tagged w/ Hurricane Dolly
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Thanks to Hurricane Dolly, the Bahia Grande got a shot in the arm with a massive infusion of fresh water.
It came just in time.
"It definitely helped because it decreased the salinity levels," said John Wallace, manager of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. The Bahia Grande is part of Laguna Atascosa.
The Bahia Grande is between Port Isabel and Brownsville north of State Highway 48.
Seventy-nine federal, state and local agencies, along with private individuals, took part in the Bahia Grande restoration.
"This time of the year, you usually have high salinity levels and limited organisms in the water," Wallace said.
"Also, the area south of Highway 100 is flooded and will probably stay flooded for the next four to six months," he added. "It will be great for shorebirds, including curlews feeding on fiddler crabs."
Counting the adjacent Laguna Largo and Little Laguna Madre, 10,000 acres of the basin are now under water, which is close to capacity.
Exactly how much water the Bahia Grande received is not known, but "to the naked eye, it's substantial," Wallace said. "Most of the flat areas now have water.
"At this time of the year, it's usually dry with high temperatures and prevailing coastal winds," Wallace said. "Salinity levels, especially at the northern end, were increasing to the point where marine life can't live there.
"The marine life had to move closer to the tidal inflow from the pilot channel," he said.
The influx of new fresh water should make the Bahia Grande a stopping-off place for migrating ducks and shorebirds this fall.
"I guess you could say Hurricane Dolly was good for wildlife but bad for people," Wallace said.
The process of reflooding the Bahia Grande began five years ago when it appeared Tropical Storm Erika might hit the Rio Grande Valley, bringing water with it to refill the dry bay.
In an effort to beat the storm's arrival, the last few yards of dirt separating the Bahia Grande from the Brownsville Ship Channel about 600 yards to the south were removed.
Erika eventually made landfall in northeastern Tamaulipas.
Wallace said the pilot channel, which is 50 to 60 feet wide, will eventually be replaced by a 200-foot main channel.
With the exception of rainfall, the Bahia Grande can only be filled by the tide's ebb and flow via the Brownsville Ship Channel through the pilot channel.
"I'm anticipating the main channel being constructed in 2009 along the same alignment as the pilot channel," the refuge manager said.Thanks to Hurricane Dolly, the Bahia Grande got a shot in the arm with a massive... more
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AxeRFJ
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added this
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3 years ago
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Action 4 Investigates: High energy billls
Many Rio Grande Valley residents were left in the dark for days by power failures attributed to Hurricane Dolly.
Two weeks have passed since the Category 2 storm tore through the area.
Many residents are beginning to receive their light bills.
The first thing many Action 4 News viewers noticed is that their July light bills were higher than June even thought they went days without power.
Action 4 News received a flood of e-mails and telephone calls from viwers complaining about their higher electric bills.
Harlingen resdient Diana Hale said she never thought her electric bill would be $532 after going days without light.
"I've never had to pay this much before," she said. "How am I going to do this right after the storm? We didn't even have power."
Hale called her retail energy provider Stream and learned that AEP had had estimated her home's energy consumption instead of taking a meter reading.
She requested to have someone come out to her home and manually read the meter but AEP asked her to do it over the phone instead.
That's when she discovered the company overestimated her energy use by 2,000 kilowatt hours -- energy she never used but worth hundreds of dollars.
.....more after the LINK!
Action 4 Investigates: High energy billls
Many Rio Grande Valley residents were... more
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AxeRFJ
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added this
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3 years ago
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South Texans wading through Hurricane Dolly floodwaters to salvage homes and belongings now have another problem: the floodwaters are laced with stinging fire ants, snakes and tarantulas.
Sweet baby Jesus and all the angels. As if flooding wasn't enough for these poor folk. The creepiest animals alive are now lurking in the murky depths? Eek.
"You don't want to wade in this water," said state Health Services Commissioner David Lakey. "You don't want to play in this water. You want to stay out of this water."
Good advice, burly, reassuring American. Take heed, Texans.
South Texans wading through Hurricane Dolly floodwaters to salvage homes and... more
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As Sen. John McCain continues to tout offshore drilling -- and others in Congress start to jump on the bandwagon -- he's found it necessary to downplay the threat of oil spills, even in the face of powerful hurricanes. There's something ironic, then, about Hurricane Dolly hitting this week.
McCain was scheduled to make another offshore drilling push at an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico today, but the Category 2 storm changed his plans. Dolly has forced energy companies to evacuate some oil rigs and cut oil and gas production in the Gulf by 4.7 percent.
In a recent speech, McCain said, "As for offshore drilling, it's safe enough these days that not even Hurricanes Katrina and Rita could cause significant spillage from the battered rigs off the coasts of New Orleans and Houston."
Unfortunately, that's not true. Hurricanes Katrina and Rita resulted in huge oil spills when 113 oil rigs were destroyed and 457 pipelines were damaged, according to government data. There were also smaller storms in 2005 that resulted in 146 small oil spills in federal waters.
For more on Hurricane Dolly's activity right now, Dot Earth has some good analysis and pictures.
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/As Sen. John McCain continues to tout offshore drilling -- and others in Congress... more
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Hurricane Dolly, which has been battering the Mexico-Texas border region, had another, non-weather related effect: providing cover for smugglers.
Police seized $8 million worth of marijuana, which was being moved inland under cover of the storm, at a Texas border patrol.
An official at customs and border protection reported that two other attempts at smuggling were discovered, where illegal immigrants were stopped from continuing in Texas.Hurricane Dolly, which has been battering the Mexico-Texas border region, had another,... more
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rwylie
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added this
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3 years ago
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