This certainly sounds like a promising idea.
Protecting the region from a hurricane’s storm surge, says William Merrell of Texas A&M University at Galveston, is simple: Extend Galveston’s seawall to the island’s West End, build a similar structure along Bolivar Peninsula and construct massive Dutch-like floodgates at the entry to Galveston Bay.
Merrell’s “Ike Dike” idea, which would cost at least $2 billion not including land acquisition expenses, has gained momentum in recent weeks.
Gov. Rick Perry’s post-Ike Commission for Disaster Recovery and Renewal reviewed the concept and unanimously recommended that the state fund a feasibility study to look at flood control efforts along the entire Texas coast.
“When I first heard about it, I thought it was a pretty outlandish project, but the more I’ve thought about it, the more I think we need to look into something like this,” said Bill King, a former mayor of Kemah who is a member of the Ike commission.
“The benefits are obvious. To protect the entire Gulf Coast from a storm surge would be an incredible benefit.”
[…]
The upfront cost may seem high, but storm surge damages caused by Ike along the upper Texas coast may have exceeded $10 billion, and that was for a hurricane that came in too far north to cause maximum damage to Galveston Island and heavily populated communities along western Galveston Bay.
Compared to the cost of an actual hurricane, as we have so clearly seen, this is downright cheap. Even if the $2 billion estimate is off by a factor of ten, this would be a worthwhile investment. A feasibility study would be a few million bucks, and that’s a no-brainer. The only question there is what needs to be done to appropriate the money.
Environmentalists familiar with the dike proposal say the large retractable gates it would require on Galveston Bay, as well as smaller ones at San Luis Pass and the Intracoastal Waterway, would inhibit fish migration and raise a host of other potential environmental impacts.
But perhaps even more significantly, said Jim Blackburn, an environmental attorney and coastal expert based in Houston, the dike proposal would give carte blanche to developers and businesses to continue building in sensitive areas around Galveston Bay. “I don’t personally think this is the solution to this area’s incredible vulnerability to hurricanes,” Blackburn said.
“But there’s a challenge to the environmental community, which may not want to see an Ike Dike, to come up with an alternative that addresses the problem.”
Well, yeah. I appreciate the concern, but the potential benefit is very high, and I don’t see the worries about developers carrying much weight as a counter-argument. The best bet at this point will be to make sure that future feasibility study takes these kind of costs and their mitigation into effect. More at SciGuy.
On a related note, one preseason hurricane forecast for 2009 has been ticked down a notch, from a guess of 14 named storms to 12. The quieter this season is, and the farther removed we get from Ike, the more complacent we’re likely to get. If there’s something that should be done, the sooner we do it, the better.
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