Rebuild section of hike-and-bike trail near Zilker Park to cost $5M after 2018 flood

AUSTIN (KXAN) — It’s been nearly a year since the city of Austin’s Watershed Protection Department roped off a part of the Ann and Roy Butler Hike-and-Bike Trail.

“If you may not be aware or weren’t aware of what we were doing here, it’s pretty startling seeing the state of things right now, but when we are finished, we’re aiming for the end of this year, it’s going to look beautiful,” said Sean Friend with Austin Watershed Protection.

Right now walkers and runners along the trail nearest Barton Springs Road and Zilker Park are exposed to rocks and heavy machinery work being used to repair a section of the Barton Creek Streambank. The goal is to turn this large piece of black sand into a large limestone block wall. The redo of the bank wall is to fix the erosion caused from heavy rains in 2018.

“It was a pretty big section of eroded bank,” Friend said about the project his team is working on. “Originally the erosion from the rainfall sort of ate away part of the trail, so that’ll be rebuilt and you’ll have a full trail section along the top.”

The Barton Creek Streambank project is designed to fix the section damaged by the 2018 rains and prevent future erosion.

“There was a lot of water moving through the channel, which oftentimes when you get those big events, which we’ve seen over the years, you can get failures of the channel bank erosion,” Friend said.

And when it comes to protecting the plant and wildlife, Austin Watershed took that into account during its planning phase.

“They installed a large, cofferdam, which is sort of like an inflatable bladder around the area. They pumped the water out. Down to a lower level so they can actually work and they and we actually removed or relocated the fish that were that were caught in the cofferdam so we moved those back into the creek so and we’re also protecting trees in the area, wildlife and you know there’s plenty of turtles down here so we’re aware of all the wildlife and doing what we can to protect them,” Friend said.

The $5 million project is expected to be complete around December 2025. The work is a collaboration between the city and the Trail Conservancy.

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