Construction continues to ramp up on the I-35 Capital Express Central project through downtown and Central Austin, but with that construction comes challenges for nearby businesses and community organizations.

Among those raising concerns is Festival Beach Food Forest, which said the construction could affect its nearby green spaces.

The organization, located on city park land near Lady Bird Lake, has spent the past decade cultivating a public food forest where Austinites can forage for free produce. But now, organizers told KVUE that a temporary wastewater pipeline relocation tied to the highway expansion could destroy a portion of the site.

“We have peach trees. All of these guys will be full of fruit in the summer,” said Angie Holiday, the program manager for Fruitful Commons, the nonprofit that oversees the forest. “People just love to come here. It’s an oasis, honestly, in the middle of the city.”

However, that oasis may soon be disrupted. According to the organization, the pipeline trench would cut through a section of the forest that has been under active improvement since a city-approved expansion in 2021. Holiday said the team was only notified about the construction about a month before it was set to begin.

“It’s not just that we have over 90 trees and shrubs directly in the line of fire from this wastewater pipe, but we're also going to see the impacts of ripping out this ecosystem that we've spent the last year and a half creating that involves soil and irrigation lines,” said Angelina Alanis, communications coordinator for the Festival Beach Food Forest.

The nonprofit is now calling for an immediate pause on the project in the area while it works with the city of Austin and the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) to find a solution.

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Read the full story at our news partner KVUE.com.