Page 4 THE BATTALION
WEDNESDAY, APR. 7, 1976
Subsidence
Gulf winds across Galveston Bay raise tides ,
threatening homeowners in Baytown’s subdivision
Associated Press
BAYTOWN — The summer
nights are the worst. Those balmy,
“easy livin’ ” evenings along the
Texas Gulf Coast are long, dark
hours of uncertainty and fear for
Baytown’s Brownwood subdivision,
a neighborhood under siege.
The subdivision is sinking, slowly,
centimeter by centimeter. The once
picturesque waters of Crystal Lake
and Scott’s Bay have become relent
less threats of life and property.
It takes only a strong southerly
wind out of the Gulf, whipping ac
ross Galveston Bay and up the long
channel toward Baytown, to send
high tides lapping over roads, across
yards and into houses.
“Volunteer firemen will come in
the night, knocking on doors and
warning us that the tides are coming
up,” says Mrs. Victor H. Appelt,
whose family has lived in
Brownwood for 16 years.
“We woke up one nijjht and heard
sirens,” she recalled. “My husband
and I got in the cars and drove out
through fender-deep water, dodging
floating logs.”
During the summer months, she
said, “the outside lights burn all
-night and people worry about every
little storm.”
One couple awoke in the night to
■find their home awash. They
splashed through darkness to their
'baby’s room and found the infant
floating on a crib mattress.
Boats are parked in the driveways
at some residences. Some park their
cars on nearby elevated streets.
Library
sponsors
book sale
National Library Week, April
4-10, sponsored by the Texas A&M
University Library, will include
a book sale, poetry reading and
exhibits.
The University Library’s lending
print collection will benefit from an
April 7 book sale staged by the
Friends of the Texas A6cM Library.
The sale will offer books,
magazines, sheet music, posters and
other items and it will run from 10:30
a. m. to 4 p. m. on the mall on the east
side of the library.
Sale items are being donated.
Contributions may be dropped at the
library, McDonald’s and area food
stores.
Also planned is an April 13 poetry
reading. Set at 7:30 p.m. in room 226
of the library, it will feature selec
tions by A&M graduate and under
graduate students. A reception fol
lows.
A display on “Mutilation of Lib
rary Materials” will be on the first
floor of the library during the week.
Lecture series
begun on works
of Solzhenitsyn
A four-part lecture series on the
literary works of Russian author
Alexander Solzhenitsyn begins at
Texas A&M today. v
The lectures, sponsored by the
A&M Russian Club are by Dr.
George V. Grebenschikov, assistant
professor of modern languages at
Texas A&M. 1
Today’s program is a 7:30 p.m.
discussion of the Nobel Prize-winn
ing “One Day in the Life of Ivan
Denisovich” in Rudder Tower 604.
All the open, no-admission pro
grams are at 7:30 p.m., notes Gre
benschikov, with the final three in
Memorial Student Center 140A.
Dates of the other three pro
grams are “The First Circle,” on
April 14; “Cancer Ward,” April 21;
and “Gulag Archipelago,” April 29.
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It’s all been a gradually intensify
ing way of life for many Brownwood
residents for several years now. And
there’s no hope of improvement.
Brownwood is slowly being wiped
out by a phenomenon called earth
subsidence. The ground is literally
sinking, collapsing like a leaky bal
loon. Since the community is beside
an arm of Galveston Bay, the sea
nibbles away at the shoreline, slowly
claiming broad expanses of land.
Once Brownwood was a gracious
neighborhood of large, comfortable
waterside homes. Tall trees arched
gracefully over roadways and shaded
wide, verdant lawns. The backyards
of many homes sloped gently to the
water. The bay was a peaceful playg
round for fishing and sailing.
“It was just beautiful,” Mrs. Ap
pelt said.
But subsidence has turned the
playground into a battleground.
In the last decade, homeowners
have spent thousands of dollars on
seawalls to hold back the water and
on home repairs when the walls
failed. Their efforts have been
brushed aside by the invading sea.
Some homes are now inundated
for several days each year. One brick
two-story home stands surrounded
by water.
Experts say Brownwood is paying
the price for the massive thirst of
nearby Houston and its industries.
Houston is atop an aquifer in the
Beaumont Clays, a geologic forma
tion deposited thousands of years
ago. A huge underground reservoir
of water is trapped in pockets of sand
within the clays.
