Greening Austin Daily

Tubing on the San Marcos Amongst Beer Cans

3rd June, 2010 - Posted by katherine - No Comments

The Statesman had this article about tubing on the San Marcos and recent problems with noise, litter and drunkenness. Here’s an excerpt:

Eighty-one people along the San Marcos River were cited for underage drinking, littering, disorderly conduct and other infractions during the Memorial Day weekend. Three were arrested for public intoxication, Texas Parks and Wildlife Department Game Warden Joann Garza-Mayberry said. An estimated 1,000 people tubed the San Marcos River over the weekend. Between 70 and 80 people were ticketed last year, she said….

On the Guadalupe River in New Braunfels, police boats are a common sight. Business owners there banded together in the late 1980s and formed the Water Oriented Recreation District of Comal County , a taxing district along the river that helps pay for police and cleanup efforts along the river and Canyon Lake.

New Braunfels residents also passed ordinances banning glass containers and plastic containers that hold 5 ounces or less, commonly used for Jell-O shots. Caldwell County does not have these regulations, Garza-Mayberry said

And further, a quote in that article  from Dianne Wassenich , the San Marcos River Foundation program director:

“There was trash so deep that I despaired ever getting it cleaned up,” she said. Still, Wassenich said, it’s not tubing that has been a problem for the river, but the way tubers handle themselves.

I thought this article was pretty interesting because I attempted to go tubing down the Blanco River in San Marcos over Memorial Day weekend and noticed a lot of beer cans everywhere. I say “attempted” because by the time we got there, there was a 2 hour wait to get on the bus that would have taken us to the start of the tubing.  Instead we went swimming near the bus pickup for about an hour and then went home. 

Anyway, the whole experience was pretty disheartening because I would like to think that most people realize you shouldn’t litter, but there were beer cans everywhere, no recycling containers to be seen, and dog poop scattered sporadically.  Not cool.  And from the Statesman pictures tubing looks like so much fun and so pretty in that area, but based on what I saw over the weekend I’m not very excited to go back and try again for awhile.