A rock and a hard place
Seaweed washing ashore has city caught in between
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

All clear ahead? STAFF PHOTO BY PHIL REYNOLDS City workers were on Mustang Island beaches all last week in an attempt to clean seaweed from the beaches ahead of the long Memorial Day weekend, normally thought of as an economic boom. This crew is near Marker 21, just south of Beach Access Road 1A. The city council was also scheduled to meet yesterday, Wednesday, May 30, to discuss alternate ways of maintaining city beaches.

Although officially billed as a "workshop," a gathering of city council members scheduled for Wednesday, May 30, at 5 p.m. could result in a decision about how the city will handle beach maintenance in the future.

The meeting, while called a workshop, carries with it an official agenda and - after the staff presentation on beach maintenance options - the item, "Discussion and take appropriate action on beach maintenance practices changes as desired."

The council has been wrestling with the problem of beach maintenance since it appointed a committee to make recommendations on the matter. That was in February, 2006.

The committee, slow to get started because of delays in appointment of a Texas General Land Office consultant, made its recommendations to the council on Nov. 16. Committee vice chairman Noyes Livingston told the council that the city should do as little sand movement on the beach as possible, giving dunes a chance to grow on their own.

Bollards at the edge of the sand dunes should be moved seaward 20 feet, providing more growth room for the dune line and narrowing the beach roadway in some places, if the committee's recommendations are adopted.

The committee divided Port Aransas beaches into three areas: recreational, from Lantana Drive to Beach Access Road 1A; transitional, from Access Road 1A to Beach Access Road 1; and natural, from Access Road 1 to the city limits.

While committee members discussed dealing with sargassum that washes up on area beaches each spring, they declined to make specific recommendations on the seaweed. That should wait until the city staff has a chance to inspect and evaluate machinery that can deal with the problem, committee members said.

Most of the committee's discussion dealt with sand removal and roadway location.

Wednesday, however, the bulk of the discussion was scheduled to deal with "removal and disposal of marine debris, recreational trash and seaweed."

The city staff has studied six options for seaweed disposal, ranging from leaving it in place to sifting beach sand out of the seaweed and trucking the seaweed to the Corpus Christi landfill for disposal. The staff listed pros and cons for each option, including what it would take to make the process work and the estimated relative cost to the city.

Of the six, trucking to Corpus Christi was the most expensive; leaving the seaweed in place was least expensive, though the staff notes that this option would have an impact on the city's general fund because workers who are now used to move seaweed are at least partially paid for through the hotel-motel tax. If they're switched to other projects instead of being used in a tourism-oriented task, salaries would have to come from the general fund instead.

The six options, in decreasing order of cost:

+ Truck sand-free seaweed to the Corpus Christi landfill

+ Burn the seaweed (would require a large area for staging seaweed to dry plus new, expensive equipment.)

+ Compost seaweed off-beach (also needs a large area plus additional dump trucks; removes the seaweed nutrients from the beach environment.)

+ Deposit seaweed in the back dune area (strengthens beach-dune system but may need another dump truck and is labor intensive.)

+ Deposit seaweed along foredune ridge (present system; keeps seaweed nutrients in the beach-dune system and requires shorter haul distances, but available dunes are becoming fewer and this method causes the beach to shrink in some areas.)

+ Leave the seaweed in place (least expensive but impacts the general fund; allows employees to work on streets and drainage and maintenance; most beachgoers do not prefer the "natural" beach look with seaweed.)

The council also will look at two options for maintaining beach roadways - leaving sand in place and putting up signs as appropriate warning of possible poor beach driving conditions and redistributing sand to designated locations.

Leaving the sand in place, while the most environmentally friendly, would have an unknown effect on tourism economy and on beach events, and could raise safety issues in beach areas where Emergency Medical Service ambulances can't get.

Redistributing the sand could mean blading it away from the travel area, using it as cover sand for seaweed behind the foredunes or pushing the sand up against existing foredunes.

Finally, the council was scheduled to look at a proposal by the beach maintenance committee to strengthen the dune complex by relocating dune posts 20 feet seaward.

This would provide more storm protection by building the dune complex and could make beach driving easier by pushing the roadway onto wetter sand nearer the water's edge. However, it also narrows the usable beach roadway, which could have an effect on beach events, and is expected to lead to public perception that it's the first step toward closing the beach to vehicles altogether.