Damaged canals, bulkhead failures and sinkholes that happened on North Padre Island during Tropical Storm Alberto have left homeowners seeking immediate action to repair the properties.
The damage is to waterfront lots that are built along the island’s canal system, where more than 30 miles of bulkheads, or straight concrete walls that extend from below the berm to above land elevation, are built to separate the land from the canals, functioning as a protective barrier to prevent land loss from erosion and currents and also maintain proper water depth.
Padre Island Property Owners Association member and island resident Dave Edgecomb, who has lived on a canal lot on Cutlass Avenue with his wife, Kim, for seven years, said the storm sent torrents of water rushing past their house last Wednesday, resulting in downed palm trees and a breached bulkhead that caused sand to pour out from under the house and pool.
“There was much more water flow than ever before,” he said. “We’ve found it’s pretty much scoured clean down to the dirt floor base of the bulkhead. The canal bottom used to be 5 feet deep. The scouring of that current that came by during the tropical storm and that comes by every day due to tidal flow has now scoured that depth to 10 feet, so now the wall has no dirt in front of it.”