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Bolivar Real Estate and Local News |
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40 Years and Counting by Georgia Osten
- Read more...by Georgia Osten
The Walla Family blew into town last Monday for their 40th Annual Crystal Beach Vacation. Yes, Mildred and Johnnie Walla and family have been coming to Crystal Beach every summer for the last 40 years! Mildred remembers coming with her father when she was in high school in Beaumont. To celebrate the event, they had special t-shirts printed. They always plan their vacation for the week after the 4th, because "the crowds are smaller." Their first vacation rental was handled by Mr. Swede himself, and they have been coming back to Swede's Real Estate ever since. Read Full Article Get More Money from Your Insurance Co
- Read more...You could be eligible to receive more money from your insurance company through the ICC Program. Policyholders may receive up to $30,000 under this coverage. The structure must meet certain eligibility criteria, including a substantial damage or repetitive loss determination by a local official. Read Full Article 12th Annual Peninsula Bike Drive Christmas
- Read more...12th Annual Peninsula Bike Drive Christmas is around the corner which means it's time for The Precinct 6 Constable's Office and Bolivar Peninsula Chamber of Commerce to start collecting donations for our 12th annual Peninsula Bike Drive. This function has always been something we have enjoyed doing, but it wouldn't happen without help from the whole community. With hard economic times, this year it will be extremely tough for many families to put gifts under the tree for their children. If you are able, please help put a smile on a child's face for Christmas. Donations can be sent to Pct 6 Constables Office, PO Box 680, Port Bolivar, Tx. 77650. PLEASE MAKE ALL PAYMENTS PAYABLE TO: The Bolivar Peninsula Chamber of Commerce.
Thank you, William Comeaux Read Full Article Shrimp - The Perfect Choice
- Read more... Whether your savoring these succulent morsels on a plate or rigging one to your fishing hook for catching that trophy, Shrimp are the perfect choice for both pleasures Read Full Article Crystal Beach is Open and Water is Safe
- Read more...The weather is great...come on down to Bolivar Peninsula. Tar balls have been cleaned up and beaches are more beautiful than ever. Read Full Article Mardi Gras 2010 Theme Contest
- Read more...Help Swede's come up with a theme for our float. Winner of the contest receives a 10% discount on beach house rental.
Read Full Article Bolivar is Back Anne Willis and Commissioner Doyle Interviews
- Read more...Bolivar is Back Crab Festival and Music Fest Had A Huge Turnout. Anne says come and see how much Bolivar has done since Ike. Commissioner Doyle promises major funding projects are coming soon. Read Full Article Texas Crab Festival and Stingaree Music Festival in May
- Read more...Bolivar is back and the 24th Annual Texas Crab Festival will be held together this year with the Stingaree Music Festival at Gregory Park in Crystal Beach Read Full Article Bolivar Peninsula Now Has Its Own Recovery Committee
- Read more...The county has created a steering committee that will map out the
long-term recovery plan for the Bolivar. The initial panel of seven
will be appointed by county commissioners and work with the Federal
Emergency Management Agency Read Full Article Now Open For Business!!
