Nature preserve earns GLO award
Ribbon cutting scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 8

The Texas General Land Office (GLO) has given its 2007 Partnership Award to the Port Aransas Nature Preserve, and will be part of a ribboncutting for the project on Thursday, Nov. 8.

The ceremony is scheduled for 10:30 a.m. at a site about a mile beyond the end of the paving of Port Street. GLO Commissioner Jerry Patterson will lead the ceremony.

The award goes to project partners that unite to achieve common goals in coastal protection and restoration. The nature preserve, according to the award, "will protect 2,000 acres of estuarine wetland habitat … and provide safer shoreline access for recreational fishing, bird watching and eco-tourism."

The GLO also cited the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, the City of Port Aransas, the Airport and Channel Corporation, which operates Piper Channel, and the Port of Corpus Christi Authority in naming the award partners.

The nature preserve - which is commonly known as the Charlie's Pasture Nature Preserve -- provides a solution to an erosion problem that threatened the Port Aransas side of the Corpus Christi Ship Channel with as much as 17 feet of shoreline loss a year. The entrance to Piper Channel, which was done along with the nature preserve bulkheading, protects the channel from the wakes of passing ships.

"The award from the General Land Office is indeed an honor because it recognizes the steps Port Aransas is willing to take to protect environmentally sensitive areas along the Texas coast," said Charlie Zahn, chairman of the Port Aransas Parks and Recreation Board.

Zahn also cited help from the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, Urban Engineering, The University of Texas at Austin Marine Science Institute, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison, R-Texas and Rep. Solomon Ortiz, D-Corpus Christi, for their help in making the preserve possible.

The bulkheading project took more than eight years and was done in four phases that totaled more than 6,000 feet of rock groins and two 880-foot jetties. Funding came from the GLO, the Coastal Bend Bays and Estuaries Program, the Port of Corpus Christi Authority and the federal government as well as from the city and the Airport and Channel Corporation.

The preserve itself, which is in the last part of its design phase, is financed by $2.2 million in certificates of obligabion issued by the city in 2004 as well as by state and federal grants.

As well, the GLO named Nueces County Precinct 4 Commissioner Chuck Cazalas and Nueces County Beach/Dune Protection Committee Chairman Fred McCutcheon as the winners of the agency's Beach and Dune Stewardship Award.

Cazalas, whose precinct includes Mustang Island, was cited for demonstrating "a commitment to the Texas Open Beaches Act and Dune Protection Act by going above and beyond the effective administration" of local government.

The GLO's Local Government Award went to Brazoria County Commissioner Donald Payne and its Coastal Stewardship Award was given to State Rep. Allan Ritter, D-Nederland, and State Sen. Mike Jackson, R-La Porte.

The awards were announced in Galveston on Oct. 23, in conjunction with the American Shore and Beach Preservation Association's annual awards presentation.