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A Publication of Guidry News Service |
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A Publication of Guidry News Service |
Work on a portion of the Environmental Protection Agency's designated Tex Tin Superfund Site had another step completed when the contractor finished work on the construction of breakwaters designed to halt erosion along the Galveston Bay side of the former smelter site. The area, officially called Operable Unit No. 4, now holds a four-segment quarry rock breakwater nearly 6,000 feet long. Only one segment touches land, the other three segments are staggered to allow circulation of salt water into the area that will soon hold a 90 acre marsh according to plans laid out by Texas Parks and Wildlife. The proposed marsh, in part, will be built from excess material dredged from the Shoal Point container terminal construction. Lead agency on the marsh construction will be the Natural Resource Damage Assessment Trustees. The breakwaters are located just east of the shell islands that form the eastern boundary of Swan Lake. The northern three breakwaters extend in a single file, north to south, from an existing breakwater located on the northeast side of Swan Lake. The fourth breakwater, located south of these three, runs northeast to southwest and onto the land. The tops of the stone structures are about 3.5 feet above the waterline and are about 5 feet wide at the crown. The US Army Corps of Engineers, Galveston District, was charged by EPA with the project design and construction oversight. Pine Bluff Sand and Gravel, Pine Bluff, Arkansas was chosen as contractor for the work on the more than $2 million job. Original estimate for the construction work was close to $3 million. Thirty-four barge loads of rock were required to complete the stone breakwaters, coming via water from Arkansas to the site in 6-barge tows. The Tex Tin smelter, located in the cities of La Marque and Texas City, Texas near the intersection of FM 519 and State Highway 146, was built by the government as a World War II emergency tin supply plant and operated until a government contract from 1941 to 1956 as the Tin Processing Corp. The facility sold to private industry in 1957 and was operated by a succession of companies until it ceased operation in 1991. On June 17, 1996, EPA proposed the site as a superfund site. The superfund site contains four operable units. No. 1, contains about 140 acres and is the former tin and copper smelting facility and includes four of the holding ponds to the south of the smelting facility. OU No. 2 contains 27 acres of the former smelter property that is owned by BP Amoco Corporation. OU No. 3 represents the La Marque residential areas northwest from the smelter facility. OU No. 4 is comprised of the Swan Lake ecosystem located between the hurricane levee and the shell barrier islands separating Swan Lake from Galveston Bay. Personnel from the Corps, EPA Region 6, Tin Tex Settling Defendants, Texas Parks and Wildlife, and Texas Government Land Office, and National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration toured the completed project by boat on January 27.
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