Don’t allow the publication on Christmas Day of this important Eric Berger/Chronicle story entitled “Rising Growth, Sinking Fortunes” about erosion on Galveston Island. Berger, who is the Chronicle’s SciGuy, consistently generates many of the local newspaper’s most insightful research articles:
GALVESTON – Geology has aligned its forces against this narrow strip of land, causing it to sink a few inches more every decade.
Though subsidence has caused much of the sinking in recent decades, it’s not the only culprit. If oceans continue to warm as expected, sea-level rise could cripple much of the island by century’s end. And as the waters rise, waves, tides and especially tropical storms will wash ever more sand away.
This might be little more than an academic exercise for geologists and conservationists but for one fact: Galveston Island, with 60,000 residents, is booming. It’s impossible to drive along the island’s West End without passing construction trucks. Six developers have planned or begun building residential communities.
Unfortunately, this low-lying West End, beyond the reach of the protective seawall, will feel the problems of subsidence, sea-level rise and coastal erosion soonest.
As scientists wrestle with how to protect the island, they are finding matters may be worse than thought. Some think it’s time to sound a warning. Unlike in the days before the great hurricane of 1900, Rice University oceanographer John Anderson said recently, this storm’s gathering clouds are all too clear.
“What I am afraid of is that people living there will one day look back and wonder why, if scientists knew changes were occurring to the island, they didn’t do anything about it,” Anderson said.
Stretching 1,000 feet into the Gulf and surrounded by sunny beaches, Pleasure Pier is aptly named. But the name belies a dark secret: Since the 1957 installation of a tidal gauge, the water has risen more than a foot. Over a full century, that translates into 2 feet, 5 inches.
A similar gauge at Pier 21 in Galveston’s harbor has measured a 2-foot, 2-inch rise in the water level in the past 100 years.
Thanks to federally subsidized flood insurance, most of these people are taking little to no risk building there. I wonder how much development would occur if we allowed flood insurance to float to a market rate?