Pine Gully Report

Pine Gully Park, Seabrook

November, 2005

Pic 1: The channel of Pine Gully was blocked for a distance of an estimated  280 feet on January 6, 2006. It had been blocked since at least July of 2005 by sediment washing in from Galveston Bay. From July through December 2005, the great whaleback of the sediment plug was 600 to 700 feet long, as shown in this November photo. Pine Gully was no longer functioning as a tidal creek. (The tufts of grass in the center of the sand show where the right-hand channel bank once was.)

January 6, 2006

Pic 2: Fresh water coming down Pine Gully had crept around the sides of the plug into the marsh months before—but these plants are adapted for periodic inundation, not permanent standing water. They began to die.

Pic 3: Having filled in the former channel course, the in-washing sediment began blanketing and killing the marsh on either side, because it had nowhere else to go.

Pic 4: Silt suffocated the grass over large patches of the marsh.

Pic 5: A heavy rainstorm in late December—the heaviest rainfall in the area all year--produced sudden runoff into Pine Gully. This resulted in the first flow of water over the sediment plug in at least six months. The sharp storm runoff scoured out a portion of the plug, reducing it from 700 feet long to the 280 feet measured in early January 2006.

Pic 6: When the water went down after the storm, the scouring revealed the depth of the sediment buildup. The deposit of new silt was two to three feet deep right across the former main channel of the bayou and into the flanking marsh. A cell phone provides scale.

Pic 7: In many places the sediment has buried the marsh grass to a depth of two feet. It should be no surprise that the marsh is dying. (Note: Hurricane Rita had no identifiable effect on Pine Gully—because of its rotation, the winds came from the north, and Rita thus brought low water, not high water.)

Pic 8: On January 6, 2006, only the merest trickle of water was creeping onto the sediment plug, never reaching the bay. Despite the heavy storm runoff of late December, Pine Gully remained plugged for hundreds of feet.

January 7, 2006  The Dig

Pic 9: Many months of complaints, notifications to public officials, and  pleading by dismayed users of Pine Gully Park failed to produce remedial action by any resource or enforcement agency to save the suffocating bayou. On January 7 a small group of citizens decided there had been enough talk, and the time had come for action. Armed with a serious arsenal of garden shovels, they assembled in Pine Gully on a gorgeous winter day and began to dig.

Pic 10: The party established low barriers where the water was seeping into the marsh around the sides of the plug.

Pic 11: Water was directed toward a single major outflow point.

Pic 12: Diggers spread out along the length of the sediment plug to excavate enough of a channel for the water to begin to move.

Pic 13: The water indeed began to flow.

Pic 14: The new flow began to do some cutting of its own.

Pic 15: A modest flow of fresh water was reestablished down the main stem of Pine Gully and into Galveston Bay, each passing gallon carrying off a little of the sediment.

Pic 16: The tide filled the lower course of the bayou as the diggers quit for the day—bay waters were once again meeting the bayou’s flow.

Pic 17: Diggers admire their handiwork. Will the flow persist? Will the volume of sediment washing in from the bay soon undo their work?