The man versus land fight that Galveston continues to battle rages onward as man continues to build structures along them. As the structures are built there is a sense of permanence felt by the developers which are inevitably doomed to frustration. These areas are affected by storms, currents, wind, and subsidence due to ground water removal; as the beach changes and moves. Typically, on the sand barrier islands of Texas the shift is toward the mainland, and any attempt to block the migration of the beach is futile. Stabilization attempts cost much more than moving a building. For example, The National Park Service spent $15 million trying to save the Cape Hatteras lighthouse, and Miami spent $64 million hauling sand to its eroding beaches. …show more content…
What they did was they mined large quantities of sand by pipeline, to raise the elevation of the entire City of Galveston above the previous land surface. The fill material was retrieved from several borrow areas including Offatts Bayou and East Lagoon. When the project was completed in 1911, over 9,900 acre-feet of material had been moved to help protect the city from future hurricanes. In 1931 despite the protests of oil, towing, and timber operations, the entrance to Lake Anahuac on the northern shore of Trinity Bay was closed to protect rice irrigation systems. The 6,000 acre lake was isolated from the Galveston Bay system and converted to a shallow freshwater lake. In 1966, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers constructed a tidal floodgate, isolating Moses Lake from the bay which was once open to lower Galveston Bay. A levee system was also constructed on the southern shore of Moses Lake to protect the city from floodwaters. Other areas of impacted by isolation include the privately owned Delhomme hunting area and the impoundment used as part of the Reliant Energy Cedar Bayou Generating Station's cooling system. Shipping terminals impact shoreline through the dredging of channels, excavation of land for berths, and through the direct conversion of shoreline habitat to shipping terminal facilities. Some of the largest facilities in the Lower Galveston Bay watershed are the Port of Houston, which includes many private docks, Barbours Cut Terminal built in the 1970s near Morgan’s Point, and the Bayport Terminal near Red Bluff. The Texas City Dike is a five-mile long, mostly riprapped structure extending from Texas City into Lower Galveston Bay just north of Pelican Island. Construction of the dike was completed in 1934. The dike serves as a barrier to prevent siltation of the Texas City Ship Channel