About 170 billion gallons of water
annually are pumped from the
aquifer to quench the needs of the
area’s flourishing population and its
industrial complex.
As the water is pumped from the
sands, water flows from the clays.
The fine sand compresses in an effect
similar to that of a sponge shrinking
as it dries.
The result is subsidence. As the
deep pockets compress, surface
ground above sinks steadily.
Since Brownwood was built, some
areas of the neighborhood have sunk
as much as six feet. Subsidence also
has affected other areas around Gal
veston Bay.
The cities of Kemah, Seabrook,
Pasadena and La Porte all suffer
some effects of subsidence flooding.
The San Jacinto Battleground State
Park, just across the channel from
Baytown, has lost many acres to sub
sidence flooding. Some park roads
are constantly under water; At the
Johnson Space Center, buildings are
sinking up to five inches a year.
But Brownwood is the worst.
The homes would be purchased
by the government, which would
pay “fair market value,” Pawlik said.
This value, he said, would be based
on “a comparison of recent sales in
the area.”
At that rate, Mrs. Appelt says,
“we’ll be getting peanuts for our
property.”
The Army Corps of Engineers
conducted months of complex
studies on ways to rescue the sub
division. But experts determined
there was no economical salvation
for Brownwood.
“We decided the best thing to do
would be to permanently evacuate
the residents, level the land and sur
render it to the sea,” said Chester
Pawlik, a government chief en
gineer. “There are 750 acres and 448
families involved. The cost is esti
mated at $16.9 million.”
After tbe homes are razed, he
said, the area would be used as a
park. But eventually it will be co
vered by water.
Baytown Century Twenty-One
Co. realtor Jim Setley agrees. “Th
ose properties are selling for about
half of what they would bring in
another area,” he said. “While
houses have doubled in value
elsewhere, just the opposite hap
pened in Brownwood. And some of it
was really exceptional property.”
A lot of people there, he adds, “are
going down the tubes.”
Some subdivision homeowners
have already abandoned their
houses in despair, Mrs. George said.
“They’ve been forced out and are
still making house payments on
homes they can’t even live in,” she
said. “Some of them are just ruined. ”
Pawlik said the government is
empowered by the Uniform Reloca
tion Act to award grants of up to
$15,000 to “help make up for the
loss” that some of the homeowners
will experience.
But even this grant would not be
enough to equalize the loss by some,
Setley said.
“Many of them will never lie able
to afford houses as big as the ones
they’re leaving,” he said.
The Texas Legislature created a
Subsidence District, the first in the
state, for Harris and Galveston coun
ties. The district is limiting the
number of water wells and the
amount of water pumped. Heavy in
dustrial water users have been told
to start switching to surface water.
A series of canals has been con
structed by an Industrial Water Au
thority to bring surface water to in
dustries along the Houston Ship
Channel from reservoirs to the
north.
These efforts may head off subsi
dence in the future but they will
have no effect on areas already
flooded because of sinking land.
Scientists who have studied the
problem said even if all water pump
ing was halted, it would
for subsidence to stop.
Experts also say therewd L Despi
> > i ™tientwa!
‘rebound of the sunkenli
feel that once water is dn received
between the sands of the H
Clays, it probably won’trett
ily, even if the sands of th
are naturally recharged.
buy up the Brownwood!
under study by federal
may be presented to Congn
this year. But before any
taken, the plan faces long®
hearings and study.
“Nothing may come ofitu
year or later, ” said one
aide.
Until then, lights willburAy
summer nights in BrowmBk / /Tf'
more than 100 familiesVI ^
“Every time a ship goetl A
sends a wall of water
yard, Mrs Appelt said, » ities hop
I lay in bed at night andfe L jven a v
she says. “After a ship goes a fea
hear that water come up § ienza n( ..
seawall and into the yard. “ffyvaeHn
“It keeps getting cloM in t h re e
closer.
“I can
the Bra2
consistet
he is abl
For IS
Bryan, h
icapped
occupatii
ogy and
vided by
Under
tient’s hi
hearing a
and orde
not help
“Most people keep things ready to
move away from rising water during
the summer,’’ said Mrs. Doc
George, a neighbor of the Appelts.
“It’s an everyday threat and you
worry about getting a warning. I
know some who have heard too late
and were trapped. They had to
spend the night in their attics.”
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