Letter to the editor, Caller_Times

http://www.caller.com/ccct/letters_to_the_editor/article/0,1641,CCCT_841_4521032,00.html

 

A good beach

Studying the Port Aransas "beach management" debate in the local papers and e-mails brings back bad memories of government-sponsored erosion of many parts of the upper Texas Coast (Galveston, Bolivar Peninsula).

Where, you ask, is the legal authority for the beaches? I shall tell you: It's in Austin at the General Land Office. Folks who know beaches are there, but it is hard to tell - basically, the GLO is all smoke, no fire. So by default the real estate salesman only needs one or two votes plus one or two uninformed members on a council to destroy a beach for several lifetimes.

What does a good beach do? First, it has a grade to absorb big wave energy; second, little sand piles with weeds grow and make bigger piles; third, the bigger the pile and weeds the better the supply of sand and growth of the beach. Sand in, sand out, so to speak. Mess this up, and before long you'll be staying in the Ninth Ward courtesy of FEMA.

To re-coin a phrase, everybody knows what you are, we just don't know your price.

My advice: Don't ruin your beach; geophysics (a.k.a. Mother Nature) is unforgiving.

Alan McNeill

(Beaumont)