Whitewater Springs The Preserve at Balcones Canyonlands...
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Fall 2010 Volume 3, Issue 3 Whitewater Springs Property Owners Association, Inc. Inside this issue: The Preserve at Balcones Canyonlands (formerly Whitewater Springs) Community Newsletter Turn Around—Don’t Drown! 2 Need to Contact Someone Here About a Specific Topic? 2 More Changes at Bertram Recycling Center 2 Plant List for Cow Creek Hiking Trail 3 Save the Dates! 3 ACC Scorecard 3 Can I Reserve the Pool and Pavilion for a Party? 4 New Water Source for Firefighting 5 To Mow, or Not to Mow? 5 Infamous Invasive Plants Exposed! …...Chinaberry 6 Don’t Mess with The Preserve! 4 Watch Out—They’re Definitely Out There! 7 Photos from the Neighborhood….. 8 Calendar of Events 9 The Preserve Gets a Face-lift You may have noticed that in the past several weeks, we have been working on “sprucing up” our community. If you have not been here for a while, you will see many improvements the next time you visit. At the entrance near the highway, some landscaping light fixtures and light bulbs have been replaced and the overly- bright security lights were painted by volunteers in order to direct light downward to reduce light pollution. We now have a container with a door that will keep the local Picayune newspapers dry and a box for disposal of cigarette butts to help prevent fires. Because we were wasting too much precious water by evaporation with our waterfalls at the gate, we needed to find another use for the large “bowls” that were formerly used as retention ponds. Holes were drilled in the bottom, thanks to the very hard work of another volunteer, to create giant pots for the native and adapted plants that will be planted there. They require little water and maintenance and should look nice all year long. Volunteers also weeded and trimmed the existing beds. Trees were trimmed by volunteers along roads at intersections and curves for better visibility and to allow large trucks to navigate without wounding oaks susceptible to oak wilt. Several Baccharis, the small trees that had been taking over at the entrance and else- where, were removed from that area. Our new mowing and landscape con- tractor has been trimming more trees along the roads and cutting around road signs. He is also spraying grass and weeds in the rocks along the roads. Al and Anita Karas have been working hard to make the pool area look nice. Here is a photo of one of our volunteer work crews. In August they spread gravel by the mailbox kiosk to cover the sticky tar and also along roads where it was needed. From left to right: Richard Curtis, Frank Caramanica, Al Karas, Frank Foley, Allen Palmer, and Eldon McGill. Not pictured but also working that day were Oscar Saint, Maury Flynn, and Wayne Tucker.
Transcript of Whitewater Springs The Preserve at Balcones Canyonlands...
Fall 2010
Volume 3, Issue 3
Whitewater Springs Property Owners Association, Inc.
Inside this issue:
The Preserve at Balcones Canyonlands (formerly Whitewater Springs)
Community Newsletter
Turn Around—Don’t Drown!
2
Need to Contact Someone Here About a Specific Topic?
2
More Changes at Bertram Recycling Center
2
Plant List for Cow Creek Hiking Trail
3
Save the Dates! 3
ACC Scorecard 3
Can I Reserve the Pool and Pavilion for a Party?
4
New Water Source for Firefighting
5
To Mow, or Not to Mow?
5
Infamous Invasive Plants Exposed! …...Chinaberry
6
Don’t Mess with The Preserve!
4
Watch Out—They’re Definitely Out There!
7
Photos from the Neighborhood…..
8
Calendar of Events 9
The Preserve Gets a Face-lift
You may have noticed that in the past several weeks, we have been working on “sprucing up” our community. If you have not been here for a while, you will see many improvements the next time you visit. At the entrance near the highway, some landscaping light fixtures and light bulbs have been replaced and the overly-bright security lights were painted by volunteers in order to direct light downward to reduce light pollution. We now have a container with a door that will keep the local Picayune newspapers dry and a box for disposal of cigarette butts to help prevent fires. Because we were wasting too much precious water by evaporation with our waterfalls at the gate, we needed to find another use for the large “bowls” that were formerly used as retention ponds. Holes were drilled in the bottom, thanks to the very hard work of another volunteer, to create giant pots for the native and adapted plants that will be planted there. They require little water and maintenance and should look nice all year long. Volunteers also weeded
and trimmed the existing beds. Trees were trimmed by volunteers along roads at intersections and curves for better visibility and to allow large trucks to navigate without wounding oaks susceptible to oak wilt. Several Baccharis, the small trees that had been taking over at the entrance and else-where, were removed from that area. Our new mowing and landscape con-tractor has been trimming more trees along the roads and cutting around road signs. He is also spraying grass and weeds in the rocks along the roads. Al and Anita Karas have been working hard to make the pool area look nice.