- Read more...The Bolivar Peninsula welcomes another place to shop....stop in and get lit at the
first and favorite neighborhood liquor store, Lite House Liquor. Read Full Article Previous Page | Next Page | |
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| | New beachfront luxury homes planned for Galveston | | 17 Jun 2013 | 
Houston-based Falcon Group , in partnership with Houston-based Grand Beach Development, is planning a luxury gated community on the eastern end of Galveston. Michael Stuart's insight:
The development, named the Estates of Grand Beach, features 10 beachfront lots, ranging in size from about two to four acres each. In addition, each lot boasts a minimum of 190 feet of beachfront. The price point for these luxury homes starts at $1.5 million per lot and offers full-time security and direct beach access and is expected to include usage of a private helipad. The lead architect for the project is Houston-based Kirksey Architects, and a general contractor has not yet been announced. See rendering: http://bizj.us/sk481/i/2 |
| | Texas Governor Rick Perry Announces Final Decisions on Legislation 2013 | | 16 Jun 2013 | 
Gov. Rick Perry today announced his final decisions on legislation passed during the 83rd Regular Legislative Session. The governor applauded lawmakers for their work to keep Texas' healthy economy the envy of the nation and a beacon for employers and families looking for the best opportunity to succeed. Michael Stuart's insight:
This session we took broad steps to strengthen our state for generations to come. With the state growing by more than 1,000 people a day, the citizens of Texas entrusted us to make important investments in our communities while being responsible with hard-earned taxpayer dollars. We passed historic water infrastructure legislation, created a new university in South Texas, and ensured every Texas graduate is better prepared for college or career. We've done all this while providing $1.4 billion in tax relief for Texans. This session will expand opportunities for success, and help us keep our state the best place in the nation to live, work, raise a family and run a business. |
| | Shale Oil Boom Could End Sooner Than You Think says Forbes | | 15 Jun 2013 | 
Even with oil prices high, drillers are struggling to make real profits off the U.S. shale boom. Michael Stuart's insight:
You’d think that with drillers getting better, honing techniques and driving down costs, that a 20% increase in investment would bring about a more than commensurate increase in oil and gas production volumes, right? And yet according to Ernst & Young, total U.S. oil and gas production was up “just” 13% on the year. Oil and gas companies have spent hundreds of billions acquiring acreage, drilling wells, booking reserves, boosting supplies, but in 2012 they proved too good at their job, found too much gas and cratered the gas price.
That basically means that natural gas reserves that were worth $26 billion the previous year became worthless because it cost too much to drill them. This led to a 58% decline in after-tax profits in 2012 over 2011. And you’d better believe the same thing could happen to oil reserves. There are plenty of reasons why oil prices should be heading up, not down. But it’s worth thinking about what could happen to the American Oil Boom if oil prices slipped just 10-15% from where they are now. Oil drilling is generating hundreds of billions of dollars of value to the United States right now, in terms of jobs and equipment, and especially the benefit to the national balance of payments of not having to spend $200 billion a year buying foreign oil. But it must be said that when you take into account all the costs incurred in acquiring and developing unconventional oil fields today, many plays are already balanced on the knife-edge of profitability, and any down draft in oil pricing could dry up activity real quick. The cartel announced that it would “study” the shale oil issue. “If OPEC hopes to maintain any semblance of its cartel pricing power now would be the time for its members to boost their oil output, drive prices down, bankrupt marginal American producers and regain market share for the long-term,” says Ed Hirs, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston, and a member of the Yale Graduates In Energy study group. If U.S. oil supply growth keeps up at the pace of the last two years, we could add 1 million bpd before the end of 2014. “In short, if OPEC simply declines to reduce its own production quotas in the face of growing U.S. oil volumes, the American producers could grow themselves right out of the money,” says Hirs. What’s more, the researchers found an “ unprecedented” jump in the marginal costs of U.S. fields, from $89 a barrel in 2011 to $114 a barrel in 2012. This implies that some U.S. producers were losing money on oil they brought to market — and doing so knowingly, says Bernstein. Howard Newman, legendary private equity maven behind Pinebrook Road Partners said in a recent talk at Yale that most shale oil fields in the U.S. can still generate a return at $80 a barrel, but that if prices slipped below that producers would cut capital investment in marginal plays to preserve balance sheet strength. |
| | Should You Rent Or Buy A Home In Retirement? | | 15 Jun 2013 | 
To answer that question, you’ll want to look at all the angles. Here’s how. Michael Stuart's insight:
A Strong Argument for Buying If you’re raring to relocate now, today’s near-record low mortgage rates make this an unusually opportune time to buy. A study by the real estate website Trulia recently concluded that buying a home would be cheaper than renting in all of the top 100 U.S. metropolitan markets if you take out a fixed, 30-year, 3.5% mortgage and stay in the home for at least seven years. (The average mortgage rate has risen slightly since the study came out, to 3.75%.) Trulia has a rent vs. buy calculator (http://www.trulia.com/rent_vs_buy) that will let you plug in your own numbers to see which way the balance would tip in your case. If your retirement is years away, however, the picture could change. Higher mortgage rates, fast-rising housing prices or a combination of the two might make renting look like a bargain. |
| | Texas Gulf Coast gets high marks from Perryman | | 13 Jun 2013 | While America is gradually finding its way out of the recession, Texas remains an exception to the overall economic gloom suffered by much of the country. Michael Stuart's insight:
The Perryman Group has been dealing with statistics and economics for over 30 years. There is one big statistic where I never cease to be amazed,” Perryman said. “That is that Texas adds 1,200 people to our population every single day, and we’ve been doing it about 16 or 17 years now.”
