The AWU Center for Environmental Research (CER) at the Hornsby Bend Biosolids Management Plant is a partnership formed in 1988 with the University of Texas and Texas A&M University to support urban ecology and sustainability studies for Austin. As a community service, the CER auditorium and classrooms are used by a wide range of organizations for environmental workshops, training, and classes throughout the year.

Click here for a map to the Hornsby Bend site and CER.

CER Monthly Events November 2009
Check out what is happening at Hornsby Bend this month. Most of the events are free and open to the public!

CER Lunchtime Lectures
Monday AT NOON AT Waller Center, 625 East 10th Street - between I-35 and Red River.
Lectures are free and open to the public. Bring a lunch and learn.

Monday, November 2 - Kevin M. Anderson - Nature in an Urban Wasteland: the Environmental History of Hornsby Bend

In the 1950s, the City of Austin built the sewage ponds at Hornsby Bend, which transformed the rural river bend into an urban wasteland. However, rather than reduce biodiversity at the site, the “Platt Ponds” became famous for bird biodiversity when a group of Austin birders found four new species for Travis County during their first visit in November 1959. Since that first visit, the Hornsby Bend sewage ponds and sewage farm have become a nature tourism destination and earned a reputation as a site of rich biodiversity. However, in America, urbanization is seen as destroying nature and biodiversity, and urban wastelands are considered degraded and disreputable habitat. This talk will explore American attitudes towards nature and how the environmental history of Hornsby Bend undermines the expectation that urbanization means the end of nature.

For more background on this topic visit the Marginal Nature blog http://www.marginalnature.blogspot.com/

Hornsby Bend Site
The 1200-acre Hornsby Bend site presents a unique opportunity for research and education about issues of urban ecology. All of Austin's sewage and yard trimmings are recycled at Hornsby Bend, which represents over 15% of all the solid waste produced by the City. Moreover, what is waste for us is the beginnings of a high nutrient food chain that provides nourishment to wildlife while recycling these "wastes" in an ecologically sound and sustainable manner. This biodiversity is present both because of the bio-treatment processes used by the facility and because of the diversity of habitats at the site stretching along 3.5 miles of the Colorado River. One measure of this biodiversity is that Hornsby Bend is nationally known as one of the best birding sites in Texas--harboring over 370 species of birds and an abundance of other wildlife, which is monitored through citizen science programs and university researchers.