City begins post-Hermine park cleanup

AUSTIN (KXAN) - Cleanup is underway across Austin. Flash flooding left behind debris - such as trees, rocks and silt - and eroded some local parks.

Barton Springs Pool remains closed Thursday. The water is still flowing over the dam but has begun to recede. Crews are tackling the debris left on the banks as the water goes down. Once the water stops coming over the dam they will be able to get in the water to assess the damage fully.

"This is probably one of our larger floods in the past couple of years,” said Wayne Simmons, Barton Springs Site Supervisor. “But, with any flood some bring in a lot of debris. Some bring in a little bit. Until we get into the water and see what's been deposited, we don't have a great gauge on what it did."

Barton Springs Pool will remain closed for several more days.

Flash flooding hit Bull Creek District Park hardest. The water’s force lifted and destroyed the brand new parking lot. Picnic table were upended, and trees were toppled.

“Big pecan trees down,” said Chris Bounds, who lives nearby. “The river bed, I’ve been told, is rearranged some and one of the giant rocks in the middle of the pond where people used to dive off of, they said has moved 30 feet.”

City of Austin crews were clearing tree branches at the park Thursday. The Bull Creek Foundation is hosting a volunteer cleanup on Saturday. The volunteers are meeting at nine in the morning in the parking lot at the SE corner of Hwy 360 and Spicewood Springs Road.

Other parks, like Auditorium Shores, didn’t suffer as much. High water flowed up over the hike and bike trail after the Lower Colorado River Authority (LCRA) opened floodgates at Tom Miller Dam to relieve the flooding on Lake Austin. All that water worked its way to Lady Bird Lake raising its water level. The water has gone down but eroded some of the hike and bike trail. Some portions of the trail will stay closed until crews can repair the damage. Most of the work will finish up on Friday.

“Most of our parks are in good shape,” said Troy Houtman with the City of Austin Parks and Recreation Department . “We just had a lot of cleaning to do, lot of debris along the creek beds, a lot of limbs that fell down so a lot of trash to pick up.”