Bolivar residents worry about ‘Ike Dike’ impact
Eminent domain, livelihoods, beach access among concerns
When Andrea Sims-Kaptchinskie opened the Hardheads Icehouse & Grill, a local, open-air watering hole in Crystal Beach raised on stilts and built in the style of a tiki hut, she knew the risks of running a business on the front lines of a hurricane zone on Bolivar Peninsula.
It was only seven years prior to the 2015 grand opening of Hardheads that the peninsula — a 27mile-long barrier formation abutting the Gulf of Mexico — suffered cataclysmic damage from Hurricane Ike. More than 3,000 structures on the peninsula were severely damaged by the 17-foot storm surge brought by the Category 2 hurricane, reducing houses and businesses to rubble. As many as 20 people on Bolivar were confirmed dead or missing, and only 102 buildings on the island were left unscathed.
Undaunted, Sims-Kaptchinskie and her husband doubled down on their dream of moving to the Gulf Coast, leaving six-figure-salary jobs to start a new life. She didn’t envision that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ proposed coastal barrier, ostensibly designed to protect them, could eventually force them to give up everything they worked for.
“So many times people retire so late and somebody passes away,” Sims-Kaptchinskie said. “We didn’t want that to happen to us, so we wanted to live our retirement. We gave up our careers of six figures, cashed in everything, started a business, and now they’re telling me that, ‘Oh, by the way,
we’re just going to scoop you up, push you away, and now you’re going to be homeless and you have nothing.’”
Sims-Kaptchinskie is one of many Bolivar Peninsula residents worried about the prospect of being displaced by the proposal to build a coastal spine — a 71-mile system of levees and sea gates beginning on high ground north of High Island and running the length of the peninsula along Texas 87, where businesses like Hardheads are located. It would then cross the entrance of Galveston Bay and run the length of Galveston Island, incorporating the existing Galveston seawall. It would end at San Luis Pass.
The Army Corps of Engineers and the Texas General Land Office, the non-federal sponsor of the project estimated to cost up to $31 billion, are now holding a 75-day public comment period on the proposal, which ends Jan. 9. A public meeting on the project is scheduled at Crenshaw Elementary School in Crystal Beach on Saturday, and as many as 300 people are expected to show up.
“Think of the number of businesses and houses that are located just north of Highway 87 in Bolivar,” said Mayes Middleton, a Republican elected in November as the state representative for the region. “Think of all the properties between (Highway) 87 and the beach that would not be protected under this plan. It’s really easy to understand why so many people are so upset about that because they’re not being protected or their property’s being taken.”
Red line on the map
One sunny Saturday afternoon in December, a group of residents gathered at Hardheads to voice their wide-ranging concerns about the coastal-spine proposal, part of which has been dubbed the “Ike Dike” by some. They shared worries about eminent domain land grabs, public beach access, environmental impacts and whether it would tank their property values.
What raised the alarm most among the Bolivar residents at Hardheads was a response to a recent open-records request made by local environmental groups. It showed a concept of the barrier with a red line that would run down Texas 87, potentially leaving many homes vulnerable to storm surge and displacing other residences and businesses.
“They’ve just put a line on the map without explaining anything,” said Winnie Burkett, a Bolivar homeowner and retired bird sanctuary manager. “And the line on the map goes right through the cemetery and it goes right through people’s houses.”
Others worried that the barrier would depreciate the value of land and homes on the peninsula, which is located northeast of Galveston and had some 2,400 residents in 2010. Margaret Lindlow, a Realtor for Keller-Williams and a homeowner on the peninsula, said she’s already fielding calls from clients about what the coastal barrier could mean for the real estate market.
“People are calling,” Lindlow said. “Every time you talk to a customer or client, they want to know if they should go ahead and sell or get out. Everybody’s holding off until we get this settled.”
Some peninsula residents are reflexively against what they perceive to be a public, taxpayer-funded solution designed primarily to help protect the region’s multibillion-dollar petrochemical industry. They believe that Bolivar Peninsula and Galveston Island are essentially being sacrificed to protect facilities that sit on the western side of Galveston Bay.
