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Surfside to get $5.7 million in beach funding
Published October 24, 2007
The Texas General Land Office announced Tuesday it has allocated $5.7 million in funding to preserve the beaches at Surfside Beach, part of the largest beach renourishment effort in Texas history, Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson said.
Most of the funds, $3 million, will be used to build an offshore breakwater or a submerged reef to keep the sand from being carried away from the beach, Surfside Beach Mayor Jim Bedward said.
“That’s the key to a long-term solution,” Bedward said. “We have to put something there to maintain the sand in the system.”
About $900,000 from city funds will be included in the project from a scrapped renourishment project, Bedward said. The past project didn’t go forward because there was nothing to keep the sand from washing into the Gulf of Mexico. The city couldn’t support a project to establish an offshore breakwater without state assistance, he said.
The Surfside Beach shoreline stabilization project is part of a $50 million endeavor using state and federal funds. Another $13.5 million project aims to create a 200-foot-wide beach in Galveston, Patterson said. Both probably will begin in the fall of 2008, he said.
“It’s a smart move,” Patterson said. “Without a beach, there’s less tourism, less sales tax, less hotel revenue and lower employment. Economically, preserving or rebuilding Texas beaches is a huge benefit — it’s an investment.”
Patterson said a University of Texas report concluded $30 million spent on beach renourishment in 1999 would return $127 million in 20 years in increased economic activity.
The first goal for state officials is keeping the sand at Surfside Beach, he said. Once they have accomplished that, funds will be used to start rebuilding the beach with mounds of sand, Patterson said.
“First we have to stop the bleeding, and then we can start to fix the damage,” he said. “We hope the initial shore stabilization at Surfside will last for 40 years. This is only the beginning.”
Surfside Beach City Secretary Kelly Hamby has been in coordination with state and federal grant officials looking to authorize and approve the money. She said $1.1 million of the total for Surfside Beach will come from state Coastal Erosion Planning and Response Act funding and $4 million from a federal Coastal Impact Assistance Program grant.
A $2.8 million beach renourishment project at South Padre Island and a $2.4 million Sylvan Beach project also are included in the Land Office’s initiative, Patterson said.
Nothing can be done to renourish the beach until the beach homes past the line of vegetation, which are the subject of a court challenge, are moved, Bedward said. More than 20 homes have been moved, but 13 homeowners still are fighting a district judge’s ruling that the homes should be moved. Their appeal of District Judge Pat Sebesta’s summary judgment in the state’s favor will be heard Nov. 16.
The state funds being allocated must be used by August 2009 or they will be used somewhere else, GLO spokesman Jim Suydam said.
Bedward said he was not concerned the homes would not be moved before then.
“If everything goes right in court, they should be moved by then,” he said. “If not, by 2009, it will be a moot point. … We’d be lucky to have any kind of beach left if nothing is done by 2009.”
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