The Bessie Heights marsh area outside of Bridge City will be getting designs and plans for restoration of grasses thanks to a competitive grant coming from the money connected to the British Petroleum oil spill. The Nelda Stark Unit of the Lower Neches Wildlife Management Area is one of three wetland projects under Texas Parks and Wildlife Department that will share $960,000. The unit has 7,998 acres in Orange County. The other projects will be the J.D. Murphree Wildlife Management Area of 25,000 acres in Jefferson County and a wetland in Galveston County.
The grants come through the Gulf State Gulf Coast Ecosystem Restoration Council established to award more than $1 billion in grants coming from fines BP is paying for the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010. The grants announced Friday are part of the first round of the awards.
Michael Rezsutek, the TP&WD project director for the upper coast wetlands, said restoring the grasses in the wetlands will help protect the area against hurricane storm surges. The wetlands are also considered the nursery of marine life, including shrimp and fish. Rezsutek said the plan is to build levees to hold fill for more grasses to grow. Streams and ponds will be designed into the plans.
“The whole design of the restoration work is not cheap and it makes getting more grants easier,” he said.
The Port of Orange has submitted grant requests totaling $17 million for marsh restoration in Orange County. Rezsutek said TP&WD has been working with the port.
In addition, cities in Orange County along with the Sabine River Authority and community water and improvement districts are applying to get $50 million in BP grants for a countywide sewer system. The system would help keep fecal coli form and other pollutants out of Adams and Cow bayous. Both flow into the Sabine River, which goes into Sabine Lake, a bay of the Gulf of Mexico. Orange County groups have joined together with leaders in Louisiana to form the Chenier Plain Alliance to collaborate on regional restoration projects using funding from the BP spill restoration.
The local entities have been using attorney Tim Richardson of Rockville, Maryland. Richardson specializes in coastal restoration and worked in Alaska after the Exxon Valdez spill. -Margaret Toal, KOGT-
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