The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Corps) has released its “Draft Integrated Feasibility Report and Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for the Coastal Texas Protection and Restoration Feasibility Study”.
The fate of Galveston Bay, Galveston Island, and Bolivar Peninsula hang in the balance. Your comments are needed now so the Corps hears “loud and clear” that the public wants its natural coastline, marshes, dunes, beaches, prairies, and wildlife habitats left unimpaired and undamaged. The message is, “Leave our natural coastal habitats alone and keep people out of harm's way!”
Send your comments by January 9, 2019 by email, CoastalTexas@usace.army.mil, You can also submit your comments by regular mail to: USACE, Galveston District, Attention: Mrs. Jennifer Morgan, Environmental Compliance Branch, Regional Planning and Environmental Center, P.O. Box 1229, Galveston, Texas 77553-1229.
Please use your own personal experiences and concerns about the Texas coastal environment in making your comments. Make the following points in your own words:
1) The DEIS is not adequately prepared and ready for public review and comment. The lack of detail about alternatives, environmental impacts, and mitigation for environmental impacts makes it impossible to choose or support a proposal for implementation. The Corps should commit to a supplemental DEIS with public comments because the current document is so sketchy and deficient.
2) The DEIS must compare more and different alternatives. These alternatives should include the Houston Sierra Club “Double E (Economically and Environmentally Sound) Storm Surge Alternative for Galveston Bay” and Bayou City Waterkeeper’s “Sage Alternative”.
3) The public must have more time to review, analyze, and comment on the DEIS. Ask the Corps for a two to four-week extension of the January 9, 2019 comment deadline.
4) The Corps must implement an extensive public outreach/input program not just for Texas coastal areas but for all of Texas so that the public knows what is at stake and that the DEIS is available for comment. Local communities need accurate and detailed information about how the alternatives may impact them. Texas, as well as all United States tax-payers, have significant environmental, social, and economic investments and concerns about this DEIS.
5) Alternatives should focus on non-structural solutions or structural solutions adapted to specific areas with lower environmental impacts. Some of these solutions include: individual levees around industrial plants/units (like storage tanks) to reduce the impacts of oil/chemical spills on the Houston Ship Channel and other ports; resolution of environmental justice problems for those who live in the coastal zone near large public works and industrial facilities; use planned withdrawal (buyouts) in areas where sensitive ecological lands exist and solutions are expensive to build, operate, finance, maintain, repair, and replace; and acquisition of buffers that allow marshes and other natural ecosystems to migrate inland as sea level rises.
6) The Houston Ship Channel industries and other industrial areas should be responsible for protection of their own facilities and should pay for most of the costs to protect these facilities from storm surge.
7) All alternatives must address Hurricane Harvey type rainfall and floodplain flooding.
For information or questions please contact: Brandt Mannchen, 832-907-3615,