Texas pushes projected $37 billion coastal protection complex

The building of the $12 billion Galveston Bay Barrier or ‘Ike Dike’ as part of the proposed $37 billion coastal protection complex may look too big ticket but in comparison to $125 billion in damage from just Hurricane Harvey alone, can Texas afford not to build?

When Hurricane Harvey hit in 2017, the storm dropped an astounding 51 inches of rainfall on the Houston area resulting in massive flooding, the shutdown of the Port of Houston and widespread damage to the petrochemical facilities. Overall, Harvey exacted a staggering $125 billion worth of damage to the area.

With that experience in mind, Texans are supporting a gigantic storm surge defense complex projected to cost as much as $37 billion, including a $12 billion storm surge barrier for Galveston Bay, popularly known as the ‘Ike Dike.’ The complex is designed to defend Texas cities, ports and petrochemical facilities from future storm surges, flooding and hurricanes following the destruction from Hurricanes Ike in 2008 and Harvey in 2017.

The push for the projected $37 billion complex in Texas comes at a time when Mississippi river cities and ports say they need $12 billion in new flood protections and the Port and City of San Francisco say they will need $5 billion to rebuild the storm wall protecting port property and downtown from worsening storm surges. Finally, the City of New Orleans has already been the recipient of a $14.5 billion storm surge protection complex to prevent a repeat of the devastation suffered during Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

The plan for the Texas complex is being developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) and is officially known as the ‘Coastal Spine.’ It is expected to be submitted to Congress for funding in 2021 or 2022.

The project “includes a combination of ecosystem restoration (ER) and coastal storm risk management (CSRM) measures located throughout the 18 coastal counties of the Texas Gulf Coast,” according to a 2019 fact sheet issued by U.S. Army Corps of Engineers which is working in collaboration with the Texas General Land Office. 

The Texas General Land Office led by Commissioner George Prescott Bush supports the project because “The Texas coast … is subject to coastal erosion, relative sea level rise, coastal storm surge, habitat loss and water quality degradation. These coastal hazards are placing the environmental and economic health of the coast at risk, which negatively impacts the state and national economy.

The complex, developed as part of the Coastal Texas Study, is described in the 2019 fact sheet which states:

The project study includes: “a “multiple lines of defense” approach/strategy that includes a combination of other structural and non-structural measures, as well as natural and nature-based features to form resilient, redundant, robust, and adaptable strategies that promote life safety. The specific measures proposed through the Study will be based on local site conditions and societal values.” 

The storm barrier will not have a negative impact on marine life within the Galveston Bay: “The modeling so far indicates that the height of tides in the bay would not be at levels that endanger fish and oyster populations.”

The proposed features “reduce risk to the community at large, not just the concentration of industrial facilities in Houston.”

Bob Mitchell, President of the Bay Area Houston Partnership, told AJOT that his organization has been supporting the Coastal Spine project since William Merrell, Chair of the Marine Sciences Department at Texas A &M University, Galveston came to him with the concept nine years ago. Merrell has been a leading advocate for the project.

Mitchell said that since that time, “our organization has been a major promoter of this storm surge project and the result is that “we expect the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) to produce a report by 2021… that we can take to Congress for funding.”

Mitchell explained that the public has “probably seen a figure of $32-37 billion dollars for the cost of the project. That projection encompasses the entire cost of coastal protections from the Sabine Pass to Brownsville. The storm surge barrier and gates across Galveston Bay are projected to cost between $9-12 billion dollars.”

William Merrell told AJOT: “I became an advocate for a storm barrier to protect Galveston Bay after I rode out Hurricane Ike in Galveston back in 2008 and saw the damage from storm surges and flooding. 

It is time that we got proactive on the issues of storm surges, flooding and climate changes and not focused on after-the-fact flood recovery through programs such as the FEMA (Federal Emergency Management Agency) process that politicians like to support…That takes a long time to work and often hurts the disadvantaged. 

The flood protections built around New Orleans were the first time we were proactive and we need to do this in Texas with the Ike Dike.

National security isn’t just about protecting people being threatened by terrorists, it’s also about protecting people from the threats caused by catastrophic rains and storm surges and hurricanes… and climate change. It used to be we saw a 100-year flood once in every 100 years. Now it’s every 50 years. Here in Texas we have seen two catastrophic rains in recent years of 30+ inches. 

Congress needs to get serious about infrastructure and about flood control protections and anticipate the problems that we are facing from climate change. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers budget needs more money to address these problems…. We have seen the work the Dutch have done around defending against storm surges and we need to spend the money to see projects like the Ike Dike get built now…. climate change is getting worse and we need to get started protecting ourselves.”

Rationale for Storm Barrier

Mitchell said “The Coastal Spine is critical to our ability to protect 5.5 million people in the Houston area as well as the petrochemical industry within the region. That petrochemical industry is a national security asset for the United States. It includes 42% of special chemicals that include fertilizers, coatings, Theraflu, and other industrial applications. It also includes 20% of the United States gasoline resources, 60% of jet fuel, and between 70% -80% fuel used by the military. Protecting this industry is an important national and economic security priority.”

He also notes the importance of protecting the Port of Houston, which is at risk from hurricanes, and in 2018:

• Handled 69% of U.S. Gulf coast container cargo
  
• Is the largest Texas port with 96% market share of containers
  

Mitchell told AJOT that there are two possible outcomes for Congress to fund the USACE so as to build the storm barrier complex:

“The funding could go the way of many traditional projects in which a fraction of the cost of construction is authorized each year and the construction could take up to 18 years to complete. The threat is too grave and we cannot allow that process to occur in the case of the Coastal Spine.”

The project can be fully funded immediately for the full $12 billion-dollar price tag similar to the expeditious funding of storm surge barriers that were built to protect New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina in 2005: “In that case following the deaths of 2000 people and the large-scale devastation inflicted on New Orleans persuading Congress that this calamity needed to be solved quickly by a new system of flood gates and storm surge protections. Congress authorized $14.5 billion dollars for USACE to design and build a system of storm protections that surround the city of New Orleans which is below sea level. The result was that within four years, the new protections were in place and New Orleans has been able to survive recent hurricanes without serious damage. That construction however, only protected around 400,000 people in downtown New Orleans, a city that is largely below sea level… The State of Texas has a much more compelling argument for construction of the storm surge barriers because we are talking about protecting 5.5 million people and major fuel and chemical assets that impact national security and the U.S. economy. So, we would propose that Congress allocate Texas the $12 billion dollars it will need in order to build a storm surge barrier system based on U.S. national security.”

The threat of flooding and storm surge is addressed by this project in the following manner:  

“You stop the storm surge from the hurricane by closing the gates and keeping the storm surge out of the bay. This allows rain water flowing through the bayous and into the Houston Ship Channel to accumulate into Galveston Bay without the further factor of the storm surge pushing the water back into urban areas and impacting port operations and the petrochemical industry.

When there is low tide and the storm surge has dissipated, you can open the barriers and the storm gates will allow the accumulated water to flow out into the Gulf of Mexico. This helps to alleviate the threat of flooding.”