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Texas Surfrider Foundation

P.O. Box 563

Liberty TX 77575

Lili at Surfside

H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740: Bad Bills for the Texas Coast
A Position Paper from the Texas Chapter of the Surfrider Foundation

(Update: Determined efforts by the members of Surfrider chapters in Texas created enough resistance to prevent these bills from reaching the floor for a final vote. However, S.B. 740 did come within minutes of getting a full vote, which likely would have passed the bill. Time expired on the session just minutes before S.B. 740 was to come to the floor).

These bills concern Treasure Island, a small development in eastern Brazoria County at San Luis Pass built in the 1970s.

These bills exempt 4,500 feet of coastline from the public access and environmental protections provided by the Texas Open Beaches Act.

A mere 4,500 feet doesn't sound like much, but H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740 are bad bills that create a dangerous precedent. These bills must be defeated.

San Luis Pass is the last natural inlet on the Texas coast -- the only one that does not have a jetty. It is a dynamic pass with great fishing and high waterflow. SLP is a wonderful natural environment, but it's also a dangerous place because of the strong currents moving through the pass.

South side of the San Luis Pass showing Treasure Island development

The Treasure Island development should never have been built. The massive amounts of water moving through this pass result in erosion rates of more than 10 feet each year. No geologist would support commercial development in this environment.

The high rate of erosion at San Luis Pass began pushing the public beach into the Treasure Island development in the early 1990s.

Building a beach house at San Luis Pass is not so different from building a vacation home on the San Andreas Fault. It's been obvious for centuries that the earth is continuously changing here.

To make matters worse, the Treasure Island subdivision has effectively privatized this beach for years. They have posted signs such as "No Vehicular Beach Access" and "Tenant & Permit Holders Only -- All Others Will Be Towed Away."

In January, 2000, the Treasure Island MUD and property owners became desperate and built a geotextile tube without state permits.

The geotextile tube was placed at the water's edge in violation of state rules. Not surprisingly, it was battered into complete collapse in a few months.

Since then the property owners in Treasure Island have added concrete rubble, bullrocks, bigger rocks, and finally VW-sized boulders in a crude and futile attempt at a breakwater.

In short, Treasure Island has made a mess of a public beach where no beachfront development should ever have occured in the first place:
San Luis Pass!!

S.B. 740 and H.B. 1603 exempt Treasure Island from the Open Beaches Act (OBA) and the legal requirement to remove these homes from the public beach.

To do this, these bills re-define the OBA requirement for determining the natural line of vegetation that marks the start of the public beach at Treasure Island:

(e) In an area of public beach where a shore protection structure constructed as provided by Section 61.022(a)(6) interrupts the natural line of vegetation for a distance of not more than 4,500 feet, the line of vegetation is along the seaward side of the shore protection structure for the distance marked by that structure. A line of vegetation established under this subsection is the landward boundary of the public beach and of the public easement for all purposes (H.B. 1603, Section 1)

These bills move the line of vegetation to just behind a property owner's "shore protection structure." They allow beach houses to stay in an area that the Gulf of Mexico turned into public beach years ago.

These bills become an endorsement for building illegal shore protection devices.

In Treasure Island, it means that the property owners can justify their existing mess of a shore protection structure to build new coastal armorments with no public beach in front of whatever kind of geotextiletube, bulkhead or seawall they construct.

There are three reasons why these are very bad bills.

Reason #1: a dangerouse legal precedent

H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740 create legal precedent for exempting beachfront homes from the provisions and public protections of the Texas Open Beaches Act and the Dune Protection Act.

For example, it says to the beachfront property owners in Surfside that if they build illegal bulkheads and throw enough concrete and rock on the public beach to hold off erosion for just awhile longer, they will then be able to petition for the same kind of exemption being offered to Treasure Island by these two bills.

photo: Surfside Beach, Texas

And the pending ProTecTube project in Surfside would fit very conveniently into these circumstances.

These bills privatize the shoreline and allow a subdivision to keep the public out. The same "privatization" could easily happen at Matagorda and in the area in between Packery Channel and the Bob Hall Pier.

