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Bad news in west bay!!!!!

111K views 187 replies 75 participants last post by  JimG 
#1 ·
I found a dredge working the intracoastal waterway last week, west of Carancahua Point. That in itself wouldn't be such an issue, but the Corps of Engineers is pumping the dredge material over the existing spoil islands onto the bay side. I mentioned this to a few friends, after noticing that they have already moved the dredge to a second spot. They are pumping all of the dredge material directly on top of the grass flats that have taken years to grow. The first area that they have dumped is covered with silty mud along with some hard areas for several hundred yards. The first dump site, on the day that I was out, had an area that was previously grass covered and averaging about a foot deep. That area now has a dry land patch that is over 100 yards wide and extending nearly that far out into the bay across the flat.

I mentioned this to Captain Trim, who had the opportunity to go out with Marcos Enriquez. They took numerous pictures of the areas where the dumping is going on, along with a short video. The dredge was moved to a 3rd dumping location when they late last week. This process moves very fast, I believe this has all happened within the span of about 2 weeks. They started on the last existing spoil west of Carancahua Point and are working their way back to the east. From all indications from the Corps, they will be dredging all the way east to Louisanna.

This is something of a call for help. Captain Trim has been calling all over to find some help for our bay and running into a ton of road blocks. If anyone has any information that will help in re-directing the Corps of Engineers to another solution to the current dumping plan, please post up. James has a date with a photographer and reporter for Wednesday, so if all goes well there will be some publicity about this. He is trying to reach the US Game and Fisheries division. If this proves to be effective, I will post contact, so that the angling voice can be heard.

I have attached a short video that they shot last week of the active dredge dumping. This video doesn't show the extent of the damage, but it is significant.

 
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#71 ·
If someone want to call me a tree-hugger over this, I'll proudly wear the name... This is (was) a beautiful spot...

Curious about something: Do our conservation groups get copies of this before hand? The pdf I saw with clear maps of the discharge areas were dated April 2011. I wish we would have known then...
 
#75 ·
It's not looking any better... After they are done just West of Carranchua cut, they will be West of Greens and working their way down over to Meacoms and spoiles that line the entrance to Jones. This could shut down some good fishing and cover some good reef as they stock pile material improving the spoil bank to protect the ICW.

Here is a PDF of the entire plan from Bastrop to Causeway. It was permitted back in 2010. I had a 30 minute conversation with the ACOE today and new project manager. They have a supervisor heading out to the disposal site to investigate further today.

http://www.fishwestend.com/forum/attachment.php?attachmentid=17535&d=1324412062
 
#76 ·
I have been in contact with the COE since Monday 12/12 and they were supposed to send someone down there to check on what the dredge contractor was doing on the 14th. I could They are supposed to baffle the discharge pipe and move it often but it does not look like they are doing that. The contact with the COE (Corps of Engrs) is Michelle at 409-766-3833. Please call her and raise cane. I have copied an email string that includes comments from the National Marine Fisheries regional director as well.



From: Rusty Swafford [mailto:rusty.swafford@noaa.gov]
Sent: Friday, December 16, 2011 7:20 AM
To: Heather Young
Subject: Re: West Bay Marsh


Phil & Paul,

I am in West Virginia right now and will be out until the first week of January. From the little bit I got from Paul's comments in thi email string Phil sent me, apparently the COE is using the Laguna Madre Seagrass window that basically lets them dredge from November to early March, while the seagrass is photsynthetically inactive (water is too cold for the chemical proceess of photosynthesis). Based upon Laguna sediment modelling done by Dr. Ken Dunton at UTMSI and assoicated water quality monitoring looking at disposal of very fine grained material in the open waters of the Laguna, the fines from the PAs are basically washed away after 2-3 months and you can't find Total Suspended Solids (TSS) over the ambient water conditions taken from control areas. A complementary study looking directly at the seagrass impacts by Dr. Pete Sheridan who worked at our NMFS lab at the time, also found recovery happened rather quickly usually within the first summer season (i.e., the rhyzomes are still there and can come up through the thin layer and the Halodule is like a weed). With the project ongoing, I doubt there is any real legal way to shut the project down. It is under a Federal contract and it would lkey cost upwards of millions of dollars to shut the contract down. I'm sure Phil can talk a little more to you about the realities of Federal contracts. However, I do think we need to engage the COE Operations and Maintenance Branch and try to get them to monitor the area to see if it recovers and to make sure that the project is better planned before the next dreging cycle.

