Apres Moi, Le Deluge
September 25th, 2008 at 4:27 pm
In November 2007, I wrote a story entitled “That Sinking Feeling: The Water’s Rising. The Island’s Subsiding. And Galveston Keeps on Building.” The story - and the headline - tried to capture the folly of building on a vulnerable barrier island.
Despite increasingly stern warnings from scientists and the protestations of environmentalists, Galveston’s unprotected West End is exploding with development. Developers are building homes and hotels on beaches expected to erode within decades. In some cases, geologists say, the builders are disrupting the very integrity of the island, carving away the land for canals, marinas, and ponds. Such excavation could enhance the potential for breaches of the island during storms by creating pathways for water. In an extreme case, Galveston could even be split into multiple pieces, the geologists warn.
The scenario does not faze many islanders. An abiding faith in the power of engineering and technology has reassured them that the forces of nature an be resisted. So they build in the face of a looming disaster.
The disaster is no longer looming. The slow-motion phenomena I described in the story have suddenly been brought to the fore. As the Fort Worth Star-Telegram aptly summed it up yesterday: “The devastating hit that Hurricane Ike delivered to the upper Texas coast has many experts questioning the breakneck pace of development along the beaches.” But it’s not just the experts. Read the comments section of any story about rebuilding the West End. On one side you have folks, admirably undefeated by the storm, promising to rebuild at any cost. On the other, you have people calling for a halt to the endless proliferation of tony condos and beachside mansions built within spitting distance of the Gulf and outside the protection of the seawall.
Scientists and residents are beginning to assess the damage to the West End. John Anderson, a professor of oceanography at Rice and critic of unchecked Galveston development, shared some of his preliminary observations. The West End, Anderson observes, for the most part “dodged a bullet.” The storm surge was less than anticipated and Bolivar bore the brunt of the “dirty side” of the hurricane. Though the precise extent won’t be known for some time, Anderson says there appears to be significant beach erosion, leaving many homes stranded on the public beaches. (Land commissioner Jerry Patterson reports “hundreds” of houses.)
“Some of those houses that were built months or a year ago are now sitting seaward of the vegetation line,” Anderson said. “That’s just really deplorable.” Anderson has reason to be miffed. He was one of the authors of a 2007 “geohazards” study commissioned by the city that challenged city leaders to steer development away from sensitive areas - eroding beaches, wetlands, and low-lying areas.
The study was effectively shelved. Development continued apace.
In my story lat year, I wrote about a $500 million master-planned community called Pointe West built on probably the most vulnerable part of the island, next to San Luis Pass on the far western tip. Here was one geologists’ prediction of Pointe West’s fate:
“[Pointe West] will be run over by a hurricane someday and totally flattened, and if that doesn’t happen, there will be a shift in shoreline movement, and some of those places will be in danger of falling into the ocean,” says Jim Gibeaut, a research professor at Texas A&M-Corpus Christi and the lead author of the geohazards map.
So how did Pointe West fare? Most of the very pricey homes seem to have survived Ike. But some of the almost brand-new beachside houses appear to be perilously close to the public beach, if not on it. See these before and after shots.
Closer to the seawall, the beaches appear to have encroached even more.
“I hate to say I told you so but sometimes you have to so people take you seriously,” Anderson says.
Another big I-told-you-so: Last October, land commissioner Jerry Patterson stood at the end of the seawall and announced the “biggest effort to preserve the Texas coast since the Galveston Seawall” — $13.5 million to nourish three miles of beach west of the seawall. The project was still in the planning stages when Ike hit. Coastal geologists, including Anderson, warned at the time that the source of sand — a large underwater shoal off Galveston’s eastern tip — should be preserved for a storm. “it’s a damn good thing he didn’t get his way,” Anderson says.
Patterson’s $13.5 million project now seems like small potatoes. On Tuesday, Galveston mayor Lyda Ann Thomas asked Congress for $100 million, out of a $2.4 billion request, to fund beach nourishment projects on the island. Will Congress balk at spending that kind of money to dump sand on eroding beaches?Would anybody be asking for that money if hugely expensive developments weren’t fronting the beaches?
In other respects, Ike has served as a Deus ex machina, settling long-running arguments overnight. For example, land commissioner Patterson had been locked in a legal dispute with 14 homeowners in Surfside Beach whose homes had been sitting on the public beach. Patterson wanted the houses moved, but the owners sued instead. Ten of those homes are now gone, rendering the lawsuits moot. The storm has also cleared the way for Patterson to introduce more stringent setback rules that would keep new homes out of the dunes and away from the public beaches, at least for a while.
But there’s one factor — not addressed in any of the press coverage I’ve seen — that looms over all of the post-Ike deliberations: climate change. We tend to focus on the instantaneous devastation of hurricanes. But the slow-motion pain that climate-induced rising sea levels will bring to low-lying islands like Galveston is much greater. Much of Galveston, including pretty much all of the West End, is only a few feet above sea level. Recent scientific research has suggested that seas could rise as much as six and a half feet by 2100. Lowball estimates that don’t include melting ice sheets are closer to half a foot to two feet. If the scientists are correct, Galveston’s future is bleak. Now is a teachable moment. Will we seize it?
September 26th, 2008 at 9:43 am
[…] Orleans de je vue in Galveston Forrest Wilder’s Texas Observer Blog about high end housing construction on Galveston Island is well worth […]
September 29th, 2008 at 10:22 am
Naomi Klein’s latest book Disaster Capitalism addresses this very thing.
September 30th, 2008 at 10:49 pm
The once a year ‘debate’ over whether to rebuild this or that community which has just been devastated seems to me not to further the public interest. A national discussion over the federal flood insurance program, for example, would be a great place to start as it would involve not only the Gulf states but also the vast Mississippi River watershed and famous beaches such as Fire Island along the Eastern Seaboard. Does everybody understand just how heavy a role the federal government has in subsidizing development in flood-prone areas in this country? I doubt it. The aftermath of a major storm, when emotions are raw, is not the time for such discussion, but certainly we have to tackle the issue sooner rather than later.
October 3rd, 2008 at 11:19 am
People need to go back to the land use of my grandfather’s day. On their privately owned beach front land they built fishing camps (shacks, really). If it was destroyed, they just built them back, found a few more pieces of throw-away furniture and were back fishing or just enjoying the beach within a few weeks. I know, I was a frequent visitor as a child to those little pieces of heaven.