Laura set to strengthen in Gulf
BARRIER: 12 years after Ike, system of levees awaits
As Tropical Storm Laura powers up over the Gulf of Mexico, bringing the risk of “life-threatening storm surge” to the Texas Gulf Coast including Galveston, an ambitious and costly proposal for protecting the area from a massive storm continues to slowly grind its way through the federal approval process.
Nearly 12 years after Hurricane Ike devastated much of the Upper Texas Coast, federal officials are still studying the effects of a proposed coastal barrier and looking for ways to pay for a project now estimated to cost as much as $32 billion.
The next draft of a plan is due out in October, but the project always takes on greater urgency during hurricane season when the region is threatened by violent tropical storms. This week coastal residents faced the prospect of two tropical storms coming their way in the midst of a pandemic.
While Tropical Storm Marco weakened as it approached Louisiana on Monday evening, Laura was expected to make landfall as a Category 2 hurricane near the Texas-Louisiana border, according to forecasters.
“To see these storms coming, that’s one of the reasons that Congress funded us, authorized us to do this study and gave us funding to do it for the whole Texas coast,” said Kelly Burks-Copes, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ project manager for the coastal barrier proposal.
While supporters tout the project’s virtues — protecting Hous
ton’s vast petrochemical complex and coastal communities while preserving crucial wildlife and wetlands — coastal residents and environmentalists worry the project will become an expensive boondoggle that will harm marine and beach ecosystems and tank property values.
Plan stirs controversy
The last hurricane to make landfall in the Houston area was Ike in 2008. A Category 2 storm with 110 mph winds, Ike caused roughly 15 to 20 feet of storm surge on Bolivar Peninsula and in parts of Chambers County. It led to loss of life and $20 billion in damage.
Years of discussions led to the Corps proposing a 71-mile barrier system to protect the Southeast Texas coast in October 2018. That proposal has gone through significant changes in response to public feedback.
The proposal — a system of levees and gates stretching from High Island to San Luis Pass — was a close approximation of the “Ike Dike” concept first touted more than a decade ago by William Merrell, a professor of marine sciences at Texas A&M University at Galveston.
That original plan called for constructing levees that would run parallel to FM 3005 on Galveston Island and to Texas 87 on Bolivar Peninsula but behind the dune line. The barrier would have left thousands of homes adjacent to the beach exposed to flooding and likely required extensive eminent domain buyouts.
But the backlash to that alignment from coastal residents sent the Corps back to the drawing board. By late 2019, the Corps had settled on a double dune system — a field of 12- and 14-foot-high dunes, approximately 185 feet wide, with a runway of 250 feet of renourished beach leading to the Gulf of Mexico. The plan also includes a sea gate at the mouth of the Houston Ship Channel, a “ring” barrier around the northern coast of Galveston, gates and pumping stations at Dickinson Bayou and Clear Lake, and 6,600 acres of ecosystem restoration.
The Corps estimates 40 million to 50 million cubic yards of sand over 50 years would be needed to maintain the dune system along Bolivar and Galveston. The Corps is targeting two sand banks in the Gulf to supply the necessary material: Sabine Bank, 17 miles south of the mouth of Sabine Pass, and Heald Bank, 27 miles offshore from Galveston.
However, the project’s supporters now fear that even this massive amount of sand might not be sufficient to protect the coastline from a storm surge. Some, including Merrell and Bob Mitchell, president of the Bay Area Houston Economic
Partnership, have backed proposals for a hybrid dune system — essentially a sand dune with a fortified core made of a clay composite. A hard structure underpinning the dunes could reduce the cost of replenishing sand on the beaches, but environmentalists say that type of dune could contribute to habitat loss for endangered species, such as the Kemp’s Ridley sea turtle.
High price tag
The Corps has declined to release the new cost estimate before it releases its draft feasibility report and environmental impact statement for the barrier on Oct. 9. The entire project, which extends southwest to South Padre Island, was originally estimated to cost between $23 billion and $32 billion, with the dunes and sea gate at the ship channel alone making up $14 billion to $18 billion of that total. Burks-Copes maintains the cost of the project will still fall within the original estimated range.
In February, the Corps held three public meetings — in High Island, Galveston and Seabrook — on the new barrier proposal with the dune fields, hoping to provide some clarity on the project’s status. It still left many coastal residents with major questions about the environmental impacts of the sea gate and cost of maintaining the dunes. A group of Port Bolivar residents requested a follow-up meeting to address a wall from the sea gate that connects to the dunes on the peninsula but were left unsatisfied with the result.
“There weren’t any substantive changes, but it was again very general. They actually did a really poor job of even talking about the Port Bolivar community. They kept wanting to talk about the (project) in general,” said Azure Bevington, a coastal ecologist and High Island resident who attended the meeting.
Burks-Copes emphasized that the agency would continue to work with the community to get its input. She noted that the Corps will not only convene its federally mandated 45-day comment period after the feasibility report is released in October, but will host six public meetings with local residents where the agency will unveil an interactive map of the proposed barrier system. These meetings will be virtual due to the pandemic.
Building support
Community buy-in for the coastal barrier may, in fact, be one of the easier lifts compared with the political morass the project will have to survive in order to win final approval.
A local sponsor needs to be identified to maintain the barrier system annually once the Corps’ work is done. Burks-Copes said the Texas General Land Office is leading an effort to draft legislation that would identify that partner and expects it to be voted on during the legislative session in 2021.
Winning congressional approval is another hurdle. One of the project’s chief backers, U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, a Republican, is facing a campaign challenge this year, and it’s unclear if a shift in power in the Senate from Republicans to Democrats would jeopardize its support. The Corps expects to submit the final proposal to Congress in May 2021.
Even if the most recent version of the project is approved, construction would not be complete for 10 to 15 years by the most optimistic estimates. By that point, the Houston-Galveston region may have faced a small handful of serious storms similar or even more intense than the ones currently posing a threat to the Gulf Coast.
“That’s why this study is important: the whole goal is coastal resilience,” Burks-Copes said.