Texas Coastal Issues

[MichaelBaranows]

I figured a few of yall might want to know. There is going to be a little get together to talk about some Texas Coastal issues for the next few days.

http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press2006/pr082306.htm

Hopefully something will really happen.

[JLittle44]

Wish they were taking public comment, but at least they're talking about it. In the last three years we have seen over 40 feet of erosion in front of the house on Surfside. Denise and I would sit on the bulkhead near one house like a park bench with a good 20' of sand between us and the surf at high tide watching the sunrise. Now that bulkhead is at shoulder-level when you walk by and the water laps it at low tide. Most of the other houses on Beach Drive are in the water now. My uncle says that 30 years ago there was actually another street and row of houses in front of that.

Erosion is natural I suppose, but there won't be much of an intracoastal without the barrier islands.

[intotheblue]

Originally Posted by MichaelBaranows

I figured a few of yall might want to know. There is going to be a little get together to talk about some Texas Coastal issues for the next few days.

http://www.house.gov/paul/press/press2006/pr082306.htm

Hopefully something will really happen.

Let's hope that 4 o'clock meeting today goes real well for us... and that they get busy... hopefully filling in the hole in the Colorado R. East Jetty and dredging the channel!!!

[John Galt]

Hope they dredge the channel in Matagorda Bay...couple of times, we've had to get out and push.

[MichaelBaranows]

I haven't heard anything about the meeting in Matty but The Facts has an article about the visit of Assistant Secretary of the Army John Paul Woodley Jr. to the Freeport area. I hope from what he has seen over the last few days that things will start to happen. Cause I would really like to see both Colorado and San Bendard mouths openned back up.



Assistant Army Secretary visits county

By Velda Hunter
The Facts


Published September 1, 2006

FREEPORT — The depths of Port Freeport eventually led to a walk on the San Bernard River for the man who oversees issues such as conservation, flood control, navigation and shore protection for the U.S. Army’s civil works program.

Assistant Secretary of the Army John Paul Woodley Jr. visited Freeport as he swept through the state’s coastal areas. His stop Thursday at Port Freeport and the San Bernard River came as the 2008 budget year approaches.

The early morning gathering served as part of a “continual education process” to keep the secretary and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers aware of the port’s projects and the importance of having the channel dredged, said A.J. “Pete” Reixach Jr., the port’s executive director.

The port is planning to widen and deepen its channel from 45 feet deep to about 55 to 60 feet as it prepares for a slew of projects either on the drawing board or in the works.

Freeport LNG’s liquefied natural gas site, a seventh port berth and American Rice/Grupo SOS’s expansion to include an olive oil bottling plant, rice-packaging plant and a fully automated warehouse are among port projects.

Calling the port a huge regional “economic engine,” Reixach pointed out 970 jobs were directly created at public terminals and 10,161 at private terminals at the port, based on a study conducted by Martin Associates of Lancaster, Pa.

“Port Freeport is on the rise and we want to position ourselves to be one of the major facilities on the Gulf Coast, and with your help, I think we can get there,” Reixach said.

Having learned much, Woodley said he’d take that knowledge back to Washington.

“From what I’ve seen, it’s important to Texas. It’s important to the region. It’s important to the Gulf, but also it’s important to the nation as a whole,” Woodley said of the port.

His comments came after leaders from ConocoPhillips, Dow Chemical Co. and Freeport LNG spoke about the need to have the channel widened and deepened.

Congressman Ron Paul, R-Surfside Beach, added that everyone has an interest at the port.

“It has made great strides and it looks to me like it’s going to continue,” Paul said.

Before boarding a boat departing the port, Reixach told Woodley he would see containers of fruit and bags of rice bound for Iraq. But what he couldn’t see would be the infrastructure in the ground from companies such as ConocoPhillips, Teppco, Dow Chemical and Freeport LNG.

“All of that’s infrastructure that’s in the ground and not portable. It’s not going anywhere,” Reixach said. “It’s critical to us to keep that channel dredged out to support these facilities that support the energy policy that goes throughout this country.”

However, the port isn’t the only group wanting to move earth.

