Coastal floodingThe Texas coastline is slowly disappearing. Here's how one community is coping.

By Shannon Najmabadi

Published 3 January 2018

The Lone Star State’s shoreline is experiencing one of the highest rates of land loss of any coastal area in the country thanks to a combination of subsidence, sea level rise, and storm surges. The significant land loss averages 4 feet per year along the state’s coastline, according to the Texas General Land Office. In some places, more than 30 feet of shoreline disappears underwater annually.

The banana water lilies that once filled Jefferson County’s Salt Bayou marsh started dying off years ago.

The aquatic plants, with their elegant white and yellow blooms, used to pepper the 139,000-acre wetland in Southeast Texas – a hub for wildlife, boaters and commercial fisheries. 

Their disappearance has been linked to the development of a shipping channel that hampered the flow of freshwater into the marsh. But scientists say it’s also the symptom of a problem that haunts the entire Texas coast: The shoreline is eroding. 

Subsidence, sea level rise and storm surges have all contributed to significant land loss, averaging 4 feet per year along the state’s coastline, according to the Texas General Land Office. In some places, more than 30 feet of shoreline disappears underwater annually.

The result?

Ecologically-sensitive areas near the coast, like the Salt Bayou marsh, are more prone to inundation by seawater, which kills off salt-sensitive aquatic plants and animals. With less space between sea and shore, it can also make neighborhoods and industry more vulnerable to hurricane storm surges.

Todd Merendino, a manager at the conservation-focused group Ducks Unlimited, said sand dunes used to line the shore near the Salt Bayou marsh, forming a crucial buffer between the Gulf of Mexico and the millions of dollars’ worth of industrial infrastructure that lie inland. The dunes are “all gone now,” he said.

“One day, you wake up and you go, ‘Wow, we got a problem,’” Merendino said. “And it’s not just an isolated problem where one swing of the hammer is going to fix it.”

The problem has inspired a coalition of strange bedfellows in Jefferson County. Local leaders, environmental activists and industry representatives are working together to execute a variety of projects — some bankrolled by BP oil spill settlement funds — to rehabilitate the marsh and protect the area’s industrial complex.