There is not much I can do about it from here, but I have contacted Heather Young of my staff and she will be availble for any meeting that may be set up with the COE.

Rusty

On Tue, Dec 13, 2011 at 8:46 PM, wrote:
Paul,



Actually I'm not sure. In some areas, like the Laguna, they do seem to come back really fast after disposal of mostly SAND on them. You need to call Rusty Swafford at NMFS (409-766-3688), he's familiar with the way those grasses respond. The grasses have sure done well out there lately haven't they?



One thing, the agencies aren't aware the grasses now extend all the way down to Alligator Point like you say. I spoke with Dave Hoth at FWS (281-286-8282) today, told him you'd be calling him. He needs to hear about this.



Phil



>
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 3:14 PM
Subject: RE: West Bay Marsh
I just hung up with the Corp and they told me that studies have been done and they are trying to put a thin layer of silt down in the dormant season with the idea that it will help the grass. What I saw was a lot more than a thin layer. They are going to look on Thursday, not soon enough for me.



Do you buy in to this concept?



From:
Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 3:01 PM
To: Subject: Re: West Bay Marsh




Also call Rusty Swafford or Heather Young at NMFS 409-766-3699.



David Hoth at FWS, 281-286-8282.

.

CCA in Houston.



Seagrasses aren't supposed to be covered up with dredge spoil, we worked too hard to get them to come back!








To: <Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 2:50 PM
Subject: RE: West Bay Marsh


Phil,



That entire shoreline all the way to Aligator Head has grass. The one area right across from Gaidos and us has more grass than anywhere else on that entire shore and they already covered it up. I own property that goes several hundred feet into the bay from the spoil bank that I still pay taxes on that they are dumping dredge on. I was under the impression that they needed permission to do that.



I talked to Donna Anderson yesterday.



Sent: Tuesday, December 13, 2011 2:41 PM
To: Paul Whiteman
Subject: Re: West Bay Marsh




Sure. Exactly where are they now? Are there grass beds much west of Carancahua cut?



They are moving down towards Green's Cut though, where I know they have grass beds. The Corps needs to be made aware that covering seagrasses with dredge spoil is a no-no, they keep forgetting don't they?



The best contact at FWS is David Hoth, 281-286-8282







Sent: Monday, December 12, 2011 1:23 PM
Subject: West Bay Marsh


Phil,



Not sure if you remember me but we have talked on several occasions regarding property I owned along the ICW down near the Gaidos/Lyons property. I have some questions regarding the current dredging that is taking place along the ICW. Please call me at the number below when you have a few minutes. I am looking for some contacts in the USFWS to try to find out why they are covering the newly formed grass beds along the ICW with dredge spoil.



 
#79 ·
There's nothing to be done about this dredging contract, although the Corps can ask the dredge to kindly pump & dump the spoils in certain places that might be the least damaging.

Forget about disposal on land, as that takes a permit for each site, as well as a lot of bulldozer work and marsh remediation. It can be done like near the port of Houston where spoils are used to elevate land to be used for commercial land, warehouses, and stuff. Bayport currently has such a project underway. Natural? You'd have to mitigate all the swamp grass you cover.

That pretty much leaves using barges to tow the dredge spoils offshore, which would double the costs of channel maintenance or worse - remember that us taxpayers are paying for this one way or another. I don't mean to throw a wet blanket on everyone but there are some very hard realities here, such as that the ICW between Pelican Island and Freeport is a huge towboat highway for barges of nearly 9,000 trips per year.

So there's no good, clean way to do this. Dredging always makes the fishermen mad. It does sound like the Corps and GLO, the two lead agencies, need to do another environmental assessment to examine the various options, the qualities of the sediment, and the impacts on the submerged grasses. This is something we should work for - and I don't have all the answers by any means.

