CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — A few city parks along Ocean Drive are falling into the bay after Hurricane Hanna and Tropical Storm Alberto helped accelerate erosion.
City officials say that Poenisch Park along Ocean Drive is the perfect example of some of the severe erosion seen at some of our parks along the shoreline; that's why they're wanting to spend more money to address the problem.
The City is hoping voters will be able to decide in November whether or not to allow seawall tax dollars to also be used for projects like one to save these city parks.
"It was good that we had an instrument like that put in place back in the day, but it's time to modernize it bring it up to 2024 standards and make it a little more flexible so we can access the funding needed to address you know drainage projects along the coastline to include our parks along Ocean Drive," Assistant City Manager Neiman Young said.
These parks are unique because they allow people access to the water, there's no seawall, but you can see over the years all kinds of materials were used to try and shore up the park land.
Deidre Williams with the Conrad Blucher Institute is consulting the City on coastal erosion and tells them what can to be done to save the parks.
“Each one of these locations that you're visiting today will have its own unique signature and its own unique character, some of those characteristics we want to maintain like the beach -- we want to maintain the beach -- but we want to try to do so while still protecting the bluff from the continued erosion," Williams said.
The final design for the parks will involve the Army Corps of Engineers and the General Land Office. The total price tag could be more than $100 million according to City Manager Peter Zanoni.