Liz Carpenter Fountain fans fed up

AUSTIN (KXAN) - The natives are getting restless, not an unusual development in the life of Austinites. Many of these natives, though, are not usually the restless types. So what's got them so agitated?

Well, it's the dried up, broken down, utterly-boring-to-look-at Liz Carpetner Fountain at Austin's Butler Park. The fountain is a jewel in the city's park system, or at least it was. It was such a jewel, in fact, that everyone, it seemed, wanted a piece of it.

They came from all corners of the city and beyond to admire the colored lights illuminating towers of water that pulsated in unpredictable patterns at night. On hot summer days, they came to stand, sit and romp in those same bursts of cool water. Many of them, while enjoying the fountain, also thought about the woman it is named for, the late Liz Carpenter, former press secretary to Lady Bird Johnson, when she served the nation as First Lady of the land.

"She was surprised and very pleased that they were naming a place after her in Austin," said Barbara Sutherland, Carpenter's niece.

Jennifer Hill Robenalt, a friend of Carpenter's who once lived in her guest house for four years, is horrified to see the dry fountain, and not just because of her connection to her mentor. Robenalt is also thinking about her three year-old son, Benjamin, who sorely misses the dancing water.

"What we're saying is, 'Fix it; just fix it,'" she said.

Her husband, Fritz Robenalt, agrees.

"Liz was very proud of it," he recalled. "I mean, she loved the fact that families and kids came here to play; that was something that just gave her a lot of joy, you know. She was just really pleased with that."

Another frequent visitor to Butler Park is Rachel Muir. She often brings her two three year-old twins so they can enjoy the fountain.

"This is a namesake to Liz Carpenter and we owe it to Liz to fix these fountains and make sure that these fountains can continue to be the fabulous place for the community that they are."

So with all this clamoring, why is a fix for the broken fountain so difficult to come by? Well, it has to do, in part, with the phenomenon of getting loved to death. The filtration system that is supposed to keep dirt and grass and other contaminants out of the water turned out to be incapable of handling such a high volume of traffic.

"Not only do you have a maintenance situation every day, where you're having to go in and clean it, but the system is actually shutting itself down because it's not able to keep up," said Tom Nelson, the city's aquatics division manager.

So Nelson and other city staff members are busy these days meeting with engineers and contractors, in search of the right mix of tools and recipes to bake up a solution, before a sun-baked public bakes them. Then there's the money issue: The cost of repairs is estimated to come in as high as $800,000, including other modifications required by a new state law mandating tough health standards for public water interaction features. So part of the delay can be traced to efforts to reduce that cost as much as possible.

"We are on the fast track of getting this thing fixed," he said, "and we're looking at all the options right now to see what the best fix is. 100-degree days are just around the corner, so we are working quickly to try to facilitate that."

So what does "fast track" mean in that context. Nelson refuses to be tied down.

"What it means is that we're going to be working as fast as we possibly can to get this thing up and running, is what I'm saying," he smiled.

It is not lost on Nelson, though, that people are watching closely, and in any case, Hill Robenalt is full of reminders.

"I started a Facebook group about it to try to, you know, get some dialogue going about it and within one week, we had 500 people on our group."

Now Robenalt is urging people on that Facebook page to show up for a public protest at the fountain at high noon Sunday. The water pressure is off, but the political pressure is getting hot.