Experts have warned that a storm surge sweeping into petrochemical complexes could cause between $50 billion and $90 billion in damage.
“Why is it the taxpayers of the state of Texas’ and this government’s responsibility to protect the petrochemical industry? It’s not,” said Mark Faggard, an attorney and property owner on the peninsula. “Where is our responsibility on Bolivar to protect the Port of Houston Authority? That’s not our responsibility.”
Faggard scoffed at the notion that the coastal spine is being designed to protect the region — which hosts 40 percent of the nation’s petrochemical industry — in the interest of national security.
“This national security deal, you can take that package of horse manure and wrap it up any way you want to, because that’s what it is,” he said. “There was no national security issue in any previous hurricane.”
Willing to take risks
The philosophical opposition extends to homeowners who knowingly took the risk of building or owning property directly in a flood zone. Residents on Bolivar are required to build their homes at a height of 16 feet, and many build them higher as a precaution. Matt Pace, a local homeowner and owner of Tricoast Insurance Services, said the homes that have been built since Hurricane Ike devastated the region are built to withstand that level of storm surge.
“We chose to build down here, we take the risk, we know what we’ve got,” Pace said. “We know what hurricane storm surge is; we’re insured properly, hopefully. It’s not up to the feds to protect me from my stupid decisions.”
But the issues raised by Bolivar residents go well beyond provincial concerns. Coastal Texans are fiercely protective of their public beach access rights, and wonder whether the coastal spine might impede that access. And there are concerns that even if the spine is built on the southern end of the peninsula, there is still a possibility that it will leave the north side residents facing Galveston Bay as sitting ducks for an inland surge.
“If we had a Cat 4 or Cat 5 hurricane pushing water across the bay, we could still get a very devastating storm surge on Galveston Bay, even with the proposed plan,” said Hal Needham, a Bolivar resident and scientist who specializes in data-driven flood-risk analysis for coastal communities. “So I think more localized protection, localized levees like ones on the west end of Galveston Bay and the Houston Ship Channel, those would really protect those communities no matter what type of storm hit.”
In the lead-up to public meetings in Winnie, Galveston and Crystal Beach, the Army Corps of Engineers and General Land Office have worked to allay the concerns of local residents, particularly as it pertains to issues such as the number of homes that would be displaced, either through eminent domain or buyouts, to build the coastal spine.
During a media briefing recently at the Army Corps’ Galveston district office, General Land Office officials insisted that eminent domain would be enforced only as “a last resort.”
Kelly Burks-Copes, the Army Corps’ project manager for the coastal barrier study, also insisted in a separate interview that the records showing mapping shapefiles with a red line showing the barrier alignment were conceptual. The alignment could change based on feedback during the public comment period, and could even be considered as green infrastructure through a series of dunes rather than an actual barrier or levee.
“What was not clear, I guess, when we (responded to the openrecords request) was that that line was first of all, conceptual, and second of all, was just a line,” Burks-Copes said. “Levees are bigger, they’re actually wider. You have to have right entry easements and that kind of thing. It could be a wall, and then it would be smaller.”
‘Reduce the risks’
Burks-Copes added that the Army Corps has modeled for stormsurge scenarios like the one outlined by Needham, and that part of the cost of the coastal spine project will include ecosystem restoration efforts on the north side of Bolivar Peninsula to mitigate wind-driven storm surge from Galveston Bay.
“If we do combinations on the front and the back side of this island, we should be able to reduce the risks, maybe not 100 percent entirely, but we can reduce the risks of flooding damages as a result of the storms going across landscape and getting back into the bay,” she said.
And yet, many in Bolivar remain staunchly opposed to the project, even with assurances from the Corps of transparency and consideration for the issues they are raising. Kathy Hazlett, a homeowner and retired paralegal, said she is prepared to take the fight all the way to Washington, D.C. — where the final plan must be authorized by Congress — if that’s what it takes to stop it.
“I bought the insurance, I pay my taxes, I do whatever I need to do,” Hazlett said. “But don’t come in here and tell me you’re going to change it with my betterment in mind. You’re not changing it for my betterment, and I will fight you if I’m the only one that’s there. And I think everyone here is that committed.”