storm brings high tides

Start your bellyachin'!

When I was a kid I was pretty good at finding things to whine about -- still am, I guess. My mom used to cheerfully intone, “Oh quit your bellyachin’!” But of course I couldn’t help but notice that if you didn’t partake of a little bellyachin’ every now and then, things that made you unhappy hardly ever got changed.

For the umpteenth morning in a row I have watched the big machines head out to a beach that is virtually seaweed and shell-free. I find this inexplicable and more than a little irritating. So today I flagged down the public works truck and asked why -- could they not see that there is in fact NOTHING TO RAKE?

Unsurprisingly enough, the operators have indeed noticed that. They are apparently under direct orders from the town staff to rake no matter what the condition of the beach. I was told that somebody complains if the rakes don’t go out. One can’t help but wonder who is this mysterious complainer that his/her desire for a zen-garden beach carries more weight than all the arguments against raking a clean beach?*

I suggest that it is time for us to complain about unnecessary raking. Loudly and repeatedly. Let’s see if a whole bunch of bellyachin’ will get their attention. I think we should start with Public Works Director Raul Morales (rmorales@townspi.com) -- a nice man who nods and smiles whenever members of the Beach & Dune Task Force talk to him about this -- and then cheerfully ignores our pointed requests.


*Do I need to list them again? Okay, here they are, in no particular order:
1. Waste of fuel
2. Needless release of exhaust fumes
3. Disruption of the peaceful, sunrise-over-the-gulf experience
4. Disturbance of habitat for the creatures who live along the shore
5. Disruption of morning beach activities of guests and residents trying to stay out of the way of the monster machines
6. Inadvertant collection of litter pushed into the dune toes where they will cause problems for nesting sea turtles
7. Disruption of natural dune-forming processes
8. Relocation of shells to places where kids building sandcastles will never ever find them

Update: I just added one of Nancy's photos that clearly shows how ineffective raking is as a means for filling in holes.

Why I distrust developers

The vegetated dune that used to reside here is now just a big pile of loose sand that is dispersing itself around the neighborhood thanks to all the wind we have been having. I could understand if someone actually intended to build something here, but apparently the plan was to bulldoze first, plan later and to hell with the native flora and fauna that used to call this dune home.

Maybe all the "for sale" signs on my street have something to do with it. No fewer than five four-plexes have been built on East Saturn in the past year, with what appears to be yet another well underway. And all of them have "for sale" signs in front of them, -- some more than one.

I guess it's hard to flip when no one is buying.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

From Wikipedia:

The Law of Unintended Consequences is not a law in the strict scientific sense, but it is often quoted to encapsulate the idea that almost all human actions have at least one unintended consequence. In other words, each cause has more than one effect, including unforeseen effects.

Unintended consequences can be classed into roughly three types:
• a positive unexpected benefit, usually referred to as serendipity or a windfall
• a potential source of problems, according to Murphy's law used in Systems engineering
• a negative or a perverse effect, which is the opposite result of what is intended

This "law" was much on my mind at yesterday's emergency workshop regarding our rapidly eroding beach (see La Quinta) and possible courses of action regarding same.

Turnout was high. Rightly so as this is a disaster unfolding that could have far-reaching consequences for everyone who lives on or near or even just has a fondness for South Padre Island. The beach - particularly on the north end of town - has been eroding for a long time and while winter storms often take away broad swaths of beach, no one recalls ever seeing it this bad. Valuable property is disappearing and expensive homes and resorts are at risk. The upcoming dredging of the channel will do us no good as there are no funds for piping that material - tantalizingly close as it may be - to the beaches that really really need it.

(Note to all those who wrote impassioned comments on why affordable housing is so evil, i.e. because it takes money out of one person's pocket to benefit another: I expect you will feel equally impassioned about using tax dollars - in the form of grants, etc. - to save the collective asses of people who are rich enough to live on or near the beach -- but this is not an area I really care to delve into with this post.)

It was good to see so many movers and shakers show up to discuss this and I sure would have liked to see even a little bit of that enthusiasm just a couple months back when Sam, Nancy and I were trying to pull together a Christmas tree dune-building session. Of course maybe a handful of Christmas trees (though it could have been a lot more than that had the entire valley been enlisted) and some hay bales might not have saved the La Quinta's boardwalk -- but now we will never know, will we?

And it was interesting to see developers who all too recently successfully petitioned the BOA to have the HBL (Historic Building Line) moved seaward so that they could build even closer to the water on a beach that everyone already knew was eroding getting all huffy about what they perceived as insufficient sympathy being shown by the Army Corps of Engineers at their current plight.

And I couldn't help but wonder how many folks who are now aghast at the budget cuts that led to this sad situation voted for and cheered on the Republicans (at both the state and federal levels of government) who cut taxes which used to fund these kinds of programs. Or support a president who led us into a disastrous war that is eating up some $4.5 billion each and every month.

And don't even get me started on "global climate change."

To all you anonymice who are thinking this just might be the blog post to make you register with google just so you can tell me again what a "piece of work" I am and why don't I just "shut up and mind (my) own business," well... hold on a cotton-picking minute. I fully realize that these endangered entities provide a huge tax base that pay for our roads, our schools, our new municipal center and all kinds of good things. I am not suggesting that they are in any way getting what they deserve. The situation at La Quinta truly horrifies me and I think we need to pull together as a community and do what we can to save these endangered properties.

What concerns me is that law I cited at the beginning of this post. I hate hearing serious talk of geo-tubes and other "hard" forms of dune protection. (See what this study - funded by the Texas Coastal Management Program - has to say about them.... talk about unintended consequences!) Even the discussion of using off-shore sand concerns me. I spend a lot of time with SPI sand and am here to tell you that it is pretty special stuff. What happens if we dump a bunch of sand with different composition and/or different sized grains on our beaches? Maybe the only unfortunate consequence will be that you can't build wonderful sandcastles with it any more. That would be bad enough - more so for some of us than others. But what if it has other - more disastrous consequences? Some studies suggest such a program can mess with the wildlife and even increase erosion.

Before we jump on the offshore sand-mining bandwagon, I think we need to carefully and fully review any and all options available to us. Just a few minutes surfing on google led me to case studies of beach communities that are exploring artificial reef creation as a means of protecting and building up eroding beaches -- with the additional recreational benefits of attracting fish and improving surf (as in, make the local surfers very happy.) Serendipity indeed!

The most interesting short-term solution we heard came from Clayton Brashear, who suggested we look into the possibility of moving sand from the right of way at the end of Highway 100. I have been thinking about that idea for a few hours now and the only unfortunate consequence I can think of so far is that it could make it easier for everyone to access the Clothing Optional Beach -- which could quite possibly speed up the end of nekkid frolicking on the beach as we now know and enjoy it.

Alas.

Update: I am going to start adding interesting links.
Shifting Sands (thanks, Nancy!)
The Island Breeze report of the workshop
Texas' Sinking Coast