Here is a photo of one of our volunteer work crews. In August they spread gravel by the mailbox kiosk to cover the sticky tar and also along roads where it was needed. From left to right: Richard Curtis, Frank Caramanica, Al Karas, Frank Foley, Allen Palmer, and Eldon McGill. Not pictured but also working that day were Oscar Saint, Maury Flynn, and Wayne Tucker.
2 THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER
Turn Around - Don’t Drown!
A recent almost flood event reminded us that we need to be very careful at low wa-ter crossings and bridges in the Hill Coun-try. Do not cross Cow Creek at Hier’s Crossing if the water is over the top of the “teeth” on the dental edging. Be cautious and don’t try to drive over the Whitewa-ter Drive Bridge if the creek has topped the bridge. The following picture shows the destruction on that bridge the morning after the famous June 2007 flood here. Trees crashed over the road and took out the railings on both sides of the bridge.
Need to contact someone here
about a specific topic? We have special email addresses for you to use:
• Roads - [email protected]
• Firewise - [email protected]
• Newsletter - [email protected] • POA Team - [email protected]
(will go to a Board Director)
Now, THAT’S what you call Whitewater!
More Changes at Bertram Recycling Center
Due to rising transportation costs, the Bertram Recycling Center can no longer accept glass. The nearest sites that do take glass are in Austin, Salado, or Blanco. However, the site now accepts more types of plastic (#3 - 7, as well as #1 and 2), including plastic bags. Also accepted are paper, magazines, and corru-gated cardboard only. Phone books are accepted also (place in the corrugated cardboard trailer).
THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER 3
ACC Scorecard
As of 10/4/2010 Plans Under ACC Review: 0
Homes Completed: 62
Under Construction: 1 ♦ Lot 660-A, Longhorn Pass
Plant List for Cow Creek Hiking Trail
Now that the weather is a little cooler, why not take a walk along our hik-ing trail? You can park at Hier’s Crossing and go from there to the White-water Drive bridge. If the trail has not been mowed recently, be sure to wear long pants. Thanks to Bill Carr, Texas botanist for the Nature Conser-vancy, we now have a list identifying 24 plants that are marked along the trail. The trailhead at the Hier’s Crossing bridge has an information box with copies of the plant list, which also has interesting facts about each of them. If you would like to have a copy of the list sent to you, please contact [email protected]. Also available is a comprehensive list of all 215 species of plants Bill found when he surveyed our property.
American Beautyberry September 2010 Scarlet leatherflower with “hairy” fruits June 2010
SAVE THE DATES!
Our 2011 Wildlife Habitat Management and Firewise
Education Day will be on
April 30th, 2011
_______________________________________
Our 2011 Fishing Rodeo will be on May 14th, 2011
4 THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER
Don’t Mess with The Preserve!
We’ve all heard the ad “Don’t Mess With Texas”. We need to bring that message close to home. The Preserve is such a lovely community - let’s all help to keep it that way!
Now that we have a sand container at the mailboxes, we should no longer see discarded cigarette butts there. But, have you noticed that we do not have a trash receptacle at the entrance? We also don't have staff to pick up trash there. So, please do not dispose of cups, junk mail, or other trash at the mailboxes, or anywhere else.
Recently, a good-hearted resident volunteer spent many hours picking up trash from along the roadsides of our community. This is an example of what he found - so many beer cans that he lost count. Because they were all the same brand and because of where they were found, the assumption is that they were not discarded by a worker or visitor. The same resident also found dirty diapers along the road - more than once!