H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740 take 4,500 feet of beach that the legislature and courts have consistently determined and upheld to be public beach and deliver it into the hands of a Municipal Utility District that has a long record of ignoring both the Open Beaches Act and the Beach Dune Rules.

Reason #2: a high-risk design

Hard structure "beach protection structures" create a scouring effect at each end of the structure. Any kind of coastal armoring along a limited length of 4,500 feet on the beach at San Luis Pass will accelerate erosion at either end of the structure.

Installing a limited barrier may prove to make erosion in the San Luis Pass area much worse. It may also have an impact on ecosystem processes. These bills impose a high risk design on any new construction of shore protection structures. From an engineering perspective, these bills do not make sense.

Reason #3: a matter of integrity

The beachfront row of houses on Treasure Island have been in open violation of the Texas Open Beaches Act for years. These bills propose to exempt these home owners rather than enforce the law. It is the politically expedient thing to do.

Exempting these property owners is much easier than enforcing the OBA. This is a classic case of dodging the difficult responsibilities that come with election to public office.

Consider, for example, the response of State Senator Janek's office when a Surfrider member sent email opposing H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740:

Thank you for taking the time to contact Senator Janek regarding your concerns over House Bill 1603/Senate Bill 740. I am staffing the Senator on this bill and he asked me to respond to your concerns.

First, the goal of this legislation is not to in anyway diminish public access to Texas beaches. As you know, the Open Beaches Act sets the property line division between public and private property at the line of vegetation. Therefore, in an area like Treasure Island, this line can meander and change dramatically over short and long periods of time. The goal of this legislation is to set the property line more permanently, so that no confusion exists among any interested parties.

There is no confusion about the definition of public beach in the Texas Open Beaches Act. The only confusion here concerns the responsibility for upholding a law put in place to protect our environment, our natural legacy, and our rights.

H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740 are about 4,500 feet of public beach. These bills are about the special interests of two dozen property owners in Treasure Island.

These bills are not about the best interests of the 24 million other Texans for whom this environment is a heritage, a right, and a responsibility.

Better solutions

No one wants to see property owners lose their beach houses, no matter how big of a mistake it was to ever build these houses at this location in the first place.

Funds that would be spent on building new shore protection structures at Treasure Island if these bills pass should instead be used to assist the property owners in relocating.

Moreover, the state of Texas needs to require substantially larger setbacks on new development all along the coast to prevent future problems like the one in Treasure Island.

BEAT THESE BILLS!

H.B. 1603 and S.B. 740 are now headed to the full House and Senate for a vote. These bills are the greatest threat to the Texas Open Beaches Act in recent history, and Surfrider strongly opposes them.

To help defeat these bills, there are 4 people you need to contact right away. The first two are the bill sponsors, Sen. Kyle Janek and Rep. Dennis Bonnen.

You also need to reach your state representative and senator. Here's a link to find out who they are and how to contact them.

Get right to the point: I'm contacting you to oppose H.B. 1603/S.B. 740.

If you are sending e-mail, put this text into the subject line:
I oppose HB1603 & SB740

You don't even have to say anything else, but the more effort you invest, the more weight your message carries.

Phone calls are quick, and e-mails are good. Hand-written letters are the most influential.

With this fight going to the floor of the Texas House & Senate, please call your friends and family and ask them to join us in this campaign. If we lose, we face a very dangerous legal precedent on other Texas beaches like Surfside that can already make the same argument Treasure Island is making.

Please get after this right now. We only have a few weeks remaining, and it's very easy to see these bills as nothing more than an effort to help some unfortunate people who built their vacation homes on the beach at San Luis Pass.

Apparently it's not so easy to see that 20 million other Texans lose their public beach as a result of these bills. Shout it out!!

Surfrider Foundation Texas Chapter is a 501(c)3 non-profit conservation organization in the Houston/Galveston/Surfside Beach area. Along with the Central Texas Chapter in Austin and the Coastal Bend Chapter in Corpus Christi, we are affiliated with nearly 60 other chapters across the United States. Our mission is to preserve the Texas coast, which includes any dimunition of Public Property Rights to use and enjoy our beaches. We are not against development. We promote sustainable development that does not create costly future problems. The Texas Open Beaches Act was written to protect our coastal treasure for future generations.