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Sea Will Rise Over the Coast, Scientists Warn

Posted on: Monday, 8 October 2007, 09:00 CDT

If a monstrous hurricane's storm surge and winds don't wipe out the Southeast Texas coast in the next 100 years or so, rising sea levels will, scientists say.

If the seas rise 3 feet as predicted, Sabine Pass, site of Dick Dowling's historic Civil War standoff, will be submerged. Sabine Lake and Pleasure Island will disappear into the Gulf. The marshes will be overtaken, and Port Arthur and the surrounding refineries and plants will front the Gulf.

The sea change also means the 15-foot seawall surrounding Port Arthur wouldn't hold back storm surges of more than about 12 feet.

These are projections that University of Arizona scientists recently made based on U.S. Geological Survey data.

Whether the rise will happen is not a subject for debate, Lamar University Earth and Space Sciences professor Jim Westgate said.

What is not certain is when, Westgate said.

The rising of the sea level is due to a combination of global warming, melting glaciers, disappearing ice sheets and expanding warm waters.

The United Nations puts the rate at about a foot to 1 1/2 -- feet every 100 years. However, the University of Arizona maps show just over 3 feet, or 1 meter, as the benchmark.

Scientists quoted in a recent Associated Press story agreed with the 1 meter projection, but disagreed on when, with estimates ranging from 50 to 150 years.

"We're going to get a meter, and there's nothing we can do about it," University of Victoria climatologist Andrew Weaver, a lead author of the February report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in Paris, told The Associated Press. "It's going to happen no matter what -- the question is when."

Eddie Fisher, the Texas General Land Office's director of coastal protection, agrees.

"Texas is vulnerable," Fisher said by phone from his Austin office. The Texas coast is low and flat with barrier islands, unlike other states that have high bluffs along the water.

In Southeast Texas, it's not a simple issue of water rising from melting glaciers and warm waters expanding. This area has the additional problem of its sinking ground.

"It gets complicated," Westgate said of computing rising sea levels.

Louisiana has been sinking, and about 50 years ago, Galveston and the surrounding area was moving downward because of groundwater withdrawal, he said.

Pumping out oil and gas doesn't help, he added, and neither does erosion in an area that hurricanes frequently maul.

An estimated 12 feet to 20 feet has been eaten off the coastline yearly since 2000, said Patrick Walther, a McFaddin National Wildlife Refuge biologist.

"It's pretty significant," he said. The coastal marshes generally have acted as a barrier to the Gulf for the inland communities, including the petrochemical industry.

Hurricane Humberto, a Category 1 storm, seriously eroded about eight miles of the beach, Walther said.

Another part of the erosion issue is the loss of sediment coming down the Sabine and Neches rivers, he said. Before the jetties were built, the sediment eventually would get washed back up on the beach. Now, it flows out past the jetties and settles elsewhere.

On Bolivar Peninsula, which would also be inundated by a 3-foot sea rise, longtime resident Eddie Oehlers said he used to live on the fourth row of homes.

Now, he's on the third row.

Before the geotextile sand sock was put in front of his neighborhood, the storm surge from hurricanes or tropical storms would take a row of homes, Oehlers said by phone.

But he's heard so many different things lately that he's unsure what to believe about the Gulf overtaking the peninsula.

Beachfront developments are at the greatest risk because they might be there for a few more decades, Westgate said.

"Don't build near the beach what you want to stay," he said.

The rising sea will conspire with hurricanes to inflict significant damage.

Hurricane Rita, for example, wiped out the homes along Holly Beach, La., in 2005.

Anne Willis, Bolivar Chamber of Commerce president, said it's just not something she worries too much about.

She sees more impact from hurricanes than from the gradually rising tides and knows of homes on the peninsula that have survived hurricanes since the 1920s.

"That remains to be seen," Willis said of the sea rise. "I'm not going to be here to worry about it."

Source: By Christine Rappleye, The Beaumont Enterprise, Texas

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