Isle to Get More Sand to Kick Up

Eroded beaches in Galveston and elsewhere are being widened.


Houston Chronicle, October 23, 2007,
by Harvey Rice & Richard Stewart

GALVESTON — Cars may once again be able to drive off the end of the seawall and onto 200-foot wide beaches once a $13.5 million beach restoration project to be announced today is completed.

The plan to widen three miles of eroded beaches west of the seawall with more than 1 million cubic feet of sand is the largest ever undertaken by Texas General Land Office, spokesman Jim Suydam said Monday.

A similar $5.75 million project will restore erosion-ravaged beaches in nearby Surfside, Brazoria County, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson will announce here today during a three-day meeting of the American Shore & Beach Preservation Association.

The list of restoration projects will include Sylvan Beach in La Porte on Galveston Bay and South Padre Island.

The beaches are so important to Galveston's tourism economy that the city is scrambling for additional money to expand the project and restore seashore in front of the seawall where the waves have wiped away all traces of beach, City Manager Steve LeBlanc said.

The project, scheduled to be begin in fall 2008, is an effort to retard the steady erosion of beaches that in some places is eating away the sand at a rate 10 feet per year and threatening to gobble up seaside homes.

Suydam said it was unclear how long the project would take to complete.

LeBlanc recalled that drivers could once exit Texas 3005 on a ramp at the end of the seawall and drive onto the beach. Those beaches eroded decades ago, and the ramp has been barricaded.

200-feet expansion
The proposed renourishment would widen the beaches by 200 feet, as wide as when the ramp was in use, LeBlanc said.
The sand would be dredged from a sand shoal at the east end of the island — east from Big Reef between the south jetty and Inner Bar Channel.

The south jetty trapped sand brought by the long shore current that generally runs east to west, carrying increasingly scarce sand that is no longer refreshed by rivers because of dams.

Sand from the shoal will then be pumped into a containment area in Apffel Park at the tip of the island.

The Land Office hasn't decided how it will get the sand from Apffel park to the end of the sea wall, more than 12 miles away, Suydam said.

The sand could be forced through pipes using pumping stations along the route and sprayed onto the beach, Suydam said.

If that approach is too expensive, the sand would be dried and trucked to its destination, he said.

Homeowners associations on the west end of the island have been lobbying for beach renourishment for more than eight years, said Jerry Mohn, president of the West Galveston Island Property Owners Association.

"I'm very happy," Mohn said. "I think the whole city is going to be delighted."

Mohn predicted that homeowners associations would raise more than $1 million of the $1.25 million in local matching funds needed for the project. The remaining match will come from the Galveston Park Board, Suydam said.

Funding the project
The project will be financed with $6 million from the state and $1.25 million from Galveston County, both drawing on the federal Coastal Impact Assistance Program; and $5 million in state funds from the Coastal Erosion Planning and Response Act.
LeBlanc said if city voters approve the extension of a half-cent sales tax Nov. 6, it would allow Galveston to raise the $9 million needed to restore beaches from 61st Street, the thoroughfare that brings tourists to the beach, to the end of the sea wall.

The city also would be able to replenish the beaches between 10th and 51st streets that were restored in 1995, he said.

City officials were urging voters to extend the sales tax before the Land Office unveiled its beach restoration plan, but they now see the tax as a means to extend the project, LeBlanc said.

The $5.75 million Surfside Beach project will use 500,000 to 2 million cubic yards of sand from nearby Matagorda County to rebuild the beach and sand dunes along a mile of beach from the north Freeport Jetty to the beach entrance at Texas 332.

That area historically has 2 feet to 12 feet of beach erosion a year, but in recent years it has been more like 30 feet a year, planners said.

Homeowners' dilemma
The beach has marched inland to a roadway called Beach Drive, leaving the houses on the seaward side on the beach. Some homeowners have demolished their houses. Others have taken the General Land Office up on an offer of up to $50,000 if they move their house to other locations. About a dozen have refused to go.
A state district judge recently ruled in favor of the state, saying that under state law if a beach overtakes property, it becomes state property.

The Surfside Beach project was due to start two years ago when Hurricane Rita caused drastic erosion and the project was pushed back, said Surfside Beach City Secretary Kelly Hamby.

The $2.5 million Sylvan Beach project may return a couple of small pocket beaches to a park that has been a beach in name only since Hurricane Carla in 1961.

The park, operated by Harris County and the City of LaPorte on Galveston Bay, has long had serious erosion problems, said LaPorte Mayor Alton Porter.The $2.8 million South Padre Island project would add sand to 4.5 miles of beach in far south Texas.