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Any TX - Gulf of Mex Towns that are not polluted?? I have been to Galveston might have been there at a particulaly bad time but thee was oil on the beach and dead birds. Water nasty brown and hot.
Was just looking at CC pics online and see a coal fired power plant. I know TX is the land of big oil but isn't there anywhere clean in that coast?
Any TX - Gulf of Mex Towns that are not polluted?? I have been to Galveston might have been there at a particulaly bad time but thee was oil on the beach and dead birds. Water nasty brown and hot.
Was just looking at CC pics online and see a coal fired power plant. I know TX is the land of big oil but isn't there anywhere clean in that coast?
There is no coal fired power plant in Corpus Christi.
Port Aransas is pretty nice, as is South Padre Island. Galveston is OK, the water is brown due to currents carrying sediment from rivers to the Northeast. The oil comes from a variety of sources, some natural seeps, some from man made sources.
Was just looking at CC pics online and see a coal fired power plant. I know TX is the land of big oil but isn't there anywhere clean in that coast?
As mentioned above, there are no coal fired powerplants in or near Corpus Christi. All electricity is generated either by natural gas or wind turbines, and there are a lot of wind turbines across the bay in San Patricio County near Portland Texas. The Corpus Christi area is in compliance for air quality standards - in particular the ozone standard. There are petrochemical plants and oil refineries in the area but there is a lot of fence-line and regional air monitoring. This is not the 1960's and they are a lot cleaner after the implementation of the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act. The watershed for drinking water is pretty much undeveloped although the area is prone to droughts especially away from the coast.
Some of the best fishing on the Texas coast can be found in the area bays with Baffin Bay home to trophy trout and the largest black drum fishery in Texas. People from Houston come to the Corpus Christi area to vacation and retire. We have ten of thousands of acres of seagrass beds which produces all sorts of marine life (shrimp, fish, crabs). The area is a world class birding destination that sees hundreds of species of resident and migratory birds throughout the year. As I write this today the islands in the bays are hosting thousands of colonial waterbirds (pelicans, egrets, herons, terns, etc) and their populations are rebounding from previous low levels.
Sure there is some legacy pollution in Nueces Bay (zinc contamination from the long-gone Asarco zinc smelter) but that is confined to the sediments in the bottom and we only see elevated levels in filter feeders like Oysters.
Your observation about the Gulf beach is not too far off the mark. the gulf is shallow for quite distance from shore and our regular winds keep the sediment churned into the water. If you like sparking clear gulf beaches you need to look to Florida.
My only complaints are that there are no mountains or even hills, there are no forests (too dry), it can be very hot and humid for 10 months of the year. We haven't had a hard freeze in 20 years and we get the occasional tropical storm or hurricane in the summer.
Any TX - Gulf of Mex Towns that are not polluted?? I have been to Galveston might have been there at a particulaly bad time but thee was oil on the beach and dead birds. Water nasty brown and hot.
Was just looking at CC pics online and see a coal fired power plant. I know TX is the land of big oil but isn't there anywhere clean in that coast?
Your post is full of misinformation and assumptions based on misinformation. First, as others have pointed out, there are no coal-fired power plants in Corpus Christi. Second, your description of Galveston is not just exaggerating, but making things up. I grew up going to Galveston beaches in the 80s and 90s all the time since my parents have had a house down there since 1983, and now after moving back to Texas, I've been spending a lot of time there, including volunteering for beach cleanups, which is sort of a busman's holiday for me, because I happen to be an environmental scientist. So here are some thoughts about your post:
1. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you might have seen a dead bird, because, after all, birds are not immortal, they do come to the end of their natural lives or die from diseases, mishaps, etc. When they do, they either land on the ground, like the beach, or in the water, and wash up on the beach. Birds don't have elaborate funerary rites, they don't bury or cremate their dead, so a dead bird is going to lie there until it gets eaten by crabs and/or decomposes. It's the circle of life, Simba, so seeing a dead bird doesn't automatically mean it was killed by pollution.
2. When I was a kid, it was a given that after a day at the beach you were going to have tar on the bottom of your feet, every convenience store on the island sold products like "Targon" and Tar-X" to take it off. Since I've been back in Texas, I haven't had to clean tar off my feet once. It's not on the beaches anymore. There are two reasons for that: a.) a lot of beach tar came originally from the bilges of ships, but a few decades ago the feds placed tighter regulations on discharge of bilgewater. b.) the rest came from oil rigs close to shore, and from natural petroleum seeps close to shore. The oil industry has gotten a lot better about letting oil get into the water, but also the near shore petroleum formations have all gotten played out, which is why even when oil was booming circa 2013 you still didn't see many platforms on the horizon when you were on the beach, and then and now all you'll see is a few gas production platforms here and there. And when near shore formations get played out, they also don't seep naturally anymore.
3. Brown water does not equal polluted water. Galveston is a barrier island at the mouth of one of most biologically fertile estuaries in North America. Galveston's water is brown with the suspended solids that washed down rivers to build Galveston Island, and which also provide the nutrients to make the Galveston Bay estuary so biologically productive.
It makes me chuckle when people, especially those from California, knock Texas beaches for supposedly being "polluted", since I have compared water quality reports of Galveston side by side with those of several popular LA-area beaches for years. National Resources Defense Council has found several times that Texas actually has cleaner beaches than California. For instance, Galveston County had 13% potentially unsafe sampling days in 2018, but San Francisco County had twice that percentage that year.