IESI picks up our trash every Friday morning. Please place your trash cans by the road no earlier than Thursday afternoon, and put them away out of site near your house or garage by Saturday morning. If you will be gone or are unable to do this, ask a neighbor to help you with the task. Many residents are willing to help out in that way, so that trash cans are not left by the road.
Please help us maintain a home we can be proud to live in.
Can I Reserve the Pool and Pavilion for a Party? We have been asked this question many times, and expect more and more of these requests as the prop-erty develops. The official answer is “The Whitewater Springs / Preserve pavilion, pool, and common ar-eas are open to all property owners every day and cannot be ‘reserved’ for an event”. Anyone in good standing as a member of the POA, whether resident or lot owner, is welcome to use our common areas anytime. Whenever we are notified that someone wishes to have a gathering, we do send out a courtesy notice by email to residents. However, all property owners are welcome to use the common areas during those events. Please note: our Social Committee does have priority to use the Pavilion area if they have set a date for an event and we will check with them before sending a notification of any other gathering.
THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER 5
New Water Source for Firefighting Thanks to a group of resident volunteers, including Frank Caramanica, Bill Hiers, Bob Whaley, and J.W. Thorp, and led by Dean Dearmont, we now have our dry hydrant installed at Cat-tail Pond. This will serve as an alternate source of water for fighting fires here so that the fire department will not need to return to Bertram to refill their tanks during a wildfire. Ours is the only one in the Ber-tram Volunteer Fire Department's district, so they will do their training on using dry hydrants here in our community. We already had connections at the pool for them to use and this will supplement that water source.
In the photo at the new dry hydrant are Bertram VFD Chief Bobby Huffstuttler, WWS Firewise Com-mittee member Dean Dearmont and a new Bertram volunteer firefighter.
The first responder for fires in our community is the Bertram VFD; if they need additional assistance, the Burnet VFD is called, followed by the Marble Falls VFD. Anytime there is a fire here or on any property that adjoins the Refuge, the fire operations crew from the Balcones Canyonlands National Wildlife Refuge also responds. We have distributed some new maps of our development to all of the local fire de-partments. The maps show all the roads, topographic features, and the locations of the new dry hy-drant and pool.
Our recent Burn Ban has now been lifted after only two weeks, thanks to some very welcome rain!
Do You Receive Emails from us?
To get up-to-date in-formation about our community, be sure
we have your current e-mail address.
Please send your contact information
LET’S STAY IN TOUCH!
To Mow, or Not to Mow To mow or not to mow…. Unfortunately that is not an option…We have to keep the weeds and grasses from en-croaching on our roads. As you know we spend the major portion of our POA assess-ments on our roads and ditches and we must keep the edges mowed. So we pay our main-tenance people to mow a 4-6 foot wide strip next to the road. The right of way from the edge of the road to the property line is approximately 20 feet in most places and if we paid to have that mowed our expenses would quadruple, but it would help to prevent fire from jumping the roads. As you also may know there are a number of people that provide a large number of service hours at no cost to the subdivision but we all can help the subdivision by doing a little extra mowing when we mow our lawns. Just take an extra 30 to 60 minutes and mow some of the ditches in your area. Heck, if everyone just spent a little time we may be able to get rid of the “Mowing Guy”. Don’t have a mower…lucky you…but I’ll bet you’ve probably got a weed wacker and we could use some help in the common areas keeping the weeds and grasses down. That’s around the bridges across Cow Creek, any of the dams and water retention facilities, any of the rocked ditches, the rocks on Chaney’s Crossing, etc. Bill Hiers, “The Road Guy”
6 THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER
Infamous Invasive Plants Exposed! In this issue we are featuring one of the most notorious invasive plant species in Central Texas - the dreaded Chinaberry! Included on every Texas list of invasives, this tree is very fast growing and spreading. When in bloom with its lavender flowers, Chinaberry can be attractive, but it out-competes native vegeta-tion due to its high resistance to native insects and pathogens. Its leaf litter raises the soil pH, altering condi-tions for native plants and seed germination. It reproduces primarily from root sprouts near the original plant, and over long distances via bird-dispersed seeds from its yellow fruit. Reproduction starts as soon as it reaches the size of a shrub, so it’s best to remove it when it’s small. Unfortunately, we do have Chinaberry growing here. We have eliminated some of them from common ar-eas, but some still exist. Please! If you have this awful plant on your property, get rid of it! It will re-sprout after cutting, so you will need to remove the sprouts. If you must use chemicals, sparingly use a prod-uct that contains triclopyr (such as Brush B Gone®) The page below is part of the Central Texas Invasive Plant Field Guide from the City of Austin Watershed Protection Development Review. For more info about invasives as well as NICE plants (Natives Instead of Common Exotics) recommended for our area, go to http://www.cityofaustin.org/growgreen/plants.htm
THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER 7
Watch Out! They’re Definitely Out There!