Perryman cited a variety of reasons why Texas has been less damaged by the recession and faster to rebound than most other states, such as the low cost of living, ports, infrastructure, and a business-conducive tax structure, among others.
“We didn’t do a lot of subprime loans in Texas,” Perryman said. “We did almost no mortgage-backed securities backed by subprime loans in banks of Texas. And as best I can tell, we didn’t side bet a single derivative on a mortgaged-backed security on a subprime loan.”
While Texas makes up about eight percent of the U.S. economy, it also has 40 percent of all new investment, Perryman said.
Houston and the surrounding area is a large contributor to the state growth. Perryman refers to the city as a “three-legged stool,” with its seat held into place by the city’s status as the world’s energy epicenter, the healthcare sciences, and the Port of Houston, which Perryman said has contributed to Texas as being eight percent of the economy yet 14 percent of all U.S. exports.
With the developing world’s growing demand for energy, the 2015 widening of the Panama canal, and the aging of the baby-boomers respectively, the trifecta of the energy, port and healthcare industries will continue to grow the region’s economy.
“It’s because … you’ve actually started to develop your own facilities — your own industry, your own growth — in some very clean, good industries. “In addition…you’re a very attractive place for high-income, well-educated folks to live. And so with that you end up with a lot of resources and not as many issues as other places have, and it puts you in a very good position.” |
| | Keep Rollover Pass Open | | 13 Mar 2013 | Keep Rollover Pass Open
By Wayne Stupka and Ted Vega
Recently, in a gross example of government overreaching in violation of private property rights, the General Land Office of the State of Texas went to the Corps of Engineers and applied for and received a permit to close Rollover Pass. Not only do they not own the land in question, they did not ask the owner of the land – the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club – - if they could. They just did it.
If this wasn’t bad enough, they are seeking to remove the best public access fishing location on the Upper Texas Coast. It is a high quality recreational resource available to handicapped and less wealthy fishermen and women of the coast – persons who cannot afford boats and motors. Furthermore the grounds on which they are overreaching do not hold up. It is a land grab, pure and simple.
Now, how would you feel if the government came to you and told you that they had applied for a permit to take action that would destroy your property? How many of you citizens out there would stand still for an arrogant, oppressive government agency telling you what they were going to do with your private property?
And now because the General Land Office has no power of condemnation, the GLO is trying to force Galveston County to do their dirty work for them by asking – or perhaps coercing – the County into condemning our property on their behalf. To date, Galveston County has not acted, but let’s be clear. It will be a “gut check” on whether the members of Commissioners Court are really concerned about overreaching government or not. This is an issue that puts the rhetoric of support for private property rights to the test.
So why are we closing the Pass?
First, we are always told it is because of erosion. Unfortunately, the big erosion problem on the Upper Texas coast is that the source of sand for all of our beaches is not what it used to be. Rollover Pass is a small symptom of the larger disease of loss of sand supply due to dams up the Mississippi River. Shutting Rollover Pass is not going to solve the erosion problem on Bolivar or anywhere else. Severe storms such as Ike cause ten to a hundred times more erosion in one day across a hundred miles of beach than does Rollover Pass in a decade. If the jetties were constructed that were part of the original plan, the erosion issue – such as it is – would go away.
Second, we are told that the problem is siltation of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway – that sediment comes through the Pass and is deposited in the canal and causes increased maintenance dredging costs. However, consider this. A diversion was recently constructed (and permitted by the Corps and the GLO) to allow the diversion of Taylor’s Bayou in Jefferson County southward into the GIWW about fifteen miles in from the easternmost point of East Bay. That diversion will dump incredibly large amounts of sediment into the GIWW – a much larger amount than is contributed by Rollover Pass. So if increased dredging were really a concern, that project would never have been allowed. Yet it was with full support by the very entities that are trying to shut down the Pass.
