Hays County real estate development
There was an article today's Statesman that made me smile. I am not opposed to development in the Hill Country, but I don't like high density. What made me smile was reading about developer Russell Hinds having changed his development quite a bit. What was to have been a 400 hone development has been replatted into just 79 home sites ranging from 5 to 21 acres. Called Mustang Valley, the development will have a pretty environmentally friendly look, leaving many trees and encouraging low water use design. This will probably include rainfall harvesting and landscape design utilizing xeriscaping. The development is just west of Kimberly, making it probably about 45 minutes southwest of Austin.
As large ranches sell and get developed, I hope we see more of this rather than high density. One of the major issues facing developers like Hinds is the availability of water. The previous plan was to have water brought to the development by on-site wells and perhaps by pipeline. The problem with community wells is the demand put on the aquifer. The problem with a pipeline is a higher demand area lakes. Rainfall harvesting, combined with fewer home sites, will be a tremendous help in terms of not straining the aquifer so much. In a good year, there will be no need to even pull from the aquifer. In a year like this 2008, in which we are about 15" short on rain, the aquifer will drop.
Another thing I would love to see incorporated is the capturing of air conditioning condensate. If the compressor is placed on a roof, the AC condensate can drain right into the rainfall collection tank. If the tank is underground, the AC can be on the ground. It may not sound like much, but one home AC unit can produce 10 gallons of water a day. That is enough to flush an efficient toilet 5 times a day. I know that the actual cost of water isn't that much right now, but we should all do everything we can to conserve. We run the AC 9 months out of the year and there is usually plenty of humidity in the air, so let's capture it.