For Immediate Release
Contact: Tom Harvey
Texas Parks & Wildlife Dept.
512-389-4453

AUSTIN, TEXAS (February 7, 2000) - In March, contractors for the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start building a new marsh in Upper Galveston Bay. In the short term, this will cloud the bay waters in isolated areas and restrict some boat access in the vicinity of the work, but it is part of a broader plan that will greatly enhance the bay ecosystem and thus improve sport and commercial fishing down the road.

The site, known simply as the "Gorini Marsh," is part of an effort to construct 4,250 acres of marsh in the bay over the next fifty years. Designed by the Beneficial Uses Group (BUG), the new marshes are being constructed by the Port of Houston Authority and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

This spring, contractors will begin pumping clay and silt from the sides and bottom of a new section of the Houston Ship Channel as part of plans to widen and deepen the channel. They will use this mud to add 1,200 acres of inter-tidal salt marsh to Atkinson Island just east of Baytown. Atkinson Island contains a 220-acre marsh created in 1993 to demonstrate this is an environmentally practical way to use dredge material from the ship channel project.

Contractors will first enclose the area in a perimeter levee and then pump in dredge material. This process will take approximately 20 months to complete.

The completed marshes and lagoons will soon be accessible to recreational and commercial fishers. These marshes will have tidal creeks and ponds like natural marshes and will become a vital habitat for juvenile shrimp and other marine life.

"This marsh creation project is a good deal for commercial fishermen, sport anglers and all others who value Galveston Bay and is a huge improvement over past practices," said Andy Sipocz, a Texas Parks and Wildlife biologist in Seabrook.

The original plan proposed in the 1970s to deepen and widen the ship channel would have used open bay disposal, essentially dumping the dredge material in the middle of the bay. At least 11 square miles would have been filled with four feet of clay, which would have made that portion of the eight-foot deep bay twice as shallow. Any time the wind kicked up, it would have muddied the waters. This would also have happened anytime the Corps of Engineers did maintenance dredging, which would have occurred every year in some areas, and that would also have been disposed in the open bay.

However, at the request of then Sen. Lloyd Bentsen and various environmental interest groups and resource agencies, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Port of Houston Authority reworked the original plan. To their credit, they created a new plan that is now setting a national model for how to conduct ship channel maintenance in a way that actually benefits fisheries and the environment.

The Beneficial Uses Group or BUG, a coalition of government agencies -- five federal, two state and the Port of Houston Authority -- was formed to identify environmentally responsible ways to use material dredged during ship channel expansion. Uses and sites for the dredged materials were determined after a number of meetings with a broad variety of interest groups and scientific analysis which revealed there was no potential for release of contaminants from the dredging and movement of material.

"In contrast to the original plan, what's happening now is that as the material is dug out, it's being placed in geographically smaller areas to create beneficial islands and marshes," Sipocz said. "Because we're shaping the material so it breaks the surface of the water, it displaces less of the bottom. Also, we're creating more marsh along shorelines near natural marshes. And all the material will be confined behind levees of stone or earth, including material from ongoing maintenance dredging for the Houston ship channel, which will help keep bay waters much clearer than they would have been otherwise."

All told, the Houston Ship Channel will be widened and deepened, downstream from Boggy Bayou, from its current size of 400 feet wide by 40 feet deep to 530 feet wide by 45 feet deep, and extended another 3.9 miles out into the Gulf of Mexico. 100 percent of all dredged materials from the bay will be used to create and maintain bird, fish and oyster habitat sites over the 50-year project life. These include a total of 4,250 of inter-tidal marsh divided between three locations in Galveston Bay, a six-acre Bird Island, restoration of Goat Island near the San Jacinto Monument and Red Fish Island in the Bay, 118 acres of created oyster reef and two new boater cuts.

"For shrimpers, crabbers, oystermen and others who depend on the bay for their livelihood, the BUG approach to the revised ship channel deepening and widening plan should be good news in the long run, although we want to be up front and say that it will mean some temporary inconvenience for the next several months in Upper Bay," said Lance Robinson of TPW's coastal fisheries group in Seabrook.

"We know that these areas to be restored are the most critical nursery area for marine fish and crustaceans, as well as important habitat for birds and other wildlife. So replacing the marsh is highly beneficial."

A Galveston Bay National Estuary Program Study noted that Galveston Bay has lost about 30,000 acres of salt marsh since 1950, mostly to subsidence, erosion and development. However, the state and federal agencies that make the Interagency Coordination Team studied the Beneficial Uses Group plan and unanimously concluded that this project would have a net positive environmental effect on the Bay.

The plan to restore the nursery marshes is important for shrimping, which is worth tens of millions of dollars to the regional economy. Commercial Bay Shrimp season begins May 15, and aerial surveys on opening day last year showed 217 shrimp boats in the Galveston Bay system. TPW has licensed about 600 commercial shrimp boats that are home ported in the five-county Galveston Bay area. In 1998, almost 7 million pounds of shrimp were harvested in this area with an ex-vessel value to the boat captain of $7.5 million. This produced an estimated total economic value to the region of $22.5 million.

For more information on the BUG plan for Houston Ship Channel deepening and widening on the Internet, including a map with a timeline showing which areas will be done first, go to URL. For information on how BUG work will affect commercial fishermen or sport anglers, contact Texas Parks and Wildlife resource protection at 281-461-4071, ext. 27 or coastal fisheries at 281-474-2811. For general information on the ship channel project, call the Port of Houston Authority at 713-670-2440 or the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers at 409-766-3004. The new BUG brochure with the map and timeline can also be mailed or faxed upon request.

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