Surfside Beach, Texas; When a Beach Becomes a Dump

The following video is from Surfside Beach, Texas. The video is from Les Freese, a Surfside local. I'll let the images and interviews speak for themselves.

Untitled from les freese on Vimeo.

A Crazy Idea That Just Might Work......

South Padre Island with a 4' storm surge. This does not take into account waves on top of the surge.

Very regularly I look at our little barrier island here on the southern Texas coast and I try and imagine what it will look like in the future. I look at the row of hotels, condominiums and homes that currently exist within the town limits of South Padre Island on the eroding beaches north of Huisache street and often think of where they will be in the next twenty, thirty or even forty years. I have very often come to the conclusion that they will eventually be located within the waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The following is a plan, albeit fanciful, that addresses that inevitability and better situates Cameron County and the Town of South Padre Island in dealing with it.

Sure, there will be a valiant effort to hold the line. The town will continue to use every resource it has to seek funds for beach dredge and fill projects and seek so-called innovative erosion control schemes such as the approved Coastal Solutions shore stabilization project regardless if they might temporarily fix the local problem but move it just a little further down the beach. After all it will then be someone else's problem to fix at that point. There might even come a point, when beach fill projects become too expensive to maintain, that the town, in the interest or desperation of protecting its tax base, resorts to a seawall, groin or some other form of armoring. After all, that is exactly what these schemes exist for. These projects are not there to protect or preserve the beach, studies show that all are very ineffective at doing so, but to provide "protection" for those properties that have decided to risk building on what is known as an exceedingly eroding shoreline.

That being said and in the Town of South Padre Island's defense, they are "built out" and their lot has been cast with the the thin strip of sand that they have built on and the relentless Gulf of Mexico.

Ah but look to the north of the city limits. The opportunity of a lifetime awaits there. A blank slate that has yet to have a real brush stroke painted along it. A chance to really re-evaluate what resilient development means. I have and will continue to advocate for responsible construction setbacks based on the area's erosion rates and the preservation of the natural dunes that line the beaches there. But I have come to realize that those are just two pieces in a much bigger solution. I would like to add two more pieces to my beach plan that I believe will help in promoting a responsible development plan for the northern beaches of South Padre Island. These ideas are not mine but the product of reading 'The Rising Sea' by Orrin H. Pilkey and Rob Young. Neither one of these would be as easily championed or implemented by decision makers as casting me as the crazy guy in the corner but they are solutions that would stem the tide of increasing tax-payer financed bailouts of coastal development.

1. Immediately stop building front-row high capacity, high rise buildings on what are known as eroding beaches. This is a ridiculous practice in the first place but also forces the town and county to commit resources to protect a risky development in the interest of protecting property and hotel occupancy taxes.
2. Stop government assistance for oceanfront rebuilding. This would include stopping taxpayer subsidies for the Federal Flood Insurance Program, Texas Windstorm Insurance Association and Federal Emergency Management Agency bailouts for properties that exist in areas that are known to be susceptible to storm surges from tropical events and northers. In addition, stop federal and state funding of beach fill projects. This would raise insurance rates to their proper level, bring down real estate values to reflect the actual risk of building on an eroding shoreline and discourage building so close to the water.

I know hands down that this is the most controversial thing I have written on this blog but we are talking about a blank slate. An area that has yet to really be touched, physically anyway, and a perfect opportunity to at least discuss the merits and possibilities of implementing this plan.

1. Preserve the current dune system
2. Establish construction setbacks based on historical erosion rates
   
3. Prohibit high capacity beachfront building
4. Eliminate government assistance for rebuilding after a storm.

Call me crazy, but those four points above look like a real beach development plan and one that would put 100% of the risk in developing on a disappearing beach in the hands of the developer and take it out of the hands of the taxpayer. The property owner would be responsible for all of the costs associated with the decision to build or buy in a high risk area. Yes, this would lead to a drop off in coastal ocean front building but you would also achieve a real solution to the erosion problem that "plagues" 90% of US beaches.

Jon Steele Bringing 'Cowboy From Hell' Home to Texas!

This weekend, Texas Native Jon Steele will be celebrating the publishing of his Texas surf article, 'Cowboy From Hell' in The Surfer's Journal and premiering his new surf film 'Jazz The Glass', pirated pirate surf movie!

Along for the ride are surfers Christian Wach, Tommy Witt and Morgan Faulkner with live music by Will Crum!

Jon has chosen not to premiere his new film in California, where he currently resides overlooking the fabled Trestles, but his homeland, the Lone Star State.

Jon will be bringing his traveling circus to the Padre Island Brewing Company this Sunday, November 15. The deck opens at 7PM with the movie starting at 8PM followed by live music from Will Crum!

The cover charge is $10 at the door with a free pint of one of the Brew Pub's fine selections. There will also be a $2 discount for Surfrider Foundation Members.

Dune Debate; No different in NJ than SPI

Volunteers planting the seeds of a new dune on SPI

I came across an article in the Press of Atlantic City yesterday that highlighted the ongoing debate of sand dunes, the protection they offer and the fact that front row property owners in southern New Jersey don't want them because they ruin their ocean view and make it more difficult to get to the water. Now I am not from New Jersey but I do know the value of a sand dune and its ability to naturally protect against storm surge without sacrificing the beach and to ask to destroy one or lower it is ludicrous in my book. To be honest, the sand dunes that are being discussed in the article were engineered and are not historically natural dunes.

