This is an interesting idea: a Lone Star Coastal National Recreation Area centered on Galveston Bay. A report hits all the right notes. Federal designation of a national recreation area will attract visitors, boost business, and create jobs - tripling visitors in its first ten years, $192 million in sales, and over 5,000 jobs. The initiative's leaders include a local Anheuser-Busch distributor and James A. Baker III, hardly granola-eating hippies. Participation is entirely voluntary, with land being acquired only from willing sellers and not through condemnation.
There's an even more interesting subtext lurking. The idea for a Lone Star Coastal National Recreation Area arose in 2008 after Hurricane Ike devastated much of the Texas Gulf Coast, but inflicted less damage on parts of the region that were protected by undeveloped lands. And damage to the Galveston region is likely to recur in the future. In short, rather than label this a managed retreat from the sea, it's being labeled a national recreation area.
If coastal damage to Galveston Bay sounds familiar, it may be because of the September 2008 Hurricane Ike, one of the most costly hurricanes to make landfall in the United States. Or it may be because of the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality's clear cut unadulterated censorship of a Rice University professor's report on the impact of sea level rise on Galveston Bay. (A compromise was reached in December.) Galveston Bay is flat. A 2009 Environmental Defense Fund report on socio-economic impact of sea level rise in Galveston Bay (PDF) found that an optimistic 0.69 meter (about 2 feet) sea level rise will displace 78% of Galveston County's households, and a pessimistic 1.5 meter (about 5 feet) sea level rise will displace 93% of the county's households.
Again, for emphasis: between 78% and 93% of all households in Galveston County will be gone by 2100 thanks to sea level rise.
And that doesn't account for hurricane damage.
The initial study area for the Lone Star Coastal National Recreation Area covers about 700,000 acres of tidal marshland and adjacent brackish wetlands and coastal prairie along with more than 350,000 acres of bay and estuarine area. The Lone Star Coastal National Recreation Area would "serve as a vehicle for coordinated and focused development that could turn the upper Texas Gulf coast into a premier outdoor recreation destination," note its backers. They see opportunities for birding, hunting, fishing, crabbing and oystering, kayaking, and the like. National Recreation Areas are Congressionally-designated areas, usually emphasizing water recreation, with some flexibility in management by federal, state, or local agencies. A designation could, in fact, boost tourism, local businesses, and jobs. The Houston Chronicle editorial board supports the designation.
A National Recreation Area designation is also a clever effort to make lemonade out of the sea level rise that will hit Galveston County and nearby wetlands.