God’s word, I-35 project move ministry
Church Under the Bridge seeking new, temporary home.
Jimmy Dorrell, wearing a baseball cap, T-shirt and tennis shoes, preaches to a crowd of self-proclaimed trolls most Sunday mornings. His words are sometimes muffled by emergency sirens, blaring horns or the roar of big rigs passing overhead.
Welcome to Church Under the Bridge, which is undergoing a “beautification project,” Dorrell said with a laugh. “The Texas Department of Transportation is remodeling our place at no charge to us. You can’t beat that.”
TxDOT’s $300 million plan to widen Interstate 35 to four lanes in both directions between North Loop 340 and 12th Street in Waco means the home of Church Under the Bridge for almost 26 years, the underpass at I-35 and Fourth and Fifth streets, will be unusable for the next few years after work starts.
Dorrell has not chosen a temporary home but has a options under consideration.
Attendance fluctuates between 200 and 300 most Sundays, depending on the weather and whether Baylor University is in session. Though membership has evolved over the years, the focus has remained on the marginalized who may feel unwelcome elsewhere. Rain or shine, in triple-digit heat or freezing temperatures, services carry on.
But a project as massive as widening I-35 is another matter.
The highway department is requiring the church move during construction but has not prohibited it from returning when work is done in three to five years, spokeswoman Jodi Wheatley said.
TxDOT has tried to keep Dorrell in the loop during every phase of the planning process, just as it has with nearby businesses and property owners who might face challenges as the project unfolds, Wheatley said.
“They have been incredibly kind and fair in their dealings with us, which some might consider an anomaly since we are squatters,” Dorrell said. “We’ve been invited to meetings three or four years, were told the site must be ‘shovel ready’ when the money is available. About five months ago, we were told they were moving forward and likely would begin work in March 2019.”
Wheatley said TxDOT appreciates Dorrell’s cooperation.
“This is going to be a seven-day-a-week project, with no rest on Sunday,” she said. “They must move, and they know it. That’s not going to be a safe place to hold meetings once work begins. That big bridge is coming down, and when it does, it is going to stay down quite a long time.”
Wheatley said TxDOT does not necessarily consider the church a nuisance.
“Holding services under a bridge is not something we encourage, but they’ve been meeting there for years, so we accept it,” she said.
Dorrell said the church takes pride in keeping the area clean, “better than when we found it,” which can prove challenging as churches and nonprofits statewide serve meals to congregants every Sunday. Still, attendees and volunteers tackle litter with a vengeance.
Waco businessman Mack Hardin, co-owner of Brazos Parking, an 8-acre site across Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard from McLane Stadium, said he has offered Dorrell use of the site during I-35 construction.
“We might get in trouble with God if we’re not nice to Jimmy Dorrell,” Hardin said with a laugh. “Jimmy said he was walking around, looking for a place, and maybe God led him to this one. Anyway, there is no one I respect more than Jimmy.” a high storm surge,” said Matt Sebesta, a Republican and Brazoria County judge.
But the idea of taxpayers around the U.S. paying to protect refineries worth billions from storms and rising seas, and in a state where top politicians still dispute climate change’s validity, doesn’t sit well with some.
“The oil and gas industry is getting a free ride,” said Brandt Mannchen, a member of the Sierra Club’s executive committee in Houston. “You don’t hear the industry making a peep about paying for any of this and why should they? There’s all this push like, ‘Please Senator Cornyn, Please Senator Cruz, we need money for this and that.’”
Often outspoken critics of federal spending, Texas’ GOP Sens. John Cornyn and Ted Cruz both backed using taxpayer funds to fortify the oil facilities’ protections and the Texas coast. Cruz called it “a tremendous step forward.”
Federal, state and local money is also bolstering defenses elsewhere, including on New York’s Staten Island, around Atlantic City, New Jersey, and in other communities hammered by Superstorm Sandy in 2012.
Economic benefits
Construction in Texas could begin in several months on three sections of storm barrier. While plans are still being finalized, some levees will be raised to about 17 feet high, and 6 miles of 19-foot-tall floodwalls would be built or strengthened around Port Arthur.
The town of 55,000 includes the Saudi-controlled Motiva oil refinery, the nation’s largest, as well as refineries owned by oil giants Valero Energy Corp. and Total S.A.
“You’re looking at a lot of people, a lot of homes, but really a lot of industry,” said Steve Sherrill, an Army Corps of Engineers resident engineer in Port Arthur.
The second barrier project features around 25 miles of new levees and sea walls in nearby Orange County, where Chevron, DuPont and other companies have facilities. The third would extend and heighten sea walls around Freeport, home to a Phillips 66 export terminal for liquefied natural gas and nearby refinery, as well as several chemical facilities.
The proposals approved for funding originally called for building more protections along larger swaths of the Texas coast, but they were scaled back and now deliberately focus on refineries.
Oil and chemical companies also pushed for more protection for surrounding communities to shield their workforces, but “not every property can be protected,” said Sheri Willey, deputy chief of project management for the Army Corps of Engineers’ upper Texas district.
Once work is complete on the three sections, they could eventually be integrated into a larger coastal spine system. In some places along Texas’ 370-mile Gulf Coast, 18 feet is lost annually to erosion, threatening to suck more land, roads and buildings into rising seas.
Who should pay?
Protecting a wide expanse will be expensive. After Harvey, a special Texas commission prepared a report seeking $61 billion from Congress to “future proof ” the state against such natural disasters, without mentioning climate change, which scientists say will cause heavier rains and stronger storms.
Texas has not tapped its own rainy day fund of about $11 billion. According to federal rules, 35 percent of funds spent by the Army Corps of Engineers must be matched by local jurisdictions, and the GOP-controlled Legislature could help cover such costs. But such spending might be tough for many conservatives to swallow.
Texas “should be funding things like this itself,” said Chris Edwards, an economist at the libertarian Cato Institute. “Texans are proud of their conservatism, but, unfortunately, when decisions get made in Washington, that frugality goes out the door.”
State officials counter that protecting the oil facilities is a matter of national security.
“The effects of the next devastating storm could be felt nationwide,” U.S. Rep. Randy Weber, a fiercely conservative Republican from suburban Houston who has nonetheless authored legislation backing the coastal spine.