Bahia Grande Restoration Team Award

The Center for Coastal Studies and Division of Nearshore Research were recently honored as part of the Bahia Grande Restoration Team efforts to restore the Bahia Grande in extreme South Texas. The team received the 2006 Coastal America Partnership Award that highlights their goal to restore and protect the coastal environment. 

Bahia Grande is a shallow basin that was altered from the construction of the Brownsville Ship Channel in the 1930s and construction of State Highway 48. Tidal waters no longer flooded the basin, and dust from the basin bottom became an issue for neighboring towns and roadways. The Bahia Grande Restoration team includes county officials, port representatives, local landowners and businesses, as well as several universities that recently completed the first-year monitoring post-restoration.  The basin was reflooded in July 2005, and researchers from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, University of Texas at Brownsville, University of Texas Pan American, and Texas A&M University College Station collaborated to assess the restoration changes.

Bahia Grande is owned by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, although it represents a collaborative effort with the local community to restore this coastal environment to it former productivity. Several agencies have participated in funding the work, including U.S. EPA Gulf of Mexico Program, NOAA National Marine Fisheries, Gulf of Mexico Foundation, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service Texas Coastal Program, Texas Corporate Restoration Program, Ocean Trust, Ducks Unlimited, and Gulf Ecological Management Sites Program. Texas A&M University researchers at Center for Coastal Studies and Division of Nearshore Research began a new contract in December funded by EPA Gulf of Mexico Program with University of Texas at Brownsville and Pan American in December that will assess the restoration of Bahia Grande for two years.