Save Our Beach

First - the Matagorda County Commissioners will be voting to approve funding for the breakwater project are on the agenda for Monday, May 3rd (item 18): I will track this and find out what this means from the project lead next week.  Also in other news on funding:  To day the Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council (RESTORE Council) announced $302 million in funding decisions for restoration activities spanning the Gulf Coast states impacted by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. With today’s vote, the RESTORE Council has approved Funded Priorities List (FPL) 3b. FPL 3b includes 20 activities designed to address ecosystem needs across the Gulf of Mexico. The activities identified in FPLs are developed through collaboration among RESTORE Council members with input from Gulf stakeholders. What does that mean for us - Texas is getting some of that funding to fund living shorelines - and East Matagorda Bay is a part of that project - so not beach related - but still will help us....

The Coastal Texas Study -  the website where GLO puts their study of where funding is going to be prioritized.  https://coastalstudy.texas.gov/index.html It has our programs in it roposed Measures on the Mid to Upper Texas Coast Matagorda, Jackson, Victoria, and Calhoun counties Ecosystem Restoration  The coast’s natural environment works as an incredible storm defense. Marshes, barrier islands and other environmental features act as a buffer from erosion, subsidence, and storm losses. Not only are these environmental aspects necessary for storm surge prevention, but they act as a diverse habitat for the local ecosystem and wildlife. Many of these environmental features in your area, however, are in dire need of restoration. For this reason, ecosystem restoration measures are proposed in your region to protect your local community from storm surge and to restore critical wildlife environments. https://www.glo.texas.gov/coast/grant-projects/cmp/index.html The Texas Ge...

UPDATE --  Permit reviews for Texas GulfLink deepwater port, proposed by Sentinel Midstream LLC and Freepoint Commodities LLC, also was suspended. Sentinel was not immediately available to comment Apparently this plan has been in the works for some time.  A pipeline coming out of Freeport into the Gulf to service very large tankers - See  https://www.texasgulflink.com/project-overview The potential to hurt Sargent Beach with this pipeline is astronomical.   Basically, you pull up to a buoy and pump millions of gallons of crude. The project is supposed to pump 85 million barrel per day I am a little annoyed we never found out about this - but luckily our neighbors in Surfside, Freeport and Jones Creek were well aware of the impact to their beach.  Over 27,000 letters in opposition were sent in during the comment period.  I will continue to track to see if there are more comment periods - but for someone who owns a house on the beach, with all the stor...

Woke up this morning and we were flooded again. We are one of the lowest points but it is so frustrating that it does not take much to flood us. You can see the graph below from NOAA for water levels at Sargent, TX that we had a big spike from the weather out in the gulf.  This appears to be the norm and we need some help on drainage and the beach restoration to help alleviate the impacts from the rising water. While the tides from March - May are bigger than other parts of the year, we were not forecast to get any coastal flooding - so much for the forecast.  And here is our back yard this morning