2. When I was a kid, it was a given that after a day at the beach you were going to have tar on the bottom of your feet, every convenience store on the island sold products like "Targon" and Tar-X" to take it off. Since I've been back in Texas, I haven't had to clean tar off my feet once. It's not on the beaches anymore. There are two reasons for that: a.) a lot of beach tar came originally from the bilges of ships, but a few decades ago the feds placed tighter regulations on discharge of bilgewater. b.) the rest came from oil rigs close to shore, and from natural petroleum seeps close to shore. The oil industry has gotten a lot better about letting oil get into the water, but also the near shore petroleum formations have all gotten played out, which is why even when oil was booming circa 2013 you still didn't see many platforms on the horizon when you were on the beach, and then and now all you'll see is a few gas production platforms here and there. And when near shore formations get played out, they also don't seep naturally anymore.
It makes me chuckle when people, especially those from California, knock Texas beaches for supposedly being "polluted", since I have compared water quality reports of Galveston side by side with those of several popular LA-area beaches for years. National Resources Defense Council has found several times that Texas actually has cleaner beaches than California. For instance, Galveston County had 13% potentially unsafe sampling days in 2018, but San Francisco County had twice that percentage that year.
I agree completly. However, the main source of the tar balls at that time was from the Ixtoc drilling rig/well blow out down in the Bay of Campeche. It continued to leak raw crude in to the Gulf for over a year before Pemex got it under control. With prevailing wind/currents carried the oil right to the South Texas coastline. Like you, I was a child of the 70's/80's and had to bathe in WD-40 after a family trip to the beach. Good times. Here is some more info...
Any TX - Gulf of Mex Towns that are not polluted?? I have been to Galveston might have been there at a particulaly bad time but thee was oil on the beach and dead birds. Water nasty brown and hot.
Was just looking at CC pics online and see a coal fired power plant. I know TX is the land of big oil but isn't there anywhere clean in that coast?
I'm going to call this our as a troll thread. It appears to me that all you ar doing is trying to stir up trouble.
Your post is full of misinformation and assumptions based on misinformation. First, as others have pointed out, there are no coal-fired power plants in Corpus Christi. Second, your description of Galveston is not just exaggerating, but making things up. I grew up going to Galveston beaches in the 80s and 90s all the time since my parents have had a house down there since 1983, and now after moving back to Texas, I've been spending a lot of time there, including volunteering for beach cleanups, which is sort of a busman's holiday for me, because I happen to be an environmental scientist. So here are some thoughts about your post:
1. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you might have seen a dead bird, because, after all, birds are not immortal, they do come to the end of their natural lives or die from diseases, mishaps, etc. When they do, they either land on the ground, like the beach, or in the water, and wash up on the beach. Birds don't have elaborate funerary rites, they don't bury or cremate their dead, so a dead bird is going to lie there until it gets eaten by crabs and/or decomposes. It's the circle of life, Simba, so seeing a dead bird doesn't automatically mean it was killed by pollution.
2. When I was a kid, it was a given that after a day at the beach you were going to have tar on the bottom of your feet, every convenience store on the island sold products like "Targon" and Tar-X" to take it off. Since I've been back in Texas, I haven't had to clean tar off my feet once. It's not on the beaches anymore. There are two reasons for that: a.) a lot of beach tar came originally from the bilges of ships, but a few decades ago the feds placed tighter regulations on discharge of bilgewater. b.) the rest came from oil rigs close to shore, and from natural petroleum seeps close to shore. The oil industry has gotten a lot better about letting oil get into the water, but also the near shore petroleum formations have all gotten played out, which is why even when oil was booming circa 2013 you still didn't see many platforms on the horizon when you were on the beach, and then and now all you'll see is a few gas production platforms here and there. And when near shore formations get played out, they also don't seep naturally anymore.
3. Brown water does not equal polluted water. Galveston is a barrier island at the mouth of one of most biologically fertile estuaries in North America. Galveston's water is brown with the suspended solids that washed down rivers to build Galveston Island, and which also provide the nutrients to make the Galveston Bay estuary so biologically productive.
It makes me chuckle when people, especially those from California, knock Texas beaches for supposedly being "polluted", since I have compared water quality reports of Galveston side by side with those of several popular LA-area beaches for years. National Resources Defense Council has found several times that Texas actually has cleaner beaches than California. For instance, Galveston County had 13% potentially unsafe sampling days in 2018, but San Francisco County had twice that percentage that year.
Amazing post, very well thought out and written. I
Any TX - Gulf of Mex Towns that are not polluted?? I have been to Galveston might have been there at a particulaly bad time but thee was oil on the beach and dead birds. Water nasty brown and hot.
Was just looking at CC pics online and see a coal fired power plant. I know TX is the land of big oil but isn't there anywhere clean in that coast?
Sounds like you were in Galveston soon after a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There was one in the late 70's and the BP oil spill 1990's or 2000's and they both washed alot of oil and dead fish to shore and some birds that were covered in oil. That was a relatively long time ago and the beach is much better condition now.
Sounds like you were in Galveston soon after a major oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. There was one in the late 70's and the BP oil spill 1990's or 2000's and they both washed alot of oil and dead fish to shore and some birds that were covered in oil. That was a relatively long time ago and the beach is much better condition now.
Actually the 2010 BP oil spill did not affect Galveston much. The rig was much closer to New Orleans and all that oil washed towards the eastern Gulf in Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and the Florida Panhandle.
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