I suppose there’s more than one way to try to save your beachfront property.
In Texas, a thin green line in the sand separates private property from public beach. And that line of vegetation is drawn by Mother Nature.
Some property owners, however, are taking a more proactive approach by planting grass and shrubs along the edge of a dune on Bolivar Peninsula to keep their homes off the public beach.
These owners are trying to create an artificial vegetation line, marking where their property ends and the public beach begins.
Under the Texas Open Beaches Act, as administered by the General Land Office, houses cannot be built seaward of the vegetation line, which was scoured away by Hurricane Ike.
Between 20 and 30 property owners on the peninsula, however, have planted their own vegetation line, said Angela Sunley, leader for the General Land Office’s beach and dune team. Land office officials can easily spot man-made vegetation versus the real thing.
Silly homeowners. They should have just called Wayne Christian.
Silly and possibly foolish and the foolish part is the assumption Ike was one of those “every 40-50 years” storms when in fact it may have been another warning about how complacency along the Gulf Coast with regard to hurricanes can and does have disastrous consequences.
Ike was an unusual hurricane not fully understood by everyone – a Category 2 storm with a Category 4 storm surge. Never seen before. But may be seen again. And possibly along the upper Texas coast. And not 40-50 years from now. It could be 4-5 years from now. Or even now.
If I had owned a home on Bolivar, I would be taking whatever insurance money I got and building somewhere else although what happened on Bolivar can happen anywhere along our coast. And it was just as catastrophic as Katrina. Imagine if that storm surge had come in just east of San Luis Pass and Galveston had decided a Category 2 storm didn’t represent a strong enough threat to call for an evacuation.
We are living in a different world with all sorts of changes in weather and weather patterns. And putting in artificial vegetation lines isn’t going to effect those changes one bit.
And neither is Wayne Christian.