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Dr.
Watson is a licensed marine and coastal consulting geologist with 40
years of
experience studying the Texas Gulf Coast. He is an expert on
sediment transport, including thorough knowledge of the longshore
sediment transport system in the surf, the geologic history of the
Texas Coast, inlet and tidal hydrodynamics, and Texas coastal boundary
law. Dr. Watson has experience in the design of harbor
entrances
and inlets. He has served as an expert witness in cases involving
coastal boundary determination. These have included
determination
of the ownership of 55 square miles of wind-tidal flats in Kenedy
County which overlie valuable natural gas deposits as well as ownership
of the wind-tidal flats adjacent to South Padre Island. He has also
served as an expert witness in several cases where the upland owner has
lost beach front property due to beach erosion caused by manmade
changes in the shoreline and river systems which have initiated severe
beach erosion on most of the Texas coast with particularly severe
erosion on parts of Bolivar Peninsula, Surfside, Sargent
beach,
West Galveston beach, and South Padre Island.
Contact Dr. Watson for
professional assistance with your project or litigation on the Texas
Coast.
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Dr.
Watson gave a presentation titled Severe
Erosion of
Texas Beaches Caused by Engineering Modifications to the Coast and
Rivers at the Harte
Research Institute auditorium, Texas A&M University, Corpus
Christi, Texas on Friday January 19, 2007. The proposed
350 ft. setback for construction on Nueces County barrier islands was
discussed. A
PowerPoint slide
show of this talk with narration as presented at the Harte Institute
can be downloaded at the following link. The presentation is
about 70 megabytes and will take about 15 minutes to download on a fast
connection.
Please go to the following page and
download the
file "erosion.pps".
With
very few exceptions, the Gulf
beaches of Texas
are eroding with rates varying from a few feet per year to over 15 feet
per year. Construction of long jetties at major navigational
inlets has locked huge quantities of beach sand into permanent storage,
compartmentalizing the coast and starving down current beaches of sand,
while flood control and water supply dams on rivers that flow to the
Gulf have reduced the sand supply to Gulf beaches. Long term
shoreline retreat on most of Mustang Island and North Padre Island is 2
to 3 feet per year or more. These
and other changes have
initiated irreversible erosion of our Texas Gulf of Mexico
beaches. Even
without predicted sea level
rise this means that the shorelines will retreat 100 to 150 feet OR
MORE in the next 50 years. The 350 foot setback for new
construction proposed by Nueces County will prevent many future
problems by leaving a zone where new dunes can be artificially created
as the present dune line is eroded back. Without this, it
will
not be long before major valuable buildings will be facing destruction
unless the shoreline is armored with seawalls, a very undesirable fix.
Click here to
download my paper, Coastal
Law and the
Geology of a Changing Shoreline,
March 2006.
