Deep Eddy Heads Into Winter With a Water Problem and a Park Plan in the Works

Deep Eddy Pool's posted 2026 season runs March 14 through October 31, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., with the pool closed every Tuesday for maintenance. As of early October, the City has not posted hours for November or later. Friends of Deep Eddy's own records suggest the winter schedule may depend less on staffing or the calendar than on how much water the wells under the pool can produce. Meanwhile, a few hundred feet away, the City is redrawing the 8-acre park around the pool. Both efforts are running into the same three limits: water, parking and money.

The pool sits just west of MoPac at 401 Deep Eddy Avenue. That puts it inside the West Austin Neighborhood Group's Tarrytown and Deep Eddy planning area, which extends south to the lake west of MoPac. The City bought most of the surrounding land from A.J. Eilers in 1935, and the bathhouse went up the next year with Works Progress Administration funding. The pool has always been filled from groundwater, and that supply is what's under strain now.

Four Wells, and Not Enough Water for the Lap Pool

At the Friends of Deep Eddy annual meeting on May 5, 2026, City aquatics supervisor Callahan Smith described the state of the wells. The board's published notes record his update as follows:

The City's Watershed Department is helping monitor the wells. The vendor, Geo Projects, has cautioned against cleaning the wells out too often, because repeated cleanouts can wear down the existing shafts. The notes call a new well "the obvious solution." A site has already been identified between the bathhouse and the entrance down to Eilers Park, next to the parking lot, where a drilling rig can get in easily and electricity is close by.

So when the water looks greener than you remember, there's a known reason. It also means maintenance has to be balanced against keeping the wells usable.

Two Ways to Run the Pool on Less Water

Smith also presented an early Parks department proposal for the off-season, defined as late fall, winter and early spring. Lap-swim demand drops in those months, and the notes say plainly that "there is only so much water in the ground for us to tap." Two options were discussed:

1. Keep refilling the shallow public side as the priority over the lap pool side, and expand lap swimming on the shallow side alongside general public use.
2. Leave the shallow public side empty and set aside at least two of the shallowest lap-pool lanes for the public.

The notes describe both as preliminary, and no decision appears in the published record. As of this writing, the City's Deep Eddy page shows nothing beyond the schedule ending October 31. The City still lists Deep Eddy among its year-round pools. Expect the pool to stay open this winter, but don't assume the layout will match last year's.

One change already in place gives winter planning more room. Under a Community Activated Parks Project submitted by Friends of Deep Eddy, eight new lane-line anchors were installed on the shallow side, which allows four more lane lines for morning lap swims. If Parks moves winter lap swimming to the shallow side, those anchors make it workable. The Tuesday closures, which started April 21, 2026, have also helped. According to the notes, they've given crews time for deferred maintenance such as forestry work.

The pool has already had one unplanned shutdown this year. It closed June 22 through June 28 to repair a broken fill-inlet valve and fully reopened June 29.

Who Pays for the Water

The City's budget does address the wells, though not by building a new one. Council adopted the $6.6 billion FY2026–27 budget on August 12. The Austin Parks Foundation's breakdown puts Austin Parks and Recreation at nearly $142 million, a 3.9% increase over the prior year. That figure includes $164,000 for well maintenance and dredging at Deep Eddy, alongside a $300,000 cut to the department's Capital Improvement Program.

That $164,000 covers maintenance and dredging, which is the upkeep the existing wells already need. A new well is a capital project, and the annual meeting notes say its cost "would probably fall on FODE," with a ballpark estimate of $150,000 to $200,000. At the same meeting, the group reported just over $90,000 in its account. At the low estimate, the nonprofit would need to raise about $60,000 more. At the high estimate, it would need to more than double what it has. All of that is before it puts money into anything else.

The larger city budget explains why this falls to volunteers. KUT reported in July that Austin was facing "difficult spending decisions" after Proposition Q failed, and that a November 2025 budget revision had cut $95 million, including parks funding. The Friends of Deep Eddy board described the outlook this way in its notes:

"Regardless of how our vision plan is realized, finding the city monies necessary to implement recommendations identified in the plan in the near future, considering the city's current budget emergency, will be problematic."

The Park Plan Comes From the Same Constraints

That "vision plan" is now a formal City project. Austin Parks and Recreation has started the Eilers (Deep Eddy) Neighborhood Park Concept Plan, which will guide future work on amenities, accessibility, environmental restoration, circulation and access across the 8-acre park on Lady Bird Lake. The pool, the bathhouse and the EMS building are outside its scope.

The plan started with Friends of Deep Eddy. The group held a community input meeting in October 2024 and approved a Vision Project framework in May 2025, and then the City brought in a landscape architecture firm. RVI Planning + Landscape Architecture holds the $110,000 consulting contract. Friends of Deep Eddy is putting in $36,000 for the site and context analysis, and the general fund covers the rest. So the same nonprofit facing a possible six-figure well bill is also paying about a third of the park study.

The first public survey, "Discover Eilers," closed September 14 with 70 responses. Here's how respondents answered when asked which improvements would bring them to the park more often, choosing up to four:

Three of the top five answers are about getting to and through the park, and parking comes in second. Parking also comes up in the pool's records. The lot is managed by the Transportation Department, not Aquatics, though Aquatics staff watch it on holiday weekends and recently added a ramp over the culvert at the dirt lot entrance. The concept plan's objectives include reviewing the lot's circulation, capacity and safety, and adding pedestrian, bike and vehicle access points.

The Red Bud Isle result was the most popular answer, but it's a preference, not a route. The plan lists "future trail extension opportunities west of the park" as one item to study, citing the City's long-range parks plan. Neighbors were asking for the same connection back in the 2010 Central West Austin neighborhood plan, which recorded requests to extend the lake trail to Red Bud Isle while avoiding sensitive habitat near the Biological Field Lab. No alignment has been published. The existing Eilers (Deep Eddy) Neighborhood Park Trail is 0.35 miles long.

Inside the park, the plan will look at more shade, improvements to the playground renovated in 2018, possible nature play areas, removing invasive plants, ADA access, and restoring the floodplain and riverbank to more natural conditions. The survey also asks whether the park needs more river access for kayaks and canoes beyond the current limestone steps and wooden dock.

Round 2 Is Where the Choices Narrow

The next phase, "Explore the Options," will share the Round 1 results and present two preliminary concept plans, and participants will be asked to pick between them. A third round will confirm the final plan, with a final concept and summary expected in winter. The full process runs from summer 2026 into early 2027. The City has scheduled Round 2 for fall but hasn't posted a date or location yet.

You can sign up for email updates on the project to get the Round 2 notice, or contact project manager Gregory Montes at [email protected] or 512-974-9458. If you missed Round 1, the project page has recordings of the September 22 small-group session with nearby businesses and the September 23 session at the community garden.

The deliverable is a concept plan with phased recommendations and estimated costs. It won't come with construction funding. Whatever concept wins in Round 2 will need to be paid for under the same budget conditions that are leaving a new well to Friends of Deep Eddy. The annual meeting notes from Friends of Deep Eddy are the most detailed public record of where both projects stand.

Changes to Deep Eddy and Eilers Park, whether that's a trail toward Red Bud Isle, a reworked parking lot or a new well, affect daily life for the homes nearby. If you're thinking about how those changes could factor into selling or buying near the lake end of Tarrytown, Grimes Group Austin follows these projects closely. Request a Confidential Home Valuation and we'll walk through what it means for your property.