Third, we are told that the GLO wishes to restore East Bay from an ecological perspective. To us, that sounded like a decent reason. But once again, this issue must be viewed in a cumulative context. The Taylor Bayou diversion mentioned above will divert millions and even billions of gallons of floodwaters into the GIWW and East Bay. That diversion is a new event. If Rollover Pass is closed, the ecology of East Bay will be dominated by freshwater inflow and will cease to function as a salt water fishery for long periods of time.
The Taylor Bayou diversion is a much bigger threat than Rollover Pass. However, if the Pass is left open, the freshwater domination of the Taylor Bayou diversion would be moderated by an exchange with the Gulf of Mexico and East Bay will likely be just fine. With the Pass closed, East Bay is doomed.
On the positive side, Rollover Pass is a poor fisherman’s dream. It offers truly quality fishing literally out of the back of your truck. You can drive right up to it. You can roll your wheel chair to it. It is open to all ethnicities and all classes of users. It is all about equality – equal access and equal rights.
By shutting the Pass, the government will be taking private property from the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club for the supposed purpose of benefiting beachfront homeowners – homeowners who now own the majority of the beach after the Severance decision by the Texas Supreme Court. Why should the Club’s private property be condemned to help private property owners?
Artist's concept of how Rollover Pass could look (click image for larger view).
All of us involved in supporting the Pass – the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club and the Gilcrist Community Association – recognize that the Pass must be improved. We have produced an image of what it could and should be, and we believe that we can raise the money – private money, not government money – to build this newer and better Pass. But since Ike, the Club, the Gilchrist community and Rollover Pass have been under attack.
All we ask is that the government leaves us alone – that we be allowed the chance to restore this fabulous recreation asset and get back to the business of providing quality fishing, bird watching and recreation to the residents of the Upper Coast.
Wayne Stupka is President of the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club.
Ted Vega is President of the Gilchrist Community Association. |
| | Bolivar Wastewater Project Passes | | 23 Oct 2012 |
In a special meeting on Monday, the Galveston County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to move forward with the Bolivar Peninsula Wastewater Project. The agenda item that passed: “Direct county employees to address and respond to GLO needs/requests to move forward with Bolivar Pen. Waste Water project and issue Work Orders for Engineering and Environmental and remove any unilateral actions that have placed the project on hold submitted by County Commissioner Precinct 1.”
Commissioners Patrick Doyle, Kevin O’Brien, and Stephen Holmes voted in favor of the project; County Judge Mark Henry and Commissioner Ken Clark voted in opposition.
The subsequent agenda item failed, with a vote of 2-3: “Consideration of removal of Bolivar Waste Water CDBG Round 1 project and replace with an eligible alternate project to be determined submitted by County Judge.” |
| | | ATV News | | 06 Aug 2012 | Last month, a State Attorney General’s opinion provided some guidance for both operators and government officials about the use of all-terrain and recreational off-road vehicles (ATV/ROV’s) on Bolivar Peninsula beaches. |
| | By Ed Snyder/Outdoors Bolivar Peninsula, TX. | | 14 Feb 2012 |
Winter fishing in Texas could mean dodging 30degree snow flakes in the West Texas panhandle while fishing for “whatever” or wriggling toes in 70degree sands along the Southea |
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Page 1 2 3| New beachfront luxury homes planned for Galveston | | 17 Jun 2013 | 
Houston-based Falcon Group , in partnership with Houston-based Grand Beach Development, is planning a luxury gated community on the eastern end of Galveston. Michael Stuart's insight:
The development, named the Estates of Grand Beach, features 10 beachfront lots, ranging in size from about two to four acres each. In addition, each lot boasts a minimum of 190 feet of beachfront. The price point for these luxury homes starts at $1.5 million per lot and offers full-time security and direct beach access and is expected to include usage of a private helipad. The lead architect for the project is Houston-based Kirksey Architects, and a general contractor has not yet been announced. See rendering: http://bizj.us/sk481/i/2 |
| | Texas Governor Rick Perry Announces Final Decisions on Legislation 2013 | | 16 Jun 2013 | 
Gov. Rick Perry today announced his final decisions on legislation passed during the 83rd Regular Legislative Session. The governor applauded lawmakers for their work to keep Texas' healthy economy the envy of the nation and a beacon for employers and families looking for the best opportunity to succeed. Michael Stuart's insight:
