Save Our Beach

I attended a webinar on Clean Coast Texas –an initiative of the Texas Coastal Nonpoint Source Pollution Program that helps communities reduce pollution and enhance water quality along the Texas coast as part of the  Texas Coastal Management Program  and  Texas Coastal Resiliency Master Plan .  This is not an initiative to increase regulations – it is an initiative to create resources, tools, best practices and help to communities to improve water quality along the Texas Gulf Coast. It is first and foremost designed to help communities identify sources of problems that are affecting water quality and then help them find solutions to those problems.   Septic, livestock, storm water, There are a lot of resources out there to help communities have a positive impact on the water quality. We HAVE to make sure that all money just doesn’t go to the big money areas of Galveston and Port Aransas. Clean Coast Texas knows where there is funding and is doing the research...

Final Engineering Phase: The survey team is out on the water as we speak. They began their work yesterday. They have been dodging cold fronts and attempting to get out there in a good weather window. As soon as this data is processed, the Geotech folks will be out. I expect end of month. We have begun our preliminary work on final design. Permit Phase: Atkins has received the Public Notice comments from the USACE.  Atkins Global has to have technical responses are due back to the Corps on Jan 29. They  We have comments from USACE, USFWS, NMFS, TPWD (x2), TCEQ, and 2 members of the public. (one of these persons is from Sierra Club, he just didn’t put that on his letter; the other person is former EPA) Both are sort of flying under radar and not mentioning their respective affiliation in their letter. Doesn’t matter to us, anyone can comment. Also the Matagorda County Commissioners voted to approve the $104,500 for the  re-nourishment permit phase.  The permit had expi...

I subscribe to the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association to learn more about how to save Sargent Beach.  They had a fascinating article on a survey to all their member about what the greatest challenges are to America's beaches. Not surprising - they are all the same issues we have.  What is interesting is that most states and locales have a long term strategic plan for coastal management.  We don't  Summary of top coastal management challenges  Overall, the coastal management challenges that respondents chose most frequently were:  Deteriorating ecosystems leading to reduced (environmental, recreational, economic, storm buffer) functionality,  Increasing storminess due to climate change (i.e. more frequent and intense impacts),  Coastal flooding, both  Sea level rise and associated flooding (e.g. nuisance flooding, king tides), and  Combined effects of rainfall and surge on urban flooding,   Chronic beach erosion (...

My kids got me a drone for Christmas to chart the progress of beach restoration.   We had an unusually low tide this morning and I took the drone down to stubby and flew it out to the cut.  Amazing.  More pics from this morning -