These three Western Diamond–backed rattlers were found by Emma and Jason’s dad on September 24th. One was on the road and the other two were in the Hiebner’s yard. The twins are about 48 inches tall, so the photo gives you a good idea of the size of the snakes. Please be careful, even though the weather is getting cooler - we still have some around.
As a Texas Master Naturalist, I admit that my opinions on the subject of snakes may not be the same as yours. But we were taught by wildlife experts that all creatures have a role to fulfill in nature. Just like spiders, mountain lions, and bats, all snakes are impor-tant in the balance of nature, even venomous ones. If the balance is upset by removing one of the components of nature, another, perhaps even more undesirable species could predominate and cause chaos.
In addition to rattlesnakes, the other venomous snakes seen here in Central Texas are Texas Coral Snakes, Copperheads, and Western Cottonmouths (water moccasins). Of course, if you have small children or pets and see venomous snakes in your yard, near your home, or in your garage, you need to protect your family and pets. But non-venomous and some venomous snakes are not a danger to us, so even if they scare you, try not to destroy them. As I learned from Mike Leggett’s Outdoors column in the Austin American Statesman, “If snakes wanted to bite people, we’d all be dead”.
Facts from “Texas Snakes” by Alan Tennant: Texas Coral Snake: Even though the venom is extremely toxic, very few people are harmed by this snake. They are so nonag-gressive toward people that virtually everyone bitten has first touched or handled the animal. Also, many bites result in no enveno-mation because the fangs are too short to penetrate shoe leather or thick clothing. Copperheads: Although they will bite if provoked, these snakes are very docile, and can be gently picked up with a stick, placed in a trash can and removed to safety. Western Cottonmouth: Despite this snake’s bad reputation, very few people are bitten by this reptile (only 7% of Texas snake-bites are from cottonmouths), and even fewer are seriously injured. Substantial tissue damage can occur, however, because their large fangs yield a lot of venom. Western Diamond-backed Rattlesnakes: A dangerous reptile because its temperament is unpredictable and some are quick to coil, rattle and strike if approached too closely. Also, its complex venom is very toxic. Nearly all of the most serious cases of snakebite in Texas are caused by this snake, although few people die. Children and pets are most at risk because of their small size.
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Photos from the Neighborhood…..
Hummingbird resting after being measured, weighed, and banded for a university study
Lunch at Margarita’s in Liberty Hill
THE PRESERVE AT BALCONES CANYONLANDS COMMUNITY NEWSLETTER 9
hhhh Calendar of Events hhhh
Highland Lakes Native Plant Garden Tour October 16 The Trails of Horseshoe Bay and Marble Falls from 9 to 3 [email protected], http://tinyurl.com/hlnpty Food and Wine Fest October 23 Fredericksburg 866-839-3378 fbgfoodandwinefest.com Wurstfest October 29 - November 7 New Braunfels 800-221-4369 wurstfest.com Christmas Light Up Parade November 19 Main Street Marble Falls 830-693-2815 marblefalls.org Walkway of Lights November 19 - January 2 Lake Marble Falls 830-693-2815 marblefalls.org Texas Hill Country Regional Christmas Lighting November 26 - January 1 830-997-851 tex-fest.com
Your comments and suggestions about this newsletter and its contents are appreciated. Please send them to [email protected]
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