Deepwater funds slowly restoring coast
$100 million so far helps improve turtle, bird, oyster habitats
GALVESTON—More than $100 million in settlement funds from the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has been spent on restoring sea turtle, bird and oyster coastal and wetland habitats and recreational improvements along the Texas coast.
The expenditures were announced during a public meeting Monday night on the Texas A&M University campus in Galveston by the trustees of the Texas Implementation Group (TIG) to update the public on how the $238 million in damages from the catastrophic oil spill is being spent.
The money comes from a 2016 settlement with BP, which leased the Deepwater Horizon oil rig that exploded in April 2010 and poured an estimated 3.19 million barrels of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. The company is required to pay the trustees for Deepwater Horizon Natural Resource Damage Assessment up to $8.8 billion over 15 years to make up for the natural resource damage along the Gulf Coast
Texas’ share of the Natural Resource Damage Assessment is $238 million. The rest of the $8.8 billion is being split among the four other Gulf-facing states affected by the oil spill — Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Florida.
“Texas TIG has committed about 45 percent of the $238 million that it’s set to receive,” said Angela Schrift, an assessment and restoration biologist for Texas Parks and Wildlife. “Over the last few years, the Texas TIG has been working on sea turtle, bird, and recreational use projects. All of the funds for recreational use projects has been committed.”
The recreational use projects include a series of artificial reefs designed to promote recreational fishing and diving. Artificial reefs were installed off the coast of Matagorda County and Freeport, at a combined cost of $5.5 million, with pre-designed concrete pyramids placed in open areas of each reef site.
Texas Parks and Wildlife created a third artificial reef by sinking the Kraken, a 371 linear-foot cargo carrier, 67 miles off the coast of Galveston at a cost of $1.9 million.
The most expensive recreational use project funded by the BP settlement is the $10.7 million redevelopment of Galveston Island State Park, which includes building multi-use campsites, dune access boardwalks, equestrian facilities, and restroom and shower facilities on the beach side of the park. That project is in the pre-design phase.
Galveston Bay is also the site of many of the wildlife restoration projects funded by the BP settlement.
With the help of the U.S. Department of Interior, the Texas trustees are spending $20 million to restore three rookery islands in Galveston Bay and one in East Matagorda Bay at the Big Bogg National Wildlife Refuge to enhance the habitat quality for waterbirds like pelicans, gulls, and herons.
Another $20 million is going toward addressing threats to sea turtles like the Kemp’s Ridley, an endangered species whose population dipped after the oil spill.
“Since 1996 we had a steady increase in the number of nests you can see that were recorded, however a couple of years after the Deepwater Horizon spill, we saw a steady decline in nesting activities,” Schrift said.
Since 2016, the Kemp’s Ridley population has rebounded, with a record number of nests — 353 —recorded in 2017.
A much smaller portion of money, $309,000, has been spent to identify best management practices for rehabilitating oyster reefs buried by sediment and for constructing intertidal oyster reefs within Galveston Bay. Hurricane Harvey in 2017 decimated the oyster population by flushing gallons of freshwater into the bay and upsetting the appropriate salt concentration.
Rejuvenating the oyster population will be a major focus of the next round of funding commitments for the remainder of the $238 million, with $22.5 million budgeted for oysters alone.
“There will be a group of individuals focused on oysters across the Gulf that will be developing priorities for oyster restoration and those impacts from Harvey,” said Richard Seiler, the natural resource trustee program manager for the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality.
Another $15.9 million is being funneled toward the restoration of McFaddin Beach and Dune in the Sabine Lake area at the Louisiana border, where the interior marshes are being frequently inundated by Gulf of Mexico waters. This will require sand placement on 17 miles of the northeastern Texas shoreline.
Thousands of acres of wetland, coastal, and tidal habitats have also been acquired with the settlement money in places like Corpus Christi Bay, Matagorda Bay and the Lower Laguna Madre near South Padre Island.