More Spacious Beaches Created Along Seawall Galveston Capital Tourism and Marketing Texas
GALVESTON – Beachgoers arriving at the Galveston seawall this weekend will find a far more spacious beach to
relax on following the pumping of more than 1 million cubic yards of sand along
3.5 miles of badly eroded beach.
The
$19.5 million effort to pump sand taken from a sand bar in the Houston Ship
Channel ended March 27 as the last batch of sand slurry plopped onto the new
beach near 61st Street, said Reuben Trevino, operations manager for the Galveston
Park Board.
Beachgoers
will see the formerly narrow strip of beach extended to about 300 feet from the
seawall. The beach is designed to gradually erode and form a slope until it
stabilizes at about 150 feet, Trevino said. He said the process should take
about two weeks.
The
project got underway more than two months ago after numerous delays but was
completed well ahead of the May 13 deadline set by the park board. The
contractor would have faced penalties of $1,500 for each day it went past the
deadline.
The
contractor began by extending more than 4 miles of pipe from a sand deposit
known as Big Reef, putting much of it offshore to avoid beach that fronted
private property east of the seawall.
East
Beach and Stewart Beach, on the eastern end of the island, are in an area where
sand is collecting, keeping the beaches healthy. However, the beaches roughly
west of 12th Street are eroding all the way to the western end of the island.
The
contractor, New Jersey-based Weeks Marine Inc., began pumping sand onto eroding
beaches at about 12th Street and gradually extended the pipeline as new beach
was created.
The
pipeline eventually extended more than 7 miles from the sand bar in the Houston
Ship Channel to the project's end point at 61st Street. The pipe is now being
taken apart.
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The
new beach will help act as a barrier from storm surges and boost the Galveston
economy by keeping the beach a prime tourist attraction, de Schaun said.
The
park board plans to use sand from Army Corps of Engineers dredging operations
to maintain its beaches. The new sections of beach would probably need
maintenance in about five years.
The
board hopes to get money set aside by BP for coastal restoration following the
2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill that can be used for beach replenishment
projects in 2018 and 2020, de Schaun said.
The
two new projects would add to Babe's Beach west of 61st Street, built in 2015
in an area where erosion had wiped away all traces of beach more than 65 years
earlier. The projects would shore up the existing Babe's Beach and extend it
westward toward the end of the seawall.
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The
replenishment of the beach in front of the seawall is the third since 1995. The
last beach renourishment was in 2009, when sand was hauled by truck to restore
stretches chewed away by Hurricane Ike in September 2008.
The
bulk of financing for the project has come from $15.5 million that originally
was intended to help finance a $40 million beach restoration project for
sections west of the seawall, the largest replenishment effort ever planned on
the Texas Gulf Coast.
The
project was scuttled after a Texas Supreme Court ruling in 2012 left in doubt
whether the Texas Open Beaches Act applied to the west end of Galveston Island
and raised the possibility that the beaches there were held by beachfront
property owners. Then-Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson yanked the project,
arguing that tax dollars could not be used to enhance private property.
The
Land Office provided $2.7 million for the recently completed project and the
Park Board and city of Galveston contributed $1.2 million.
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