This session we took broad steps to strengthen our state for generations to come. With the state growing by more than 1,000 people a day, the citizens of Texas entrusted us to make important investments in our communities while being responsible with hard-earned taxpayer dollars. We passed historic water infrastructure legislation, created a new university in South Texas, and ensured every Texas graduate is better prepared for college or career. We've done all this while providing $1.4 billion in tax relief for Texans. This session will expand opportunities for success, and help us keep our state the best place in the nation to live, work, raise a family and run a business. |
| | Shale Oil Boom Could End Sooner Than You Think says Forbes | | 15 Jun 2013 | 
Even with oil prices high, drillers are struggling to make real profits off the U.S. shale boom. Michael Stuart's insight:
You’d think that with drillers getting better, honing techniques and driving down costs, that a 20% increase in investment would bring about a more than commensurate increase in oil and gas production volumes, right? And yet according to Ernst & Young, total U.S. oil and gas production was up “just” 13% on the year. Oil and gas companies have spent hundreds of billions acquiring acreage, drilling wells, booking reserves, boosting supplies, but in 2012 they proved too good at their job, found too much gas and cratered the gas price.
That basically means that natural gas reserves that were worth $26 billion the previous year became worthless because it cost too much to drill them. This led to a 58% decline in after-tax profits in 2012 over 2011. And you’d better believe the same thing could happen to oil reserves. There are plenty of reasons why oil prices should be heading up, not down. But it’s worth thinking about what could happen to the American Oil Boom if oil prices slipped just 10-15% from where they are now. Oil drilling is generating hundreds of billions of dollars of value to the United States right now, in terms of jobs and equipment, and especially the benefit to the national balance of payments of not having to spend $200 billion a year buying foreign oil. But it must be said that when you take into account all the costs incurred in acquiring and developing unconventional oil fields today, many plays are already balanced on the knife-edge of profitability, and any down draft in oil pricing could dry up activity real quick. The cartel announced that it would “study” the shale oil issue. “If OPEC hopes to maintain any semblance of its cartel pricing power now would be the time for its members to boost their oil output, drive prices down, bankrupt marginal American producers and regain market share for the long-term,” says Ed Hirs, a lecturer in energy economics at the University of Houston, and a member of the Yale Graduates In Energy study group. If U.S. oil supply growth keeps up at the pace of the last two years, we could add 1 million bpd before the end of 2014. “In short, if OPEC simply declines to reduce its own production quotas in the face of growing U.S. oil volumes, the American producers could grow themselves right out of the money,” says Hirs. What’s more, the researchers found an “ unprecedented” jump in the marginal costs of U.S. fields, from $89 a barrel in 2011 to $114 a barrel in 2012. This implies that some U.S. producers were losing money on oil they brought to market — and doing so knowingly, says Bernstein. Howard Newman, legendary private equity maven behind Pinebrook Road Partners said in a recent talk at Yale that most shale oil fields in the U.S. can still generate a return at $80 a barrel, but that if prices slipped below that producers would cut capital investment in marginal plays to preserve balance sheet strength. |
| | Should You Rent Or Buy A Home In Retirement? | | 15 Jun 2013 | 
To answer that question, you’ll want to look at all the angles. Here’s how. Michael Stuart's insight:
A Strong Argument for Buying If you’re raring to relocate now, today’s near-record low mortgage rates make this an unusually opportune time to buy. A study by the real estate website Trulia recently concluded that buying a home would be cheaper than renting in all of the top 100 U.S. metropolitan markets if you take out a fixed, 30-year, 3.5% mortgage and stay in the home for at least seven years. (The average mortgage rate has risen slightly since the study came out, to 3.75%.) Trulia has a rent vs. buy calculator (http://www.trulia.com/rent_vs_buy) that will let you plug in your own numbers to see which way the balance would tip in your case. If your retirement is years away, however, the picture could change. Higher mortgage rates, fast-rising housing prices or a combination of the two might make renting look like a bargain. |
| | Texas Gulf Coast gets high marks from Perryman | | 13 Jun 2013 | While America is gradually finding its way out of the recession, Texas remains an exception to the overall economic gloom suffered by much of the country. Michael Stuart's insight:
The Perryman Group has been dealing with statistics and economics for over 30 years. There is one big statistic where I never cease to be amazed,” Perryman said. “That is that Texas adds 1,200 people to our population every single day, and we’ve been doing it about 16 or 17 years now.”
