Council reverses beach policy on seaweed
MAGEE PARK EYED AS SOLUTION
BY PHIL REYNOLDS SOUTH JETTY REPORTER

Dune dozer A bulldozer works in an area behind dunes that were manufactured by placing seaweed from the beach near the beach roadway. The city has identified such 'pockets' as providing enough seaweed dis- STAFF PHOTO BY PHIL REYNOLDS posal space to handle the rest of this season; after this year, workers will have to look for someplace else to put the seaweed they scrape off the beach.

Two weeks after approving a city beach maintenance policy, city council members revised the policy to exclude stacking seaweed in the 20 feet between the sand dunes and the beach roadway.

In a special meeting on Thursday, June 14, the council told the city staff to find a different way to rid beaches of seaweed in the short haul. Those could include putting the weed in "pockets" along the dune line, a policy the staff said the Texas General Land Office (GLO) would approve because, according to the GLO, dunes that are manufactured with materials scraped off the beach aren't part of the city's dune protection plan.

The council told the staff to meet with Nueces County officials to see if the city could use part of the county's I.B. Magee Beach Park as a long-term depository for seaweed removed from beaches.

Because the property is part of the county and not of the city, however, the city can't issue a permit to dispose of seaweed on that land. After a meeting Friday, Mayor Claude Brown said County Parks Director Blake Pettis and Commissioner Chuck Cazalas, whose Precinct 4 includes Port Aransas, were both in favor of the plan.

Brown, as well as councilmen Bubba Jensen and Charles Bujan, have argued loudly against the existing policy of putting seaweedcontaining sand on the seaward side of existing dunes. While that policy allows the dunes to "grow" seaward, it also reduces the driving area between the dune line and the pilings that mark off the pedestrian area of the beach between Lantana Street and Avenue G.

"Once we take that seaweed and we pile it there, we've taken that portion of the beach from the citizens of the State of Texas forever, and we'll never get it back," Jensen said. "That's a high price for the disposal of some seaweed."

"Ideally, you'd like to keep the sand in the system," City Engineer Jim Urban told the council. "(The city staff) is in crisis mode, because we're trying to satisfy you and the citizens by getting the seaweed off the beach any way we can.

"We really are very limited, because of permitting, what we can do legally," he said.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which has jurisdiction over water up to the high tide line, has told the city it needs a permit to scrape seaweed and sand off that portion of the beach.

A Corps of Engineers permit, Urban said, typically takes 6-8 months - and that's a best-case scenario.

"Even the quickest solutions are fairly long-term," said Councilman Rick Pratt. "I want to get us back to the moment. We have to do something this season to get rid of the seaweed, if you're getting the same phone calls I am."

One possibility the city is looking at is building a rake that could be attached to a road maintainer and using it to rake seaweed off the beach. City Operations Director Crockett Moreno said crews could attach the rake to the city's maintainer as soon as the rake arrives here.

"That could be tomorrow, it could be next week," Moreno said.

"The only place it's legal to put (seaweed) today is in that 20-foot area in front of the dunes, or where the GLO is allowing us to put it (in pockets identified as being in front of the vegetation line) or we can leave it piled on the beach," Urban said.

The areas where the GLO has agreed to let seaweed be placed, however, will only hold enough seaweed to carry the city through the current season.

Urban also pointed out that sea turtles, which crawl up the beach to nest during the height of the seaweed season, are an issue.

"The turtles that come up, that's an endangered species, and that's a huge issue," he said. "If somebody now inadvertently runs over a turtle, that's a federal offense."