The price tag on the Westside Creeks Restoration Project will likely be millions more than original projections estimated due to high inflation rates and construction costs, San Antonio River Authority officials told members of a project oversight committee last month.
A partnership between the river authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the project aims to restore 11 miles of creekways that were “channelized” and lined with concrete as part of a 1954 San Antonio Channel Improvement Project. By restoring the aquatic ecosystems with plantings of native grasses, wildflowers and trees, the creeks will return to being more natural channels.
At the same time, the project is intended to maintain the present level of flood control for creeks that historically were prone to catastrophic flooding.
The Army Corps’ latest estimates for the project, which is being funded with federal and county money, total more than $200 million. The Army Corps’ Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act Work Plan, a bipartisan federal infrastructure act passed by Congress in 2021, allocates $75 million for the project, although that total is likely to go up in coming months, and Bexar County is contributing $65 million for the design and construction of the project.
The project is currently in the design phase and set to go out to bid in early 2025, River Authority Senior Project Manager Rebecca Krug recently told an oversight committee made up of Westside community members and stakeholders.
“All four creeks are being designed concurrently,” she said. “The phased construction is going to start with San Pedro and Apache creeks … and then right after that they’ll transition into the next phase of the project to work on Martinez and Alazán creeks.”
Construction on the project is projected to be completed by 2029.
While the project itself is welcomed by members of the Westside community, many of whom remember fishing or playing in the creeks as children before they were channelized, it also underscores other issues within the historic barrio, said Leticia Sanchez, co-chair of the Historic Westside Residents Association. Sanchez said Westside residents often feel their priorities are ignored or pushed aside by local and federal officials in favor of other initiatives.
Sanchez said the feedback she’s heard from residents about the Westside creeks projects is, “That’s great, but can they do this instead?”
Channeled efforts
The flood of 1921 was the original catalyst for the Westside creeks project. The flood, which ripped through downtown San Antonio and left more than 200 dead, prompted local leaders to build the Olmos Dam to protect the city’s core.
However, intense flooding continued to periodically sweep through the predominantly Mexican and Mexican American neighborhoods on the city’s near West Side throughout the 1940s, ’50s and ’60s, angering residents who felt abandoned and neglected by local leaders.
Their push for change, paired with federal flood control efforts across the country, resulted in the channelization of the San Antonio River and the four Westside creeks in the 1970s. While the creeks were remade to be efficient at channeling water, their ecosystems were severely affected, said Robert Ramirez, one of the co-chairs of the River Authority’s oversight committee.
“They finished it in 1975, and essentially, [the creeks] were turned into drainage ditches as conduits for the water,” Ramirez said. “The banks are solid concrete. So they got the job done at channeling the water downstream toward the river and then up toward the Gulf, but it affected the ecology.”
The creeks remained this way for decades — ugly, collecting trash and offering no environmental benefits to the area, Ramirez said.
Then, in the early 2000s a local champion arose who wanted a better environment for the creeks and his home neighborhood: Roberto Rodriguez.
It was his advocacy for the West Side and its creeks that led to the selection of the Westside Creeks Ecosystem Restoration Project as a pilot ecosystem restoration project by the Army Corps in 2011, Ramirez said.
“His slogan essentially back then was, ‘What about the West Side?'” Ramirez said.
The launch of a new idea
Born on the West Side in 1942, Rodriguez had grown up experiencing both the creeks as they had been in their more natural state and some of the damaging floods the area had experienced prior to channelization.
The creeks had been lush and deep but the floods had been violent and terrible, Rodriguez recalls.
“There used to be thousands of the crawdads in the creeks, thousands, and we would fish for them and eat them,” he said. “I remember trying to save some of our chickens in one of the floods, and hearing the horrible sound an animal makes when it knows it’s about to die.”
Throughout his education and career, Rodriguez remained heavily involved within the Westside community, serving on the city’s Linear Creeks Parkway Advisory Board. During his time on the board, Rodriguez successfully advocated for the inclusion of the Westside creeks by name — the Alazán, Apache, Martinez and San Pedro — in the bond funding for creekway improvements approved by voters in 2010.
In 2000, Rodriguez ran for the San Antonio River Authority’s Board of Directors, where he served for two terms. He advocated for the restoration of all four Westside creeks, with his efforts leading to the formation of the Westside Creeks Restoration Oversight Committee in 2008.
Rodriguez’s work led to the Corps selecting the Westside creeks as a pilot ecosystem restoration project in 2011, officially launching the Westside Creeks Ecosystem Restoration Project in 2012 with a feasibility study.