To illustrate the irony of beachfront property owners not getting it, here is a story. I was informed yesterday that a beachfront owner in Loch Harbor, New Jersey actually filed suit against the town and another property owner who constructed and vegetated a dune to protect his property. It went to the New Jersey Supreme Court where the court ruled that the dune was in violation of the local fence ordinance and ordered the property owner who created it to bulldoze it. Now the woman who filed and won the suit is furious with the town because the street in front of her house, that might have been protected by the previous dune, is now covered in sand after every storm.

Hurricane Ike woke up the majority of beachfront property owners on South Padre Island in the summer of 2008 and they realized the importance of a dune. However, as with New Jersey there are a few that just refuse to see the handwriting on the wall.

Here on SPI, the town is in the process of working with the University of Texas at Brownsville and the Surfrider Foundation South Texas Chapter to construct a continuous dune line for storm surge protection. Yes, this is another "engineered" dune restoration project. However it is being done to replace dunes that were bulldozed in the 70s and 80s to make way for some of the beachside hotels we have now. Just like New Jersey, there are a few property and condo owners who threaten suit every time a dune vegetation planting is planned. The reasons vary from "the dunes are ugly" to "where are we going to put our volleyball court". Many of these people either live in condo complexes that had water washing through their ground floor units or had pools filled not with water but sand after Hurricane Ike two summers ago. But because they were not directly affected, this time anyway, by the storm because of being on a higher floor, they would deny the others the protection that a dune would provide.

In my opinion, the town of South Padre Island has two options. One is to seek to continue the continuous dune line and try to protect beachfront properties AND try and preserve their beach or build a seawall that would protect those properties but kill its beach.

It seems to me that the answer is clear.

Collecting Beach Trash For A Holiday Message

It is hard to believe that such an unbelievably beautiful place, as the beaches north of the town of South Padre Island are, could be overflowing with litter and debris. There are 22 miles of undeveloped beach and dunes between the northern corporate limits of SPI and the Mansfield Cut! Plastic bottles and bags, sand toys, dirty diapers, aluminum cans and even glass bottles are never few and far between.


From trash left by beach goers both on the beaches and in the dunes to maritime litter from oil platforms, natural gas platforms, shrimpers and freighters there is no lack of debris to find.

This Holiday season, the Surfrider Foundation South Texas Chapter along with On the Beach Surfsports and Unlitter.com will be raising awareness of this problem by constructing a display window in the holidays' theme with nothing but beach trash. This display will be entered into the town of South padre Island's Holiday Decorations Contest. The goal is to wake people up and educate them in the reality that everything they dump ends up on the beach!

In just 45 minutes, 10 volunteers were able to fill a 30' flatbed trailer and my truck with trash for the upcoming window!

This green plastic jewel is just one bit of evidence that plastics are hurting the marine animals in the Gulf Of Mexico. Notice the Turtle bites.



More updates to follow.......

God Bless Texas! Public Beach Access Now a Right!

What a great time to be a Texan! This past Tuesday, Texans went to the polls and claimed their public beaches for themselves by passing Constitutional Proposition 9 to protect the right of the public, individually and collectively, to access and use the public beaches bordering the seaward shore of the Gulf of Mexico. Not only did the voters just pass Prop 9, they sent it into mandate status with a margin of 3 to 1. In my opinion, this is the biggest single piece of coastal legislation since the ratification of the Texas Open Beaches Act (TOBA) in 1959.

Texas is unique in that it does not have any beaches that are privately owned to the waterline. TOBA set up a rolling easement that is the public beach between mean low water and the vegetation line. This is essentially a state park that is dedicated to the use of the public. By order of the TOBA, coastal municipalities and counties must provide access to these beaches no less than every half mile and provide 15 parking spaces for every linear foot of beach. Truthfully, public access along the Texas coast has become more complicated due to population growth, development, erosion and changes in the line of vegetation that currently define what is “public beach” or “public beach easement.”

May, 2009 was a dark time for TOBA. In the wake of Hurricane Ike that devastated Surfside, Galveston and the Bolivar Peninsula, political chaos ensued. In a final minute move of the 2009 legislative session, we had Representative Wayne Christian, who had lost his second home to the Gulf of Mexico and wanted to rebuild, slip an amendment on an unrelated bill that exempted his area of coast from TOBA. To compound the problem, Governor Rick “Good Hair” Perry refused to take a stand at all and let the bill slip into law quietly without even signing it so that he wouldn’t look bad in our upcoming gubernatorial election. It looked as if Ike was going to gut TOBA.

Seeing the handwriting on the wall, the Texas Chapters of the Surfrider Foundation made it their mission to get Prop 9 passed. On November 3, that goal came to fruition. What has been accomplished is that the core of TOBA, public beaches and access, has been enshrined within the Texas Constitution and under the protection of those it directly benefits, the voters. No more can a single legislator screw us out of our public beaches without putting it before the electorate to decide. God Bless Texas Voters!

Beach Access Now A Texas Constitutional Right!!

Congratulations Texas! Accessing and using the Public Beaches of Texas is now your Constitutional Right! No other state in the United States has anything like this! One more reason to add to the long list of why there is no better state to live in!

Beach Access is now your Constitutional Right and yours to protect! Use that Right responsibly. Help others learn to use that Right responsibly.