all pitched in together and had the Splash Cash team to raise money, built the center.
01:41:50
And, to this day, people—I don’t know how many people but the city—hundreds of people go—students, adults—go through there and it’s like walking into what an aquifer cave would be. And so one can go into the Beverly S. Sheffield Environmental Education Center or as we call it, Splash for shorthand, and learn how the aquifer works and really see firsthand all the critters in the aquifer. They—it’s a salamander breeding cap—captive breeding program. So that was a—a great and fun trip.
01:42:27
They’re talking today about probably making a—a Welcome Center, a Visitor’s Center—using some hotel bed tax revenue and other revenues so it’ll still be the Beverly S. Sheffield Center but it’ll—it’ll be more worthy than what we managed to create all those years ago. It was a fun project. It wouldn’t be permitted. You couldn’t get that permitted today, I’m sure of that much. So that was great. And that whole pool with the bathhouse restoration, I think—I think Beverly—he inspired so many great things.
01:43:04
And the lamps up on the hill, those old gas lamps, when one comes off Barton Springs Road and is about to drive—if you’re about to drive down into the pool parking lot, there’s some stone columns on both sides of that drive and gas lamps that now work again after all these decades. In the flood of the 30s, that was the high water mark. Oh yeah, over the bathhouse. The bathhouse used to be two stories and it got washed—the second story got washed away. Yeah. They had dance—Beverly had dances up there.
01:43:39
It was—it was a different, you know, you’re talking about a community gathering place so it was a much different place then. So a lot to say about the gr—the great people of Beverly Sheffield. We haven’t even talked about Bobby Crenshaw, Lowell Lebermann, good lord, we couldn’t have done this work without—without them—Lowell Lebermann, the green panther on the City of Austin City Council. And Lowell was a board member at Hill Country Conservancy and—and I loved to watch Lowell give people the opportunity to donate. Lowell’s very good at extending the opportunity to people.
01:44:19
He was great. And Bobby Crenshaw, when—when sh—Roberta Crenshaw—when—when she would go to City Council and they were giving her an honor one night for her involvement with Beverly Sheffield and others. And I—I swear I can’t remember which mayor and she said, “Mayor, that’s all very kind.” By then, she was in a wheelchair at—“but Mayor, that’s all very kind, but what I really want to talk with you about tonight,” and Bobby began to read it to them and lay it out there what they needed to do. So we need more champions like that.
01:44:58
I—I think that’s something that—that’s missing in Austin today is people who—who interact in all segments of Austin society and—and are in the—in the bank boardrooms and are at the country clubs and are swimming every day in Barton Springs. And it’s those champions that I miss. But we had other great accomplishments in those days as well. And you asked me about Earth Share of Texas. That was another one of our startups.
01:45:34
I had no idea and—and I wish I could remember the gentleman’s name, but Tim someone came back from a conference in New York and I swear, proverbial back of the napkin story, we were at La Zona Rosa and Tim on a white napkin drew a circle and wrote, “3B” and he said, “George, what—what do you think about that?” I said, “Well Tim knowing you and three billion dollars.” So, you know, and I’ve got Hill Country going and we’ve got the Beverly S. Sheffield. We’re trying to—we got to get more money and do more things.
01:46:10
He said, “That’s how much money more than three billion dollars employees in America gave through workplace donations last year. Now keep in mind this was thirty years ago. And now it’s more than four billion dollars. Federal employees overseas, post office employees, Dell employees, City of Austin employees, you know, you name it, they give through workplace giving voluntarily. And so I said, “Okay, Tim, so how do we get at that? How do we get a chunk of that money for the environment?”
01:46:44
And he said there was a national organization called the Environmental Fund of America, now known as Earth Share—just Earth Share. And so we started the Texas Chapter. I—I promise you it was not margaritas that caused Tim to trick me into—to being the Founding Board Chair. But we got together and Molly Stevens at—at Westcave and—and Gail and Pliny at the Center for Maximum Potential Building Systems. Let me think—Bob Van at Protect Lake Travis—George Farenthold—yeah, George was one of the founding people at Earth Share of Texas.
01:47:21
George was—help me with the name—the center in Houston—the center of that coalition of groups in Houston.

DT: Texas Environmental Coalition.

