Photos and videos of people traipsing through the Austin City Limits Music Festival wearing rain boots, ponchos, or no shoes at all circulated online last week.
The Austin area received several inches of rain leading up to and during the first weekend of the event, leaving piles of mud and rain puddles in Zilker Park. The grounds were so saturated that the festival delayed opening Saturday so teams could prepare the grounds for visitors.
The scene muddied the waters about the state of the park's Great Lawn. Council Member Ryan Alter, whose district includes Zilker Park, even released a statement last weekend calling the damage to the lawn "unacceptable" and demanding "assurances that it will never happen again."
But he backed down from those initial claims in a subsequent interview with KUT News.
"I've heard the lawn is in better shape than we all probably would guess," Alter said on Wednesday after speaking with city and festival staff. "It's still very brown and doesn't look great, but underneath that mud and dirt is actually still healthy grass."
In other words, the pictures of massive mud piles that went viral on social media illustrate a very normal and predictable occurrence: When lots of rain falls on a lot of grass and soil, and thousands of people are trampling on top of it, things can get pretty gross.
ACL Fest brings in thousands of people each year, along with thousands of pounds of equipment for staging, vendor and food booths and staffing spaces.
Even when it doesn't rain, the weight of all those humans and hardware compacts the soil underneath Zilker Park, which means the grass on top of it has less space to hold air, water and nutrients. This happens not just during ACL, but during other events that happen at Zilker Park throughout the year, including Kite Fest, Blues on the Green and the Trail of Lights.
The city says it devotes considerable resources to restoring the lawn after each of these events to ensure it stays healthy and green, including deploying teams before and after ACL to aerate, irrigate and fertilize the lawn.
In a statement released Wednesday, the Austin Parks and Recreation Department also noted the company that produces ACL, called C3 Presents, foots the bill for that work after the festival is over. That bill was about $20,000 in 2024.
"Strict operational and contractual safeguards are in place to guarantee full park restoration at zero cost to taxpayers," the statement said.
In another statement released Friday, the department said city staff are working "around the clock" to prepare for the second weekend of ACL by clearing the grounds of all mulch and equipment and giving them time to rest and dry out. They also said work crews had begun "laying down artificial turf in high traffic areas prone to excessive dust."
Weekend 2 of ACL Fest kicks off Friday. Once the festival is over, the city will close the lawn for several weeks for annual maintenance and restoration.
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