But being around the business for a while, you're not going to stop this project without a court injunction and paying possibly even off the contractor. Want to burn a million bucks in Obama money? Here's your chance.

I might take Mont's approach and make the Corps pay for some bay restoration, which is far cheaper and actually gets something done.
 
#80 ·
Okay, obviously this post was here to get attention and hopefully get the ball rolling in the right direction. Just to clarify a few things that I have already learned. The Corps has the right to dump where they are currently in the process of dumping the material. The only hope that I expected here was that possibly they would see this valuable area as something that should be preserved.

I do know that there was a conversation this week with a biologist from the Corps and a good friend of mine, where the biologist stated that the only reason the grass was growing was from previous dumpings creating an environment that would allow the grass to take hold. Though I
 
#81 · (Edited)
Okay, obviously this post was here to get attention and hopefully get the ball rolling in the right direction. Just to clarify a few things that I have already learned. The Corps has the right to dump where they are currently in the process of dumping the material. The only hope that I expected here was that possibly they would see this valuable area as something that should be preserved.

I do know that there was a conversation this week with a biologist from the Corps and a good friend of mine, where the biologist stated that the only reason the grass was growing was from previous dumpings creating an environment that would allow the grass to take hold. Though I’m no biologist, I can’t see how the grass could re grow any time in the near future. There is a silt covering across the flats even 200 hundred yards from the area where the dredge pipe had been placed, that ranged from 6 inches to a foot thick.

There was another comment stating that the only reason the grass was growing at all was from the previous dumpings from the Corps, which they believe created the environment that allowed the grass to grow in the first place. Again, I have to disagree. There has been sporadic grass growth on the North Shore for years, but nothing at all like what has happened in the last 3 to 5 years. If anything helped the sea grass in West Bay, it was hurricane Ike. The extreme flush created by the huge amount of water leaving the bay did an amazing job of flushing the bay bottom. Just my humble opinion, but doesn’t seem likely that a heavy layer of silt will do anything for grass growth.

I’m thrilled to see the amount of concern and great suggestions from this thread, and look forward to seeing more. Keep the info and support coming.
 
#83 ·
Swells, the last time they dredged the ICW they were pumping directly onto land from Greens Cut heading South and from Caracahua heading South on both sides, they had flags put out on the right heading South and on the left heading South they would just move the pipe every so often directly on land. This just seems to me that this is nothing more than the company being lazy and not caring where they put it in an effort to save time moving, therefore making more money in a shorter period of time.
Once the grass has been established in the bay systems I thought that it was automatically considered to be some what a protected area (meaning you can not cover it up in feet of mud unnaturally) . I remember reading something to that effect many years ago ( I might be wrong my memory is not very good after many surgeries). It is just bad business on their part all the way from the corp to the company doing the job, and no one seems to know what exactly is going on in the bay and they both should know. I have seen the Corp. of Engineers mess up many things in my life time for the sake of making something better. I do not know where they get their Engineer Degrees from but in one particular case I know a gentleman personally that paid 35.00 in Jamaica for an Engineer in Training license and he was good to go, he was down there working mediation after a hurricane for the corp and never has taken one engineering class. He is now employed with the FEMA side of things, oh well back to task. They should not be dumping spoils is the bay system it is a natural estuary especially over grass flats I have seen them dump on land more than one time in my 30 plus years fishing the bay so what is the difference this time??
 
#84 ·
I thought that was how they always dredged the IC. My buds have had a place on one of the Baffin spoils for ~30 yrs and when the dredge comes, discharge pipe is layed across the spoils and the sediment is pumped to the backside. Looks like a ecological waste zone for 2-3 yrs, but the grass has always come back. In fact this is the first yr in a few that it is wadeable again, w/o sinking to your knees. May be a different situation up there in west bay...?
 