Perryman cited a variety of reasons why Texas has been less damaged by the recession and faster to rebound than most other states, such as the low cost of living, ports, infrastructure, and a business-conducive tax structure, among others.
“We didn’t do a lot of subprime loans in Texas,” Perryman said. “We did almost no mortgage-backed securities backed by subprime loans in banks of Texas. And as best I can tell, we didn’t side bet a single derivative on a mortgaged-backed security on a subprime loan.”
While Texas makes up about eight percent of the U.S. economy, it also has 40 percent of all new investment, Perryman said.
Houston and the surrounding area is a large contributor to the state growth. Perryman refers to the city as a “three-legged stool,” with its seat held into place by the city’s status as the world’s energy epicenter, the healthcare sciences, and the Port of Houston, which Perryman said has contributed to Texas as being eight percent of the economy yet 14 percent of all U.S. exports.
With the developing world’s growing demand for energy, the 2015 widening of the Panama canal, and the aging of the baby-boomers respectively, the trifecta of the energy, port and healthcare industries will continue to grow the region’s economy.
“It’s because … you’ve actually started to develop your own facilities — your own industry, your own growth — in some very clean, good industries. “In addition…you’re a very attractive place for high-income, well-educated folks to live. And so with that you end up with a lot of resources and not as many issues as other places have, and it puts you in a very good position.” |
| | Keep Rollover Pass Open | | 13 Mar 2013 | Keep Rollover Pass Open
By Wayne Stupka and Ted Vega
Recently, in a gross example of government overreaching in violation of private property rights, the General Land Office of the State of Texas went to the Corps of Engineers and applied for and received a permit to close Rollover Pass. Not only do they not own the land in question, they did not ask the owner of the land – the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club – - if they could. They just did it.
If this wasn’t bad enough, they are seeking to remove the best public access fishing location on the Upper Texas Coast. It is a high quality recreational resource available to handicapped and less wealthy fishermen and women of the coast – persons who cannot afford boats and motors. Furthermore the grounds on which they are overreaching do not hold up. It is a land grab, pure and simple.
Now, how would you feel if the government came to you and told you that they had applied for a permit to take action that would destroy your property? How many of you citizens out there would stand still for an arrogant, oppressive government agency telling you what they were going to do with your private property?
And now because the General Land Office has no power of condemnation, the GLO is trying to force Galveston County to do their dirty work for them by asking – or perhaps coercing – the County into condemning our property on their behalf. To date, Galveston County has not acted, but let’s be clear. It will be a “gut check” on whether the members of Commissioners Court are really concerned about overreaching government or not. This is an issue that puts the rhetoric of support for private property rights to the test.
So why are we closing the Pass?
First, we are always told it is because of erosion. Unfortunately, the big erosion problem on the Upper Texas coast is that the source of sand for all of our beaches is not what it used to be. Rollover Pass is a small symptom of the larger disease of loss of sand supply due to dams up the Mississippi River. Shutting Rollover Pass is not going to solve the erosion problem on Bolivar or anywhere else. Severe storms such as Ike cause ten to a hundred times more erosion in one day across a hundred miles of beach than does Rollover Pass in a decade. If the jetties were constructed that were part of the original plan, the erosion issue – such as it is – would go away.
Second, we are told that the problem is siltation of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway – that sediment comes through the Pass and is deposited in the canal and causes increased maintenance dredging costs. However, consider this. A diversion was recently constructed (and permitted by the Corps and the GLO) to allow the diversion of Taylor’s Bayou in Jefferson County southward into the GIWW about fifteen miles in from the easternmost point of East Bay. That diversion will dump incredibly large amounts of sediment into the GIWW – a much larger amount than is contributed by Rollover Pass. So if increased dredging were really a concern, that project would never have been allowed. Yet it was with full support by the very entities that are trying to shut down the Pass.
