Houston, We Have a Problem. The Wall Texans Cannot Afford Not to Build

Texas Coastline, Hurricane Ike, 2008NOAA

Meet the Ike Dike, the wall Texas must build.

It’s called the Ike Dike, and unless you live along the Galveston coastline, chances are you probably haven't heard of it. If you think the Texas/Mexico border wall is expensive, hold on to your hats. The Ike Dike will cost upwards of $26 billion dollars and it’s no longer considered optional.

Hurricane Ike made landfall in 2008, with seawater flooding downtown Galveston. Water levels climber to nearly 8 feet in some homes and the storm claimed at least 15 people that night on the Bolivar Peninsula, destroying some 3,600 homes there.

Devastation along the Galveston coastline, Hurricane IkeAP

The Ike Dike is the brainchild of Bill Merrel, a resident of Galveston, who came up with the concept as he sat out the hurricane with his family on the second floor of their home while the entire ground floor was flooded.

The sketches he produced that night formed the basis for a project he and others have been promoting since 2008. The Ike Dike is a proposal for a coastal barrier intended to protect Galveston Bay. The basic idea is to combe huge gates across the main inlet into the Bay from the Gulf of Mexico, known as Bolivar Roads, with many miles of high seawalls. 

The problem? It's not going to be cheap and environmentalists have concerns about the impact of the wall on local ecosystems. The decision on building the wall is however no longer just a financial one. Houston is at risk from two very different and very real threats.

Pumping of groundwater and global climate change are aggravating the situation for may low lying areas in Houston, both along the coast and inland. Multibillion-dollar coastal megaprojects already are underway or under consideration from San Francisco to Miami to New York City and if the Ike Dike gets the green light, Houston will join their ranks.

Houston can ill afford not to address this. it is the fifth-largest US metro area and the vulnerable heart of the petrochemical industry. As a sign of how serious the problem is, in 2014 the US Army Corps of Engineers partnered with the state to study Ike Dike-like alternatives for Galveston Bay. 

Finally, after numerous redrafts, bills to establish a governing structure for the $26.2 billion barrier proposal, which the Army Corps developed alongside the Texas General Land Office, recently passed both the Texas House and Senate. 

Aerial view of the Bolivar Roads Gate System (left) and the swing gates (right).U.S. Army Corps of Engineers / Texas General Land Office

In September of this year, the Corps will deliver their recommendations to the US Congress, which will need to approve funding for the project. The project cannot start soon enough for some as the risk is on the increase.

According to Ming Li, a physical oceanographer at the University of Maryland Center for Environmental Science,

“Last year, five hurricanes hit the US Gulf Coast, one with sustained winds up to 150 mph. There’s scientific consensus that climate change will cause greater numbers of these monster Atlantic hurricanes.”

Accompanying these superstorms are rising sea levels, a clear and recent danger to all coastal communities. As our planet warms, melting icecaps are filling the seas at an unprecedented rate and water levels are climbing. In the last 100 years, the Texas coast sank about 2 feet into the sea.

One of the culprits partly responsible for this is excessive groundwater pumping. Computer projections indicate that climate change will push up sea levels somewhere between 1 and 6 feet over the next 50 years. Rather than abandoning this prime seafront property to the ravages of the elements, Texans are moving into harm's way in ever-increasing numbers.

The Texas coastal population is projected to climb from 7 to 9 million people by 2050. If ever there was a reason for building a wall to prevent a future catastrophe, that figure spells it out in very clear human terms.

If you want to learn more about this mammoth effort to stave off nature, this article on Undark covers the project in more depth.

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