Although he retired from the River Authority’s board in 2013, Rodriguez remained involved in the project’s progression, helping it to secure federal and county funding.
“The Westside Creeks Ecosystem Restoration Project is what the feds call it,” Ramirez said. “Now we want it to be called the Roberto Rodriguez Westside Ecosystem Restoration Project.”
Asked how he felt about the possibility of the project taking on his name, Rodriguez turned teary-eyed.
“It would be such an honor,” he said.
Changing costs
Rising costs are making the project nearly twice as expensive as original estimates predicted, but officials are hopeful this won’t change the projected timeline of the project too much.
The original cost estimates in 2014 amounted to roughly $118 million, the River Authority’s Interim Deputy Director of Government Affairs Brian Mast said. With the $75 million in federal funding and an initial $40 million from the county, the project was considered fully funded as of 2022.
Since then, however, rising construction costs and inflation have driven the estimated cost up to $200 million, Mast said. This spring, the Army Corps will seek approval to proceed with the project’s higher cost, said River Authority General Manager Derek Boese.
A delegation from San Antonio that included River Authority staff, Bexar County Judge Peter Sakai, Commissioner Justin Rodriguez (Pct. 2) and Corps staff visited Washington, D.C., last month and spoke with federal leaders about the project, many of whom still seemed optimistic about the project, Mast said.
“While in D.C., nobody batted an eye knowing that there were increased costs — they’re seeing this across the nation,” he told the committee, referring to other large infrastructure projects.
The county has also allocated additional funds to the project, Justin Rodriguez told the San Antonio Report. Over the county’s last few budget cycles, an additional $25 million has been committed to the project, he said.
“It’s got my full commitment,” he said.
What’s ahead
With survey work by River Authority staff complete and that data delivered to the Corps’ design team, the design phase of the project is “full steam ahead,” Krug said.
River Authority staff are currently working to gather soil data for constructing foundations, and Corps staff are reviewing the data and findings, Krug said.
The Corps is also working with a third party to perform a “cultural resources survey” and archeological survey of the area that is mandated by the Texas Historical Commission. Those will continue through the construction phase, Krug said.
Additional community input meetings will be held likely in late spring or early summer after the design work is 65% complete, she said.
The design phase for all four creeks is expected to be finished by the end of 2025, Krug said. Phased construction is expected to start with the San Pedro and Apache creeks in early 2026 and go through 2027, she added. Remediation work still needs to be done around Apache Creek to decontaminate soil that has heavy metals in it such as lead and dispose of it properly, Krug said.
Phase two will include the work on Martinez and Alazán creeks, she said, with a projected finish date in 2029.
Mi barrio no se vende
Sitting outside on her mother’s porch with her daughter, Dolores Perez Gonzalez watches her two grandsons play with a football on the front lawn while her husband mows the grass. Beyond the property is a newly poured sidewalk along Apache Creek.
Perez Gonzalez said she’s never heard of the Westside creeks project, despite her family’s proximity to it, but said she is in favor of seeing the creeks cleaned up and made more natural.
“I like to sit out here, the kids like to play out here,” she said.
While the project itself seems welcome to most area residents, it also reflects a changing West Side, Sanchez said.
As a whole, gentrification — the process whereby the character of a historical urban area is changed by new people moving in — is happening on the near West Side, which worries some longtime residents such as Sanchez. Signs declaring “Mi barrio no se vende” or “My neighborhood is not for sale” dot some houses and yards.
“The frustration is that we’re ignored because we don’t have the power, the wealth that the developers have,” she said. “So whatever is being done in our neighborhood typically is not for us.”
Sanchez worries the changes happening could see residents getting pushed out of their homes if property values rise.
Ramirez said the city and county have made strides in this area and that he hopes Westside residents take advantage of programs available to them such as homeowners credits, homestead exemptions and tax deductions.
“What we need is a right of first refusal for Westside residents” as far as which businesses come into the community, Ramirez said.
Sanchez’s ideas seemed aligned; she said she wants to see a larger restoration on the Westside that includes bringing back the tienditas and casitas — little stores and homes owned by neighborhood residents.
“The mayor believes you can’t improve without bringing in developers,” she said. “But that’s like taking a drug. The drug may cure something, but then the side effects may kill something else.”
Justin Rodriguez is hopeful the project can be a first step towards reparations.
“I get the skepticism, right? It comes from decades of being overlooked and neglected,” he said. “But in this particular instance, I think that it’s an opportunity for residents of Precinct 2 and to the West Side to really take advantage of. [This is] an investment that will pay dividends, not just now — but into the future.”