Aboard two boats, Friends of the River San Bernard took groups — including Woodley — from 48-foot-deep water into an 11.5-foot-deep channel, going from port territory down the Intracoastal Waterway. Passing Freeport LNG’s site under construction at Quintana and later the 275-foot-tall MODU Zeus abandoned drilling rig, Woodley and other guests got a chance to see a slice of the county’s coastal community.

They also got a chance to see what’s left of the San Bernard River’s mouth and learn about a once thriving community that is suffering because most of its businesses washed away as the mouth clogged.

“Water goes around the bend then it just stops,” said Darrell Powell, a Friends of the River member. “Rita put the finishing touches on it.”

Standing on the shore, Powell said the water was about 3 feet deep near where he stood — low enough to walk to the other side of the river. Down the river, another member estimated the flow stopped about 400 feet from the Gulf.

“It’s amazing. The river is just stopped up like somebody put a cork in it,” Woodley said. “We certainly need to consider the implications of that for navigation and the whole ecosystem.”

Along the journey, Roy Edwards — who has led the effort to reopen the river’s mouth — showed photos of the river running dry, barges having difficulty maneuvering and where businesses used to exist. He wants to restore the river to where it was in the 1920s, he said, and use sand to rebuild dunes in the area or relocate it to other nearby coastal communities in need of sand.

If Woodley is looking for a project, Edwards had plenty of information supporting his cause.

With that and the informative breakfast meeting at the port’s administration building, Brazoria County left Woodley with much to think about.

[Seahuntress]

Thanks for posting on that Michael.

[MichaelBaranows]

This was posted over on 2cool by Coastal Outfitter about Matagorda Jetties..

It was explained to me yesterday that the meeting went something like.........

yes the jetties are silted in and the dredges are all out of state

yes they are built wrong

yes they are going to be re-built to the regular solid jetty and extended

yes a recent study has been already completed

there is $2 mil already allocated, total cost to rebuild 8$ mil, other $6 mil to be searched for , but the repair is to start with the first $2 mil soon, it will not be for dredging.

the main issue is to move the curent rock or bring in new.........that is being reviewed for best $ use of funds.

funny what gets done in a election year..........................

[Seahuntress]

Election year that is funny.

They were working on the dreding before Katrina hit. Then they moved everything to Louisana. We had no problems getting out of there until Katrina. It's deeper water, so I love going out of Matagorda and not having to trailer to Freeport. Bigger A.J.s about 40 miles out too. Of course I love the wreck diving too with those "Big Snappers"

[Wooley]

I feel for you guys out there on the Gulf Coast of Texas. I work for the Coastal Engineering that did the geotechnical sand search for beach nourishment in Surfside, Treasure Island, and Oyster Creek area.

We also did some coring at the San Bernard Sand Spit and the Colorado River Mouth as potential borrow sites for a beach nourishment at Sargent Beach. Here in FL we have our share of erosion but nothing like what I saw over there.

[intotheblue]

Originally Posted by Wooley

I feel for you guys out there on the Gulf Coast of Texas. I work for the Coastal Engineering that did the geotechnical sand search for beach nourishment in Surfside, Treasure Island, and Oyster Creek area.

We also did some coring at the San Bernard Sand Spit and the Colorado River Mouth as potential borrow sites for a beach nourishment at Sargent Beach. Here in FL we have our share of erosion but nothing like what I saw over there.

Hmmmm, they can take all the "sand" they want out of the mouth of the Colorado.... but I have been afraid they are just trying to acquire "more" beach front by letting the river banks close in!

[MichaelBaranows]

Here is an article from the Matagorda County Advocate from last week.

U.S. Corps of Engineers official tours Matagorda County sand-choked ports
September 7, 2006
Judy triplett
Matagorda County officials got a chance last week to show the highest ranking civilian in the U.S. Corps of Engineers the county's sand-choked ports, caused by lack of federal funding to keep them dredged.
With the tour of the ports, officials also explained how the non-reliable channels were hurting the county's economy.

"I'm getting a very strong impression that we need to work real hard to get the funding in place to do some of these navigation improvements," said John P. Woodley Jr., assistant secretary of the Army, civil works division.

