January 2, 2003

Fonteno Bayshore Park
 

A large bay front park has been proposed for the thousand-acre site at Bayport where the Port of Houston Authority hopes to build a major new container port, by several elected officials and others in the bay area. The group proposes to name the park in honor of former Harris County commissioner Jim Fonteno, who retired on January 1, 2003.

"This site at Bayport is the last large tract of natural terrain on the upper west side of Galveston Bay," said Mayor Robin Riley of Seabrook. "It does not take a lot of imagination to picture it as a park. A major new bay front park in southern Pasadena  would be an enormous asset to the people of Houston and other nearby cities as well as to Pasadena residents."

Part of the port's Bayport property extends into Seabrook, which already has a hike and bike trail system connecting several parks. 

"Three of our parks virtually adjoin the Port's Bayport land," said Riley. "Trails could easily be extended into it from our flagship Pine Gully Park, Robinson Park, and from the Seabrook Wildlife Refuge off Red Bluff Road."

Natalie Ong, mayor pro tem of neighboring El Lago, echoed Riley's view. 

"An enormous opportunity exists  at Bayport," Ong said. "In a bird's-eye view, it's the only large stretch of green along our shoreline of rapidly increasing development." The small city of El Lago has only a handful of unbuilt lots and can do little in direct support of countywide efforts to expand parkland or conserve coastal habitat.

Ong stresses that "our water views and nearby open space have a major bearing on quality of life in El Lago, which is why the city helped fund technical studies of the negative impacts of a container port."

In August, the Galveston Bay Conservation and Preservation Association made a formal submission to the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department regarding the park potential of the Bayport site. In response to the Department's draft Land and Water Resources Conservation Plan, GBCPA noted that creating a bay front park at Bayport would  simultaneously address several of the conservation and recreation objectives in the plan.

The nearly 1,100 acres in question consist primarily of coastal prairie with prairie pothole wetlands, "prairie pimple mound" complexes, and a few forested plots. 

"The land formations at this location are pristine, having never been plowed or leveled," stated a news release by proponents of the park.  "This type of habitat is exceedingly rare on the Texas coast. Less than 1 percent of original acreage remains, according to U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service comments to the Army Corps of Engineers earlier this year on the container port proposal."

"It is our belief that this parcel of land would be of far greater service to Texas as a park than as an expansion of the Port of Houston," said GBCPA in its August submission to Texas Parks and Wildlife. "Here we have a parcel of Native Prairie and Grassland habitat, which your plan singles out as high priority; located in the Gulf Coast Prairies and Marshes ecoregion, which your plan identifies as the highest priority for conservation." 

A park at this location would also meet recreational goals in the plan, being well within the desired range of 90 miles from a major metropolitan center.

"Consider what a wonderful legacy a Fonteno Bayshore Park would be for the future," said Natalie O'Neill, mayor of Taylor Lake Village.

"Vigorous citizen opposition to container port development at Bayport has focused attention on better alternative uses for the site," said O'Neill. "Improving public access to our bay and protecting our valuable wetlands is a vision worth pursuing."

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service evaluation of the Bayport property went beyond identifying the rarity of coastal prairie wetlands to express the view that "the wetland complex involved is of national significance." 

According to documentation developed by the Trust for Public Lands and released at the December meeting of resource agency personnel and others concerned with open space, Pasadena has within its boundaries some 4,000 acres of native prairie habitat. About a quarter of this is at Bayport, which has the additional advantages of bay access and a direct surface water connection to the bay via its tributary, Pine Gully.

The Great Texas Coastal Birding Trail--jointly developed by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, the Texas Department of Transportation, and local communities along the coast--has four sites in Seabrook. The City is developing an ecotourism program to make the most of its parks, trails, and variety of habitats and bird life. Its park system has begun hosting hiking groups, and its Ecotourism Committee has held two annual symposia on the long-term potential of nature tourism as a sustainable form of local economic development.

According GBCPA, creation of a state park at Bayport would meet TPWD's goal of coordinating with local governments "to improve public access to the outdoors and increase conservation of land and water statewide."

"Given that there exist alternative sites for the Port of Houston Authority's planned expansion, given that both state and federal agencies have agreed that the Bayport site is the most environmentally damaging of all the alternatives, and given that it is a stated strategy of the TPWD to support methods of port expansion that minimize impacts to marine resources, it is our contention that it is in the best interest of the people of Texas to conserve this land as a state park," concludes GBCPA's submission to TPWD.

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