Third, we are told that the GLO wishes to restore East Bay from an ecological perspective. To us, that sounded like a decent reason. But once again, this issue must be viewed in a cumulative context. The Taylor Bayou diversion mentioned above will divert millions and even billions of gallons of floodwaters into the GIWW and East Bay. That diversion is a new event. If Rollover Pass is closed, the ecology of East Bay will be dominated by freshwater inflow and will cease to function as a salt water fishery for long periods of time.
The Taylor Bayou diversion is a much bigger threat than Rollover Pass. However, if the Pass is left open, the freshwater domination of the Taylor Bayou diversion would be moderated by an exchange with the Gulf of Mexico and East Bay will likely be just fine. With the Pass closed, East Bay is doomed.
On the positive side, Rollover Pass is a poor fisherman’s dream. It offers truly quality fishing literally out of the back of your truck. You can drive right up to it. You can roll your wheel chair to it. It is open to all ethnicities and all classes of users. It is all about equality – equal access and equal rights.
By shutting the Pass, the government will be taking private property from the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club for the supposed purpose of benefiting beachfront homeowners – homeowners who now own the majority of the beach after the Severance decision by the Texas Supreme Court. Why should the Club’s private property be condemned to help private property owners?
Artist's concept of how Rollover Pass could look (click image for larger view).
All of us involved in supporting the Pass – the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club and the Gilcrist Community Association – recognize that the Pass must be improved. We have produced an image of what it could and should be, and we believe that we can raise the money – private money, not government money – to build this newer and better Pass. But since Ike, the Club, the Gilchrist community and Rollover Pass have been under attack.
All we ask is that the government leaves us alone – that we be allowed the chance to restore this fabulous recreation asset and get back to the business of providing quality fishing, bird watching and recreation to the residents of the Upper Coast.
Wayne Stupka is President of the Beaumont Rod, Reel and Gun Club.
Ted Vega is President of the Gilchrist Community Association. |
| | Bolivar Wastewater Project Passes | | 23 Oct 2012 |
In a special meeting on Monday, the Galveston County Commissioners Court voted 3-2 to move forward with the Bolivar Peninsula Wastewater Project. The agenda item that passed: “Direct county employees to address and respond to GLO needs/requests to move forward with Bolivar Pen. Waste Water project and issue Work Orders for Engineering and Environmental and remove any unilateral actions that have placed the project on hold submitted by County Commissioner Precinct 1.”
Commissioners Patrick Doyle, Kevin O’Brien, and Stephen Holmes voted in favor of the project; County Judge Mark Henry and Commissioner Ken Clark voted in opposition.
The subsequent agenda item failed, with a vote of 2-3: “Consideration of removal of Bolivar Waste Water CDBG Round 1 project and replace with an eligible alternate project to be determined submitted by County Judge.” |
| | | ATV News | | 06 Aug 2012 | Last month, a State Attorney General’s opinion provided some guidance for both operators and government officials about the use of all-terrain and recreational off-road vehicles (ATV/ROV’s) on Bolivar Peninsula beaches. |
| | By Ed Snyder/Outdoors Bolivar Peninsula, TX. | | 14 Feb 2012 |
Winter fishing in Texas could mean dodging 30degree snow flakes in the West Texas panhandle while fishing for “whatever” or wriggling toes in 70degree sands along the Southea |
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Swede's Real Estate
Physical Address: 2840 Hwy 87
Mailing Address: Po Box 1158
Crystal Beach, TX 77650
Phone 409-684-3345
Sitemap
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Your Crystal Beach Bolivar Peninsula - Beach Property Expert - a member of the TexasGulfCoastOnline network
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Swede's Real Estate
Physical Address: 2840 Hwy 87
Mailing Address: Po Box 1158
Crystal Beach, TX 77650
Phone 409-684-3345
Sitemap
|

|
Your Crystal Beach Bolivar Peninsula - Beach Property Expert - a member of the TexasGulfCoastOnline network | |
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