Woodley, who visited the Port of Palacios and the mouth of the Colorado River on Wednesday, was accompanied by Congressman Ron Paul, whose District 14 includes Matagorda County. The two men met with Tony Rigdon, Palacios port director, and Mike Griffith, chairman of the Port of Bay City, county officials and a group of commercial fishermen and offshore fishing guides.

Since 2002, money earmarked for dredging shallow draft ports, including Matagorda and Palacios, was reprioritized by President Bush to go to only deep-water ports, like the Port of Houston, essentially dropping from the budget the small ports that serve commercial and recreational fishermen.

The mounting sand in the channel has filled in the passage to the point that a person can walk across it, and the corps' plans to dredge it is only a temporary fix that will not solve the problem once and for all, Griffith said at Jetty Park on Matagorda Beach.

"You can see that we have a serious situation here," Griffith said. "We've had tremendous economic impact as a result."

The meeting came to a stop as the group watched a shrimp boat attempting to leave the Gulf to return to dock. It had to attempt to navigate the narrow channel that snakes through the mouth of the Colorado River.

The boat's captain started down the channel in reverse. With the boat in reverse, the propeller would sometimes scour enough sand from the channel to allow the boat to pass, said Buddy Treybig, a Matagorda commercial fisherman and owner of a seafood market and oyster processing plant.

The boat's captain eventually gave up and returned to deeper water. He would have to wait until 8 p.m. when it was high tide, Treybig said, before he could maneuver through the channel.

"You can see we need help," Griffith said. "We desperately need a fix here."

A training weir - an underwater structure that lets water wash over it - and jetty system installed by the corps in 1989 created a system that accumulates sand in the channel and basically causes it to be unusable, Griffith said. "We've had a number of business interests who have wanted to locate here, but they've chosen not to because we don't have reliable channel depth."

The Port of Bay City operates a refuge harbor in Matagorda, Griffith said, and the channel needs to be kept at 12 feet.

"About two years ago, we had a storm - Claudette - and large shrimp boats sought refuge and grounded because there was not the 12-foot depth that was published."

Many incidents involving small pleasure boats grounded in the sand-obstructed channel were also brought up.

"If you look at the channel - if you flew over it - you'd see that the channel just snakes through there," said George Deshotels, Precinct 2 Matagorda County commissioner. "It's real narrow, it's not straight and it's constantly changing...it's just a matter of time before we get someone seriously hurt here."

The $2 million the corps received to dredge the mouth of the Colorado should be used to begin construction of an extension on the east jetty, Griffith said. The money came from an emergency appropriation bill passed by the U.S. Congress this year to address damage from Hurricane Rita. It would, when finished, create increased water velocity and jettison sand offshore.

The redesign was modeled by a corps researcher, Deshotels said, who worked up computer and physical models to test and confirm the soundness of the redesign.

"You know, (the current jetty system) was something that was tried, and it just didn't work...now, we'd like to get the jetty extended...and we just desperately need it here. Anything you can do to help us, we would appreciate," he said.

The new bridge spanning the Intracoastal Waterway slated to begin construction this month, and the new Matagorda Bay Nature Park are two positive things that bring attention to Matagorda County, said Treybig.

"We have a chance to really do something, but this is the holdup," he said of the choked channel. "We've got things here that no other place in the world has. And this is holding it all up - this."

Woodley said, "I'm a big proponent of the importance of navigation of all kinds, and when you have a situation where navigation is so important to the economy, whether it's petrochemicals, or the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway, commercial or recreational fishing...It needs to be supported by reliable infrastructure."

The Port of Palacios needs dredging every three years, but it has been passed up since 2002 and is becoming impassable, Rigdon said during Woodley's tour of the Navigation District No. 1. The subsequent choked channel is negatively impacting the Palacios economy.

"Our channel is our economic lifeline," Rigdon said.

When deep-water ports became a priority and shallow-draft ports were no longer dredged, Palacios fishermen suffered, he said.

"I'm not going to tell them they are not a priority," Rigdon said. "I'm not going to accept that."

Woodley and Paul also toured ports in Freeport, San Bernard River, Galveston, Texas City, Victoria, Point Comfort and Port Lavaca.

[intotheblue]

Thanks for posting that!