CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — While residents are preparing for what is to remain an active tropical season, some Island homeowners are still dealing with damage from Tropical Storm Alberto.
The Property Owners Association has started the clean up process which includes clearing the path of the bulkheads so that the reconstruction work can begin, and performing their own technical risk assessment, which could involve reevaluating the canals as a whole.
"We anticipate the need to slow or stop the flow of water to do evaluations and/or repairs," POA Treasurer George Reed said. "We don't in any way shape or form advocate that we're going to stop water flowing in the canals. Quite the opposite, we want to facilitate that process."
Reed said planning for the canal reassessment has been ongoing, long before Tropical Storm Alberto arrived. In the process of calculating the right materials to fix the repairs, the drive for change turned up a notch as the overall solution involves the entire community.
"So long-term, we're going to be looking at things collectively rather than just on a crisis or emergency basis so that we can proactively go in and shore up the canals and do what we need to in preparation for future circumstances," he said.
A full timeline of completed repairs is not available at the moment as the issue at hand is much larger than just a homeowner's nightmare.
"We need to make sure that we evaluate this correctly," Reed said. "There are going to be, for a lack of a better term, pinch-points or areas in the canal that would be more subject to damage from water movement or erosion."
The POA acting president, Jefferey Rackley, told 3NEWS throughout this process, every homeowner is being prioritized.
"We're concerned about the homeowners and we're doing everything that we can, there's a process that we have to go through to make sure that everything falls into play," Rackley said.