Texas Parks and Wildlife

By Connie Swinney
Staff Writer

An effort to restore Sandy Creek has taken root in Llano County.

About 25 landowners, conservationists and other volunteers attended the Sandy Creek Riparian Restoration Field Day March 2 on private property (County Road 316) adjacent to Sandy Creek to assess land and put so-called revegetation efforts into practice.

“People like myself and other professionals, we really didn't think about rivers. They were just part of the landscape,” said Steve Nelle, a Natural Resource Conservation Service retiree. “We didn't know anything about how to manage them or take care of them.”

Sponsored by Hill Country Alliance, the Bender family welcomed the volunteers to their property to tour the creek shoreline, plant black willow cuttings and sedges as well as broadcast native seed and transplant muhly grasses.

Lew K. Cohn
Managing Editor •

Utopiafest founder Travis Sutherland told more than 100 concerned Burnet County residents his festival is about “family, connection and community” during a public meeting Wednesday evening at the Burnet County AgriLife Extension building.

A public hearing on the permit is scheduled for 9 a.m. Tuesday, Sept. 25, during a regular commissioners court meeting at the Burnet County Courthouse in Burnet.

However, many of those in attendance at Wednesday night’s meeting voiced their displeasure with organizers’ failure to notify them about the venue change to property off Shady Grove Road (County Road 200), as one local attorney even accused them of violating state law by promoting the now 10-year-old festival without a mass gathering permit.