Last week, the Wimberley Valley, Hays County, and the Texas Hill Country lost their passionate protector of the natural environment and champion for groundwater conservation: Joe Day. I was honored that Joe considered me a brother, and for me personally his passing cuts that deeply. We may have sensed for months that this time would come, but even he would not let us speak in the past tense. Until now.
I met Joe in the mid-1990s when we were both working on the incorporation of the City of Wimberley. Joe was instrumental in forming the Wimberley Valley Watershed Association in 1996 and became board president in 2000, the first time in history that Jacob’s Well stopped flowing. With Joe’s background in groundwater hazard detection and remediation, he was acutely aware of the impacts to the environment and the economy of over pumping the Trinity Aquifer and the existential threat groundwater depletion had for Jacob’s Well and Wimberley’s beloved Cypress Creek.
“It’s all mitigation,” he would say. That was not resignation, but a profound understanding that his and our time to steward our land and water is temporary, and that tradeoffs mediating human habitation on sensitive ground would take all the professional prowess that he amassed in his Austin-based hazard mitigation business in the 1980s, and then some.
When Joe and Barbara moved to a mountaintop near Wimberley after Joe retired young, he became a board member of the Wimberley Chamber of Commerce and wrote its first economic development plan, which focused on promoting tourism to the Wimberley Valley through nature-based tourism and art. That proved prescient and lasting.
Joe and Barbara opened their home to the community with Lookout Mountain, offering incredible food and nature tours into the canyon and the extraordinary seven-county view above the Wimberley Valley that Joe loved so much. He would in particular point out the overlooked benefits of Ashe juniper, or mountain cedar, which he cherished in his “cielo del bosque” atop Mt. Joe.
Joe helped form and promote creation of the Hays Trinity Groundwater Conservation District in 2001 and served as a director for four years. He was instrumental in writing the management plan for HTGCD and had the foresight to establish groundwater management zones to protect spring flow. Joe served later on the stakeholder group that codified the spring flow and established Jacob’s Well Groundwater Management Zone in 2020.
Joe was a child of the Texas Hill Country tirelessly volunteering his time to develop the Regional Water Quality Protection Plan and a rewrite of Hays County subdivision rules. In recent years, Joe served as a founding board member of Protect Our Blanco and on the Blanco Water Reclamation Task Force to prevent wastewater discharge into the Blanco River.
Long ago as a boy, Joe enjoyed hikes and exploring the woods and streams of Rollingwood and Westlake Hills before they were developed, when many roads were still gravel paths. With that same wonder and fascination, he dedicated the last 30 years of his life to conservation. His contributions to save Jacob’s Well Natural Area, and the Cypress Creek and Blanco River watersheds, is a legacy for future generations and an expression of his brilliant, enduring spirit.
David Baker