01:47:30
GC: Yeah, yeah. George brought them into the fold before they knew what was happening. Jadeth—Janice Adamson. So we had a lot of great people around the picnic table out in East Austin and thought okay, this can’t be that difficult. Let’s start a coalition of nonprofit environmental groups, go to employees in the workplace and say hey, you know, five bucks a month. It’s—it’s painless and collectively it’s going to make a huge difference. We did not know we would have to get a bill passed at the legislature.
01:48:02
And so Governor Richards was gracious enough to sign that bill. I—I—we didn’t make it the first try but that’s standard at the legislature. It generally takes two attempts to get a bill passed. You do the education the first round, then—then you get your leadership on board and you get the bill passed. Governor Richards signed it, started the State Employee Charitable Campaign and—and we’d already done the City of Austin, City of Houston, some bus companies, some schools, and—and it has raised—Earth Share of Texas raises almost a million dollars now annually to—and all the money goes back to the groups.
01:48:44
The—the administrative and the overhead of Earth Share of Texas is—is paid by donors, but all the money raised by employees goes back to the groups—equal shares. So it—it’s—it’s a great model. There are other chapters in other states. And I’m glad to be part of it. I’m not longer involved.

DT: Well you’ve talked about a—a lot of your efforts from the Save Barton Creek Association, SOS, Hill Country Conservancy, Earth Share of Texas and—and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what the lessons have been that you’ve learned from all these different passages in your life and—and what you might be able to teach younger people coming up who—who might have some inkling of an interest in—in conservation but might benefit from some advice?

01:49:43
GC: You and I talked a little bit about this question and—and I had promised that when I get on my soapbox, I’ll—I’ll try not to get too much tone in my voice and preach to the choir, but I—I do hope I’ve learn—I believe I’ve learned some things that—that might help people who are getting involved in any kind of advocacy, whether it be for human rights or environmental causes or workplace rights, it—it’s important I think to know how the system works and to know how to be effective working within the system.
01:50:20
I’ve said I was eternally grateful to Bill Bunch and Save Our Springs and Earth First because somebody staking out that hard position on the left, so to speak, does make it a whole lot easier to have the conversation in the middle, whether that be a policy conversation or a regulatory conversation. And—and that’s where I found, I believe, I—I’m most effective. I—I think what a lot of people don’t understand, regardless of whether it’s city, county state, or federal government, is that those—and I don’t mean to sound sarcastic at all—those bills are written in plain English.
01:51:01
The first time I wrote a bill and—and saw it get amended five thousand times, but it did get passed, I thought, “That’s not that hard. Anybody can do that.” It—writing the bill or—or the ordinance in plain English is—is the first step. Then finding the champions—I—personal opinion here—I—I think it’s real important to know the staff. The elected officials vote, yes, but it’s the policy aids. I—I—one quick example. People used to call me, “George, so and so won’t answer the phone. George, I can’t get a meeting with the mayor.”
01:51:40
“Well why do you want to meet with the mayor?” And someone would explain to me why they wanted to meet with the mayor. You don’t want to meet with the mayor. You want to meet with the transportation policy staff. You want to meet with Amy, the Environmental Policy Officer on the mayor’s staff. Mayor doesn’t know what you’re talking about. Get the policy people in involved. So, again, I’m on my soapbox a little bit about this, but I don’t think people realize how important, in general, people don’t realize how important staff is.
01:52:09
When you get a bill and just say the congress at the federal level—when you get a bill into markup, it’s the staffers on the Hill running that markup—the—the amendments to the bill—and taking it to the floor. The members have said here’s what I want in that bill. The sausage gets made in markup and that’s just regular people, staff people—lowly paid, overworked staffers. Those are the folks you got to go drink whisky with every night. [laughing] Again, regardless what level of government it is.
01:52:44
I think another thing that—that I’ve learned that’s been a blessing to be around people who are—who are able to always be straightforward. Sometimes lobbyists don’t have a good reputation. I—I think—I think that’s unfortunate. Lobbyists bring the information to the conversation. They are paid to bring the information to the conversation. If lobbyists misrepresent the facts, they’re not going to last long in this business. They’re just not. The lobbyists who’ve been at the state legislature, at the City Hall, you and I know some of those folks.
01:53:25
The good ones have been there a long, long time. That’s not because they know any magic formula. That’s because they’re honest in what they come in. I might hate their position, but at least I know what their position is, I know that they believe to be their clients’ interest. They can state that clearly. So getting to know the advocates for the other side, so to speak, is—is real important. Going and having, you know, Richard—I’ll use my dear friend Richard—so, Richard, tell me what it is you’re trying to accomplish and let’s talk about this.
01:53:59
And Richard will do that. He’s—he’s a great guy. Lot of people don’t like what he does but that’s because they don’t understand him. Darth Vader is my favorite name for Richard. Surely future generations will watch this and go, “Who the hell is Richard?” So—so I think the third lesson and—and I guess the final lesson I would say is you got to keep at it. People call me and, “You know, George, I’ve been working on this for three months and I’m just not getting anywhere.” We had the first stakeholder meeting for the Violet Crown Trail—I mentioned one in the City of Austin in 2006—the stakeholder group started in 2000.
01:54:41
Craig Smith was on it. I was on it, couple of other people were on it—2000. Nine years later, we got an agreement with the City of Austin. Five years after that, we got a permit. Two years after that, we began constructing the Violet Crown Trail. So we were fifteen years in before we turned dirt. And—and that—as crazy as that sounds, that’s—I mean, look at the Civil Rights and what President Johnson did. That’s sixty years ago when he signed that bill. That fight’s still ongoing. I mean, we haven’t made that much progress and we’re sixty years into it.
01:55:21
So I think that staying at the table, being persistent, knowing the facts on—on—and—and I said that was the last thing. But, David, I will wrap up. People tend to think of it as a two-sided conversation. My experience has been there are usually about five sides to the conversation. So it’s the—it’s the unexpected stakeholder who—who can throw a wrench in the deal at the last minute. You—you look at any of the big hoopla conversations in Austin, whether it be a soccer stadium or whatever, there—it’s just unwise to think that there are only two or three points of view there.
01:56:02
There are a lot of points of view. So it takes hard work. Got to go out and—I don’t always do it. Sometimes I get lazy too. But to be effective in that conversation, whatever it is one is trying to achieve for one’s organization, you got to get out there and talk to everybody.

