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January 2, 2003
A large bayfront park is a very obvious and much
more desirable use for the thousand-acre natural site at Bayport where the
Port of Houston Authority proposes to build a major new container
port, according to a crescendo of voices from in the bay area. Elected officials
are pressing to create such a park and name it in honor of long-serving County
Commissioner Jim Fonteno, who retires on January 1, 2003.
"This site at Bayport is the last large tract of natural terrain on the upper west side of Galveston Bay," said Mayor Robin Riley of Seabrook. "It does not take a lot of imagination to picture it as a park. A major new bayfront park in southern Pasadena would be an enormous asset to the people of Houston and other nearby cities as well as to Pasadena residents."
Part of the Port's Bayport property extends into Seabrook,
which already has an impressive hike and bike trail system connecting several
parks. "Three of our parks virtually adjoin the Port's Bayport land," said
Riley. "Trails could easily be extended into it from our flagship Pine Gully
Park, Robinson Park, and from the Seabrook Wildlife Refuge off Red Bluff Road."
Natalie Ong, mayor pro tem of neighboring El Lago, echoed
Riley's view. "An enormous opportunity exists at Bayport," she said. "In a
bird's-eye view, it's the only large stretch of green along our shoreline of
rapidly increasing development." The small city of El Lago has only a handful of
unbuilt lots and can do little in direct support of countywide efforts to expand
parkland or conserve coastal habitat.
"But our water views and nearby open space have a major bearing on quality of
life in El Lago, which is why the City helped fund technical studies of the
negative impacts of a container port," said Ong.
In August, the Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association (GBCPA) made a formal submission to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department regarding the park potential of the Bayport site. In response to the Department's draft Land and Water Resources Conservation Plan, GBCPA noted that creating a bayfront park at Bayport would simultaneously address several of the conservation and recreation objectives in the plan.
The nearly 1,100 acres in question consist primarily of
coastal prairie with prairie pothole wetlands, "prairie pimple mound" complexes,
and a few forested plots. The land formations at this location are pristine,
having never been plowed or leveled. This type of habitat is exceedingly rare on
the Texas coast. Less than 1 percent of original acreage remains, according to
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service comments to the Army Corps of Engineers earlier
this year on the container port proposal.
"It is our belief that this parcel of land would be of far greater service to Texas as a park than as an expansion of the Port of Houston," says GBCPA in its August submission to Texas Parks and Wildlife. "Here we have a parcel of Native Prairie and Grassland habitat, which your plan singles out as high priority; located in the Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes ecoregion, which your plan identifies as the highest priority for conservation." A park at this location would also meet recreational goals in the plan, being well within the desired range of 90 miles from a major metropolitan center.
The name of County Commissioner Jim Fonteno has come up in
relation to park proposals for the site because Fonteno is about to retire after
serving on the Harris County Commission for close to 30 years. He was elected in
1974 and took office in 1975. As of January 1 his Precinct 2 seat on the
commission, serving southeast Harris County, will be occupied by newly elected
commissioner Sylvia Garcia.
"Consider what a wonderful legacy a Fonteno Bayshore Park
would be for the future," said Natalie O'Neill, mayor of Taylor Lake Village.
"Vigorous citizen opposition to container port development at Bayport has
focused attention on better alternative uses for the site," said O'Neill.
"Improving public access to our bay and protecting our valuable wetlands is a
vision worth pursuing."
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluation of the Bayport
property went beyond identifying the rarity of coastal prairie wetlands to
express the view that "the wetland complex involved is of national
significance." According to documentation developed by the Trust for Public
Lands and released its December meeting of resource agency personnel and others
concerned with open space, Pasadena has within its boundaries some 4,000 acres
of native prairie habitat. About a quarter of this is at Bayport, which has the
additional advantages of bay access and a direct surface water connection to the
bay via its tributary, Pine Gully.
The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail--jointly developed by
the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department (TPWD), the Texas Department of
Transportation, and local communities along the coast--has four sites in
Seabrook. The City is developing an ecotourism program to make the most of its
parks, trails, and variety of habitats and bird life. Its park system has begun
hosting hiking groups, and its Ecotourism Committee has held two annual symposia
on the long-term potential of nature tourism as a sustainable form of local
economic development.
According GBCPA, creation of a state park at Bayport would
meet TPWD's goal of coordinating with local governments "to improve public
access to the outdoors and increase conservation of land and water statewide."
"Given that there exist alternative sites for the Port of Houston Authority's planned expansion, given that both state and federal agencies have agreed that the Bayport site is the most environmentally damaging of all the alternatives, and given that it is a stated strategy of the TPWD to support methods of port expansion that minimize impacts to marine resources, it is our contention that it is in the best interest of the people of Texas to conserve this land as a state park," concludes GBCPA's submission to TPWD.
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Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association
P.O. Box 323, Seabrook, Texas 77586
Phone: 281-326-3343
Website: www.gbcpa.org
E-mail: gbcpa@gbcpa.org