#85 ·
The grass that is growing along the north shoreline is a direct result of Phill
Glass who was with the FWS out of League City. He trucked a load in from Baffin 10 years ago and planted it in behind the state park . Anybody that fished this area might remember a small fenced in area back there. That area was the first to get this grass and it floated across the bay. I own property along the icw right where the video was shot and the coe does have an easement 1350 feet out into the bay from center of the icw. When I spoke to the coe last week that told me that the contractor was supposed to spread out in a thin layer and if the contractor was not following the specs that they would make them correct it. The COE was down there last Wed but I have not gotten a report on there findings. I will follow up with them tomorrow. The ICW was last dredged in this area 5 years ago and the spoil was intentially pumped onto personal property along the north side of the ICW to raise the level so as to slow the salt water intruision. No spoil was pumped into the bay at that time yet most of the grass on this shoreline has shown up in that timeframe. 3 years ago the area right across from our camp had zero grass and before they covered it up it was one of the best areas along that shoreline.

We will see, but call anybody you know and complain.
 
#87 · (Edited)
I have to agree about the source of the grass, the two primary plantings that I remember were Dana Cove, at the State Park and at San Luis Pass, behind the old water treatment station. The State Park is by far the most prolific area of grass growth in West Bay, until what appears to the natural seeding of the North Shore. Other areas of the bay have taken off as well, Maggies and Snake Island have nice smaller grass flats.

There has always been sporadic grass growth around West Bay, I have seen it in nearly every cove in the bay at one time or another, the difference seems to be it’s ability to take hold and grow for more than one season. From what I can tell, this grass growth is purely the result of stout south and southeast winds blowing grass seedings across the bay from previously planted areas.

I have to say thanks to Captain Trim for taking point on this issue and really putting in a lot of effort to find a remedy. He has a lot of contacts from his many years of fishing, guiding and living here. Thanks, as well, to all on this board and others that have responded, called and made great suggestions. Captain Trim, if I understand correctly, is out today with some people who can help in making this matter much more well known.
 
#88 ·
I heard he was taking people out there. Steve thanks for posting all of this. I will be out there all day Thursday and later today. I had calls into ACOE over the weekend once I saw the dredge working.

I'd agree with the North Shoreline flourishing after Ike and the Grass Projects conducted along S. Shoreline are wonderful. That coupled with the geo tubes have allowed these areas to really flourish.

There's a short mention in the GDN Reel Report today and Capt. JK should have a follow up either tomorrow or the next day after he gets all the details from the sources we've passed along to him.
 
#92 ·
My family has the camp on the north side of the intercoastal, just west of Green's Lake. My uncle spoke with the people dredging and supposably they are going to start pumping on the north side of the intercoastal, in the area around our camp, in @ a week. They pumped here the last time they dredged as well.

The grass area everyone is talking about is beautiful, and I hope it doesn't get affected by what is already, or will be done.
 
#93 ·
My family has the camp on the north side of the intercoastal, just west of Green's Lake. My uncle spoke with the people dredging and supposably they are going to start pumping on the north side of the intercoastal, in the area around our camp, in @ a week. They pumped here the last time they dredged as well.

The grass area everyone is talking about is beautiful, and I hope it doesn't get affected by what is already, or will be done.
They have received approval from land owners to dump there apparently. At least that's the message that was portrayed to me by the ACOE.
 
#103 ·
I know that the spoil bank needs to be improved around Greens. After Ike the area lost a good amount of the bank. It's clearly visible heading West down the ICW. However, the issue still remains they need to find an acceptable disposal site in order to maximize the spoil build up ON LAND. All the while minimizing the impact it has on the ecosystem in the bay.

They plan on going to the causeway so what areas are next... Think about it... Meacoms, N Deer Island, Confederates Reef area S. Deer they plan on moving all the way even into Offats.

There will be some new navigation hazards to watch out for in the coming months.
 
#105 ·
Gater, your talking about the ban just for this year? This years ban had to do more with the areas that were affected by the red tide. WB never had it this year and has always had thriving oysters. I'm not saying there good to eat now! I doubt dumping on them would make it any better.
 
#107 ·
Fishfinder

Gater, your talking about the ban just for this year? This years ban had to do more with the areas that were affected by the red tide. WB never had it this year and has always had thriving oysters. I'm not saying there good to eat now! I doubt dumping on them would make it any better.
No, not just for this year and has nothing to do with the red tide. There have always been parts of West Bay that have closed to oystering.

Gater
 
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