American climate refugees: A Town in Texas: This is How it Ends [for Robert Lee, TX]

A Town in Texas: This is How it Ends

UPDATE:  COMMENT FROM 

I am the new Water Superintendent for Robert Lee, I was brought in 6 months ago for this very reason. And I have a few comments about this post( and its author).
First, we are not abandoning the city, we will do whatever is needed to ensure that the city has the water needed to survive.

Second, the water may be salty but it is far from brown and smelly. If it were the state (Texas Commission of Environmental Quality) would not let me pump it to town. 

Third, the total cost of the pipeline is $1.5 million not the $ 10 million mentioned in this post.

And finally, why would our neighboring city be willing to sell us water? Its called being neighborly! Would you not offer a helping hand to someone in need? I know in Texas its the way of life. 

Would you want someone leading our country that was willing to let a community dry up and die? Or rather one that was willing to do whatever it took to ensure that we survived? You could be next! Then we would be hearing a different tone.

So instead of complaining and quoting allot of FALSE facts, get the story right and try to do something productive!!! 


E.R. Roberts

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Once a thriving recreational lake and source of water for the town of Robert Lee, Texas, the E.V. Spence Reservoir is now a brackish puddle.

The Daily Impact, November 1, 2011

They are starting to think seriously about abandoning the west Texas town of Robert Lee because it is about to run completely out of water. Too strong? Okay, some of Robert Lee’s 1,049 people are thinking about leaving before the water runs out. Will that create a trend that gives us our first American town to be abandoned because of climate change? (I’m still betting on Las Vegas as the first city.) Will America’s first recognized climate refugees be Rick Perry’s Texans? We’ll report. You decide.

A half-century ago, Robert Lee did what most municipalities in the West did to make sure they would have a permanent water supply: they dammed the Colorado River and made a private lake. (That’s what Vegas did, with a dam called Hoover.) Robert Lee’s lake was the E.V. Spence Reservoir, which gave the town not only water but a tourist industry: marinas and boatyards and lake houses and all the ancillary businesses and revenue flows that derive from people playing on water. In a desert.

Too strong? Robert Lee’s annual rainfall average is 12 inches, which is 2 inches a year above the commonly used standard of 10 inches for a true desert. Twelve inches puts it in the loose category (10-30 inches per year) of semi-arid steppe. In the past year it has received 6 inches of rain. It’s a desert now.

And the E.V. Spence Reservoir, that once covered 22 square miles, more than 20 times the area of the town it nourished, is now more than 99% gone. It’s a fetid pond, now being overrun, in a cinematic post-apocalyptic touch, by herds of feral hogs. The town’s public water is a brown, smelly brine. The marina’s docks loom over bone-dry, crusted ground and the luxurious lake houses overlook, well, desert. And here’s another post-apocalyptic scene: the last green grass in town — which has for two years prohibited lawn-watering — is on the golf course, which uses reclaimed waste water to maintain the emerald green.

But wait! The town has a plan! To build an emergency water pipeline to…wait for it…another town 12 miles way, that has some wells. Two questions:

1. Why would that town, which is also located in a desert, in a state suffering its worst drought in recorded history, with no end in sight, pipe a bunch of its last water to Robert Lee? And
2. Why on earth would Rick Perry’s Texas, home of the mythical Texas Miracle where people create jobs without government help of any kind and never pay taxes, and where there is no such thing as climate change, cough up the $9 million that Robert Lee needs for its pipeline? (And that the Obama campaign may need as an example of how things really work in Texas.)

Remember the famous question in Jared Diamond’s Collapse: What was on the mind of the man who cut down the last tree on Easter Island (completing the reduction of a one-lush landscape to basically a bare rock)? Well, we can be pretty sure that the two questions above will be on the minds of the person who turns out the last light and leaves Robert Lee, Texas.

Not, one hopes, to go live in Las Vegas.

http://www.dailyimpact.net/2011/11/01/a-town-in-west-texas-this-is-how-it-ends/

American climate refugees: West end of Galveston Island, TX, should be abandoned, according to Rice University study "Atlas of Sustainable Strategies for Galveston Island"

Galveston Island gets tough advice from Rice study

By HARVEY RICE, HOUSTON CHRONICLE

October 26, 2011

GALVESTON - Galveston officials should consider abandoning the west end of the island and consolidating the city behind the seawall to rejuvenate the economy and avoid being swamped by rising seas, Rice University scientists recommend in a two-year study made public Wednesday.

The 198-page "Atlas of Sustainable Strategies for Galveston Island" is an effort to encourage long-term planning for coastal cities and an island that must cope with rising sea levels and hurricanes.

The authors deem impractical a proposed "Ike dike" plan to protect the coast with hard structures, but recommend a levee to protect the bay side of the east end.

The report, produced by the university's Shell Center for Sustainability, says Galveston's economic future lies with tourism and a port expanded to service a new generation of super cargo ships designed for a wider Panama Canal that is nearing completion. The study closes with architectural visions that fortify the city against the rising sea and contribute to the growth of tourism.

"I appreciate Rice University's great study, and I look forward to discussing its findings," Galveston Mayor Joe Jaworski said via email. "Given sea rise and erosion issues, I am aware there will always be a tension between development and open space preservation on Galveston's west end. I hope that future development is always done in the smartest, most sustainable way."

Jaworski said he agreed with the study's suggestions for development on the east end.

The authors do not expect their recommendations to have an immediate effect on Galveston policy, said co-author John Anderson, the Maurice Ewing professor of oceanography at Rice. "The plan in publishing this document is to get this information out there," Anderson said.

Facts paint grim future

In the first section, Anderson and oceanographer Davin Wallace use scientific evidence to outline the island's grim future.

Graduate students from other fields of study, including economics, lay out development options in the second section; the third section features selected designs from a four-year architecture school project.

"These data do not yield a pretty picture for the future of the island," notes the book's introduction.

The coastline on the west end is retreating at 3 to 6 feet per year, the fastest rate of erosion in 6,000 years, the book says. Sea level rise could double or triple the rate of erosion over the remainder of the century, it says.

The sand supply for Galveston beaches has run out and existing sand is being washed away by storms, much of it too far out to sea to return, according to the study.

The authors found that the western end of the island is eroding so fast and is so vulnerable to storms that it should be abandoned for the eastern end behind the seawall, the highest part of the island. An undeveloped area used for dredge spoilage, known as the East End Flats, could be developed to offset the population loss on the west end. The depopulated west end could be developed for ecotourism.

Costs factored in

The book also argues that it costs the city more to provide services for the west end than the area returns in property taxes. For example, 31% of the island's roads serve 11% of the population.

Population in the west end can be reduced by limiting construction near the beach, the book recommends. Another way is to adopt a geohazard map that was made for the city in 2007 but shelved. By building only in environmentally hazard-free areas, construction would be limited to a narrow zone in the center of the island.

The final solution is to wait for a catastrophic hurricane to do the job.

The last portion of the book is devoted to architectural designs that include protecting the shoreline with mangrove trees, extending the area in front of the seawall, and abandoning traditional wood-and-drywall houses for structures of steel and concrete that blend with the natural environment.

"We need to rethink the way we are living along the water's edge that produces less environmental impact," said co-author Christopher Hight, associate professor of architecture. "We can keep doing what we are doing, but it's not a recipe for success."

harvey.rice@chron.com

http://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/article/Galveston-Island-gets-tough-advice-from-Rice-study-2238312.php