DT: Well you’ve done that. Le—let me ask you to—to talk to us a little bit more. I have one last question and I—I hope that you might add if—if we’ve skipped anything. But you’ve mentioned visiting Port Aransas and Hamilton Pool and Barton Springs and the wonderful Annandale Ranch and places well beyond Texas. And—but I was wondering if there was a particular special spot that you enjoy visiting that you could, you know, explain to us and—and how—how it means so much to you and why it maybe gives you comfort when you are working on these very long, involved projects?

01:57:04
GC: That one’s easy. It’s the Frio River. And so the Frio River and Frio means cold in Spanish and—and that’s a name well deserved. It—it’s the last crystal clear, clean river in the state of Texas. The Devils certainly is—is clear for most of the way. But the Frio River, from headwaters to where it—its confluence with the Nueces is two feet to twenty feet deep and, in those twenty foot holes, as—as the locals say, “You can read a newspaper at the bottom of that—of that pool.” It is—we’ve been kayaking the Frio every weekend.
01:57:45
My wife and I have been going. So this is November 2018 to put a little bit of a time reference on it, we started in September of 2018. The first time the Frio has been running like this since 2007. I—I keep record of this. I don’t keep a journal like I should, but I write on the kayaks the date and wow and high water mark or—or something memorable about that day. Just—one of the kayaks has little felt markings all over it. It looks more like a graffiti canvas. And the Frio River not only because I mentioned growing up there as a child, but it is—it’s primordial.
01:58:29
It—we’ve been thinking about what—how to describe it as we’ve been kayaking every weekend during this incredible—I call it the hundred year wet fall. In 2007, we had the hundred year wet spring and summer. And it—it’s primordial with the cypress trees, the crystal emerald, translucent water—we’ve been trying to figure out what—what the words are and—and it’s not developed. I mean, there’s Garner State Park, there’s—there’s Laity Lodge, there’s some private homes but, for the most part, because of the work of the Nature Conservancy in San Antonio, and this is the water source for San Antonio—that’s—that’s a big part of the story—we—it is a major part of the water source.
01:59:17
There are about twenty miles of the Frio River now completely protected. And so it’s extraordinary to kayak all day long, dawn till dusk, and you might see two homes. That’s—that’s unusual in Texas. So I love it for a lot of reasons, but—but that’s—that’s my place.

DT: I understand. Well I have nothing more and I’m—was curious if there’s anything you’d like to add?

01:59:46
GC: Well to thank you absolutely. .Thank you and everyone involved in project. The—our oral histories project at Hill Country Conservancy—the lady, Barbara Morgan, who is kind enough to help us shoot some video, she said, “Well, George, where’s the storyboard? Where’s the script? Where—what—what’s—I said, “Barbara, old-timers. Let me tell you who the oldest people are. Start there. So I commend you, you know, hopefully I’m going to be around a while, but you’re very wise, David, to come and get the old-timers before we ride off into the sunset.
02:00:21
But seriously, we—we were able to get on video some fo—R. B. Wilson, who is a special Texas Ranger and I’m seguing from the purpose of—of our conversation today, but I appreciate you getting—getting Texans on camera. And it’s—it’s a great project.

DT: Well thank you. We—we really appreciate you participating in it. Good enough.

[End of Interview with George Cofer – November 20, 2018]