Mr. Saba, thanks for your email from this past Tuesday concerning the impact to Sargent Beach from hurricanes Hanna and Laura. Indeed, we share your concern about the impact these storms have had on Sargent beach, an area already experiencing one of the highest annual erosion rates along Texas’ Gulf-facing coast. Shortly after Hanna, we had correspondence with Judge McDonald concerning impacts to both Sargent “East” and “West” areas from that storm and he was able to have Matagorda County Pct 6 Constable Bill Orton send us a significant number of images documenting the impact of Hanna’s surge on Sargent Beach. As of this writing, we have yet to see additional on the ground images depicting further impacts to Sargent Beach from Hurricane Laura.
As you are aware, the GLO and Matagorda County have partnered on a pilot project to address the long-term stabilization of Sargent Beach; for years, sediment has been drawn west along the shoreline and pulled into Mitchell’s cut, so previous renourishment efforts at Sargent “East” have resulted in material migrating to the west fairly rapidly and ultimately into Mitchell’s cut. When tropical storms such as Hanna and Laura have impacted the coast, there has been little beach area to help adsorb these impacts. Putting in place these stabilization measures will provide the ability to keep a renourished beach in place, thereby leading to a greater level of shoreline protection at Sargent Beach from future storm events.
At present, the project is in the preliminary design and permitting phase for the preferred identified alternative that will address the long-term stabilization of Sargent Beach. This identified alternative consists of a proposed angled rock terminal groin adjacent to Mitchell's cut, five segmented near-shore rock breakwaters and two areas of beach nourishment. All of this will be constructed on the far west end of the Sargent “West" portion of the overall Sargent Beach area, west of the pier. This location was determined to be the most effective siting for the initial stabilization measures, based on the hydrodynamic modeling conducted as part of the preliminary design effort.
As of this writing, the preliminary design has been completed and an application for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Section 10/404 Individual Project permit to authorize construction of the groin, breakwaters and beach nourishment was submitted to the Corps of Engineers Galveston District on July 30, 2020. Given our experience with the Corps’ regulatory process for coastal erosion response projects, the nature of the beast is such that it may take the Corps possibly ten to twelve months or longer to render a permit issuance decision, so how quickly we can get to the construction phase of the project will be determined in part by the Corps’ ability to complete their permitting process in a timely manner.
Once the Corps issues the permit to the County, the preliminary engineering design will need further development up to the final (100% completion-level) in order to make the project "shovel-ready" for construction and funding will need to be secured for the construction phase. At that point, I would assume that the GLO will once again partner with Matagorda County to undertake construction of the project.
We are also partnering with the County to execute a Hurricane Harvey FEMA Public Assistance program repair project to address Harvey impacts to the Sargent “East" area; this work will be integrated into the construction phase of the long-term stabilization pilot project in order to ensure the sediment placed at Sargent east remains stable at that location, given the present instability of the shoreline as discussed above."
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