Subject: Buddy Gough article from Caller Times

CORPUS CHRISTI CALLER TIMES ARTICLE
SUNDAY, MARCH 17, 1996

MESSING WITH MOTHER NATURE By BUDDY GOUGH
Packery Channel Project Confronts Powerful Forces

The debate over putting a permanent pass at Packery Channel provides reason to
review the powerful forces confronting such a task. These forces are the natural
dynamics of coastal environments, not the strong voices being raised for and
against the Packery project. Given the record of human attempts to tame coastal
passes, we have a history that could be titled One Hundred Years of Hard Knocks.
Nueces County residents should know why. The story is told in the dry language
of techical tomes like Shore Ecology of the Gulf of Mexico. It is also rendered
in the wisdom and research of recognized experts: Dr. Henry Berryhill of Corpus
Christi, the former chief of Marine Geology for the U.S. Geological Survey; Dr.
R.A. "Bob" Morton with the Bureau of Economic Geology at the University of
Texas-Austin; and, Dr. Richard Watson of Port Aransas, whose research applies
specifically to the Coastal Bend.

But let's cut the heart of the matter in the simplist of terms. Skipping over
several millenia of coastal evolution, we have a Texas Coast characterized by
long and narrow barrier islands and peninsulas bisected with openings or passes
to interior bay systems. This barrier-island complex is the creation of a
powerful, sand-bearing current sweeping along Texas beaches. Described as a
"river of sand," the longshore current has been and remains a bull-dozing force
to be reckoned with in the surf zone. It generally flows in a northerly
direction on the lower coast and southerly along the middle coast to converge
somewhere around the Big Shell area of Padre Island.

For its work of construction, the river of sand has three helpmates - wind, wave
action and tide. Of these, wind is the greatest and tide is the least. The wind,
prevailing from the southeast, kicks up waves and pushes them into the surf to
hurry the current along. The breaking waves also stir up the sand and put it in
suspension. Some sand is swept onto the beach, where the wind again picks it up
and sweeps it into the fore dunes and primary dunes and onward to the sand flats
beyond. Simultaneously, some of the suspended sand is carried away in the
current for beach-building downstream.

There are times when hurricane-force winds whip up a storm-surge of waves high
enough to wash over the dunes to relocate huge amounts of sand in back-island
areas. Likewise, the storm surges can radically relocate buried sand along a
beach. Even in normal conditions, however, the longshore current transports an
immense amount of sand. And because of seasonal wind shifts and the push-pull
effect of wave action, there is considerable shifting back and forth of the
river of sand's heavy load.

According to undisputed research, the magnitude of shifting sand transported
along the southern end of Mustang Island amounts to 726,000 cubic yards
annually. To put the figure in comprehensible terms, Watson wrote that the sand
moving along the shore was enough to fill an 8-yard dump truck every six
minutes, or 250 dump truck loads daily all year long. But the river of sand does
more than build barrier islands. As it flows past natural passes between barrier
islands, it also sends some of its supply inland to form fan-shaped deltas or
large shoaling areas inside the passes. The classic fan-shaped delta exists at
Port Aransas and consists of Harbor Island and the shallow shoals of Redfish and
South bays. Area residents will also notice the large shoaling area created by
the old Corpus Christi Pass in the vicinity of the JFK Causeway.

At any rate, the influx of sand always threatened to the choke and block the
passes. The eventual blockage was only prevented at natural passes backed by
deep bays with river inflows strong enough to create a positive outflow of water
from the Gulf. Wind, the strongest force for water movement in coastal bays,
also helped keep the passes open via the scouring effect of winter northers.
Even so, the natural passes were generally too shallow and unpredictable to
support the dreams of deep-water commerce shared by 19th-century Texans.

In taking up the challenge of creating a permanent and protected deepwater pass
at Port Aransas, for example, the entrepreneurs of the Coastal Bend set out to
conquer the river of sand. It took the lessons of a half-century of failure and
the engineering might of the Corps of Engineers to finally do the job. The end
result was a pair of massive stone jetties that not only protected a wide, deep
pass, but also extended the Gulf beyond the reach of the river of sand. Interior
alterations of the pass were also important to the success of the project.
First, the Lydia Ann Channel cut across one side of fan-shaped delta to connect
the pass to Aransas Bay. Later, the Corpus Christi Ship Channel cut the other
side of the delta to open up Corpus Christi Bay. The final configuration was a
"Y" of deep entrance channels opening to the deep, river-fed bays, giving the
pass the backup power of two estuarine systems with net outflow to the Gulf. The
system of deep water connections takes millions of dollars annually to maintain
but the payoff is billions in commerce.

Nevertheless, there were unintended results. With river inflow into Corpus
Christi Bay directed toward Port Aransas, the old Corpus Christi Pass at the
south end of the bay was weakened. It soon sanded shut. There was also a problem
with the river of sand. As with all jettied passes on the Texas Coast, the
longshore current tended to pile sand against one side of the jetty, widening
the beach. At the same time, the sand-starved beach on the other side of the
jettied pass began to erode. Both effects occurred at Port Aransas. There was
also a tendency for storm surges to flank a jetty and breach the beaches on the
eroding side of a pass. It took the construction on a dike on San Jose Island to
protect the flank of the North Jetty at Port Aransas.

However, the experience at Port Aransas didn't keep other pass projects in the
Coastal Bend from having mixed results. The ill-fated Fish Pass on Mustang
Island was a good example. Constructed in 1972, the pass' short, granite jetties
did not extend into the surf far enough to escape the river of sand. The pass
began sanding up quickly and soon closed. End of story. Well, not quite. The
Fish Pass channel provided an excellent alley for Hurricane Allen's storm surge,
which cut Highway 361 at both ends of the Fish Pass Bridge.

Farther south, efforts to establish passes through Padre Island also met with
mixed results. The natural obstacles were especially daunting. Padre Island had
no historical passes. Instead, there were only washover passes or storm-surge
channels temporarily open during hurricanes. Worse, the semi-arid island was
backed by a shallow, hypersaline lagoon with negligible tides and freshwater
inflow.

Berryhill described the attempt to create a pass between the deep Gulf and the
shallow lagoon as like trying to push water uphill. Yet during the 1940s and
1950s, five attempts were made to open a washover named Yarborough Pass in hopes
of improving water exchange to the lagoon where salinity-induced fish kills were
common. The pass was dredged opened four times in a 32-month period between 1941
and 1944, and each time the river of sand immediately plugged. The last and
greatest effort in 1952 endured only three months. The water exchange during
that brief period reduced salinities only .5 percent within a half-mile of the
pass.

The construction of the Mansfield Channel and accompanying jetties in 1957 was
more ambitious. The original north and south jetties were 1,600 feet and 900
feet long respectively, but they sank into the soft sand. The newer granite
jetties have endured, but not without problems. The sand accumulation against
the south jetty now reaches nearly to the end of the rocks, allowing sand to
sweep around the end of the jetty to cause shoaling in the channel. At the same
time, the beach north of the north jetty has eroded significantly. Attempts to
nourish the eroding north beach with spoil from frequent dredging of the channel
have not had a lasting affect, according to surf guide Billy Sandifer. He said
the surf north of the Mansfield jetties laps against the fore dunes at times,
leaving the North Jetty vulnerable to being flanked by a storm surge.

In the end, the dull details of coastal dynamics described in the scientific
tomes became more vivid during an aerial tour of Coastal Bend beaches last
Monday. Seeing was believing when it comes to confronting the forces of sand and
surf.