LOCAL NEWS
A 17 year old boy drowned on Nov. 9 while hunting for Plecostomus with his father and two others near Cape’s Dam. Ross Webb Jr. got caught in some rebar wire that was jutting from the concrete in the dam, and his father performed CPR at the scene, according to Jon Cradit, a family friend.
“The city of San Marcos extends our deepest condolences to the family and loved ones of the young individual who tragically lost his life,” the city stated. “This is a heartbreaking loss, and our thoughts remain with everyone affected.”
According to the city of San Marcos, Webb “was caught underwater in the current near Thompson Island for around two minutes” at approximately 12:15 p.m. He was transported to Christus Santa Rosa Hospital, where he was later pronounced deceased.
Webb was his parents’ only child, and Cradit said they are a “great family.”
“We’re all in the caving community — cavers — and there’s different caving events that occur. One of them is a hydro-geo workshop that is put on every year for the university students, and he was very active in helping with that,” Cradit said. “Any kind of volunteer stuff, anything that needed to be done, he was always ready to help at any kind of event or any kind of activity. He was just a really nice kid. He would get up at six in the morning and go start fixing breakfast for the events and stuff like that.”
According to the city, several steps have been taken to address the safety concerns and to mitigate potential hazards at the dam.
“In 2013, the City received Cape’s Dam and surrounding acreage as dedicated parkland through a Planned Development District zoning case,” the city stated. “In 2016, the City Council approved removing Cape’s Dam. In 2020, the City Council directed the City Manager to negotiate an interlocal agreement with Hays County for the repair and rehabilitation of Cape’s Dam. In 2021, the City Council adopted the ILA with Hays County to address Cape’s Dam.”
The interlocal agreement between the city and county has provisions for evaluating Cape’s Dam, which includes safety provisions, and the city stated that they are in the process of securing a consultant to do so. The city anticipates that a Request for Proposal will be released by early December after projects with a federal ARPA deadline are addressed.
The city has installed buoys and signage to prevent people from swimming near the dam and plan to remove unidentified materials submerged under the dam.
“Unfortunately, signs alerting visitors to the hazards have been repeatedly removed or destroyed over the years. Staff recently replaced signs within the past few months and are working to install more durable signage to ensure they remain in place,” the city stated. “Unidentified materials submerged beneath the dam have been a key reason for the closure of Thompson’s Island and Cape’s Park since 2016. Over the coming weeks, Parks De- partment staff will evaluate the removal of these materials. This evaluation will assess potential permitting needs, the impact on the surrounding area, and the extent of the materials submerged.”
Cradit said he’s just disappointed that nothing was done about the shape of Cape’s dam before something tragic occurred.
“I’m just really disappointed that the city council didn’t do something 15 years ago or whenever,” Cradit said. “There’s been reports from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife that says that dam needs to be removed. I think the Edward Research and Data Center did a study that said it needs to be removed. All these scientific reports say it needs to be removed. Yet the [San Marcos] city council won’t do it, and they allow somebody — some rogue pirate — to go in and dump this wire on top of the dam and put concrete on top of the dam. It’s not engineered correctly. It’s just this half-assed job of concrete and wiring. You can go there and see all the wires sticking out. It’s really dangerous. The city parks [department] will put signs on there saying, ‘This is dangerous.’ And someone will go out there and tear all the signs off.”
Cradit said at one point the city council voted to remove it, but some of them changed their minds and decided to keep it.
“There’s nothing historical [about Cape’s Dam]. Well, there may be a little historical dam there on the wing walls, but the main part of it has been washed out 50 years ago. So the historical part of the dam is long gone. It’s all scattered downstream,” Cradit said. “A kid should not have to die for the city to do something that they were told 20 years ago is dangerous.”
To learn more about the timeline of events with Cape’s Dam go to sanmarcostx.gov/939/ Capes-Dam.
