A new feasibility study for Cape’s Dam is moving forward, reigniting long-standing tension over the structure’s future.
Cape’s Dam, built over 150 years ago to power a watermill, has been the center of public debate for more than a decade after it sustained damage during floods in 2013 and 2015.
After the dam was damaged, its future remained uncertain as city leaders and community members spent the next decade weighing different options, leaving the structure largely untouched, except for addressing pressing safety concerns.
However, San Marcos City Council voted at its March 18 meeting to contract Freese & Nichols Inc. for a $340,000 feasibility study under a previously approved interlocal agreement with Hays County that outlined collaboration on the dam’s potential rehabilitation.
Over the next 10 months, the study will assess the dam’s condition, evaluate options such as repair or removal, examine environmental and regulatory hurdles, analyze potential economic impacts, and gather public input.
Councilmembers Amanda Rodriguez and Saul Gonzales said at the March 18 meeting they would lean toward removing the dam.
“We’ve been having discussions since I’ve been here about the limiting of funds,” Rodriguez said at the March 18 meeting. “Maybe I don’t understand the nuances because I’m new…but it just feels redundant… there are so many projects this money could go toward.”
Mayor Jane Hughson and Councilmember Lorenzo Gonzalez said at the March 18 meeting their main concerns are addressing the safety hazards and ensuring the study explores the feasibility options without being redundant.
“This is something that not everybody is going to be pleased with, whichever way,” Hughson said at the March 18 meeting. “Why study options that we’re not going to vote for?”
The city has discussed Cape’ Dam since 2013 after council approved the zoning for The Woodlands of San Marcos apartment complex, which became The Woods and is now Redpoint San Marcos. As part of the agreement, the city was granted 20 acres of designated parkland along the river, including both Cape’s Dam and the mill race.
In March 2016, city council voted to remove the dam, but its demolition was halted due to local efforts protesting the decision, including by the Texas Historical Commission and the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce.
If the city had removed the dam, it would have received financial support from Texas Parks and Wildlife and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife for the project.
In 2017, the developers of The Woods, donated nearly 31 acres of land near the dam to the San Marcos River Foundation (SMRF), which has continuously advocated for the dam’s removal.
While the city owns the dam and the state owns the San Marcos River, SMRF’s adjacent land ownership means the city must coordinate with the group when proposing safety-related changes.
City Attorney Samuel Aguirre said at the March 18 meeting that although SMRF and the city share ownership, the city holds maintenance responsibility. However, if there were to be a safety issue, Aguirre said, “There would be joint liability, generally speaking.”
“Parks and recreation governmental agencies generally have a certain degree of immunity for certain things,” Aguirre said. “Certain conditions just by their nature are hazardous…at the same time though, a man-made structure might be a little different,…[but] generally we have some immunity we can assert with respect to recreational areas.”
Much of the debate on restoring or demolishing the dam centers on a 2015 study completed by Thom Hardy, former Texas State biology professor and chief science officer for the Meadows Center for Water and the Environment, which supported removing the dam.
Hardy’s study, funded through a city contract, concluded that keeping the dam at its full or half height would not benefit native plants, and that rebuilding the dam would harm native fish and plant life by blocking their movement and lowering the quality of their environment.
In particular, the study also said rebuilding the dam would continue diverting water into the mill race, further damaging natural flow and conditions, whereas removal would help improve growing conditions for Texas wild rice and habitat for the endangered fountain darter fish.
Tim Bonner, endowed professor for the Meadows Center and a fountain darter specialist, said his research contradicts Hardy’s conclusion that removal of the dam would improve fountain darter populations.
“Anything that shows fountain darter numbers are going to increase with a lower dam makes no sense to me,” Bonner said. “I don’t care what kind of models you use. I can never see the fountain darter numbers are going to be increased by taking slack water and changing it into swift water…[if] you remove that dam, it’s going to be faster flow through there.”
Bonner said regardless of what happens with the dam, which he said he has no opinion on, neither option will significantly impact fountain darter populations in the area.
In a letter to city council from 2017 obtained through a public records request filed by The Star, the San Marcos Area Chamber of Commerce asked council to “reevaluate any and all documentation provided prior to the decision to remove Cape’s Dam.”
“It is vehemently clear that previous studies, including that of Dr. Hardy, show discrepancies that are troublesome, and potentially render the work obsolete,” the letter read. “It is important to recognize that the removal of any long-standing infrastructure can provide a myriad of unintended consequences that lead to unexpected complications.”
Discussions regarding the dam flared up again after 17-year-old Ross Webb Jr. died on Nov. 9, 2024, after accidentally being trapped underwater near Cape’s Dam while swimming near rapids.
Jon Cradit, friend of the Webb family and San Marcos resident, said he is concerned about the buildup of dangerous material near the dam, including rebar and wire that Webb Jr. became stuck on.
“We used to go down there to that location for picnics and church…stuff like that back in the 60s,” Cradit said. “The dam was broken back then, and what was there was just chunks of concrete.”
Virginia Parker, executive director of SMRF, said the official stance of the organization is that the dam should be removed.
Parker said while the city has addressed safety issues over the years, SMRF believes the dam is inherently dangerous because it is a low-head dam, a manmade structure that creates a sudden drop in a shallow, fast-moving stream.
“At the end of the day, the river foundation just has to answer the question of what’s good for the river, but we are human and we can see that there is a safety issue,” Parker said. “You can’t address the fact that it’s a low-head dam without removing it.”
Additionally, to move forward with any attempts at rehabilitation, Parker said the city would have to invoke eminent domain, which allows the government to take private property for public use in return for comparable compensation.
“We will not allow access for rebuilding,” Parker said. “If council will use eminent domain, then it makes sense to go further into the study of how they would do that. But if council knows they will not use eminent domain, it does not make sense for them to spend six figures to figure out how to rebuild a dam that they wouldn’t build.”
Parker said SMRF will continue to work with the city through this, specifically emphasizing that she hopes the process will remain civil.
“This community is bigger than just Cape’s Dam, and so we all need to be able to have some discourse about this topic and still get along and know that half the community is going to be disappointed with whatever happens,” Parker said. “We just need to agree to disagree on some of these things, and it’s unfortunate, but we cannot let this break our community again.”
