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That sinking feeling: while government geologists argue over subsidence and sediment loading, the rest of us are wondering: is the Gulf Coast toast?

Article Excerpt
If I interpret it correctly, a controversial July 2004 report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) predicts that Galveston Island will be a memory by the time my great-great-great grandchildren are born. Or maybe it's their great-great-great grandchildren. We're speaking here in geological time, and in an arcane, apocalyptic language that is mostly gibberish to laypeople like me. According to one of the report's co-authors, Louisiana State University geologist Roy Dokka, southern Louisiana is sinking into the Gulf of Mexico at a rate of five feet a century, and the upper coast of Texas can't be far behind. The good news is that some scientists in other government agencies think Dokka is full of beans. The bad news is that nobody really knows for certain, and even if they did, there's very little we can do about it.

Nearly everyone agrees that our coasts are vanishing, that sea levels are rising, and that the earth is warming. The question is why. Clearly, the coastal problem is not as bad in Texas as it is in Louisiana, which lost more than four thousand square kilometers of coast during the twentieth century. New Orleans is almost under water already. But so are parts of Houston after a good rain; there are places where the surface level is eight to ten feet lower than it was in 1930. In the community of Surfside, in Brazoria County, you can drive along the beaches and see waves lapping around the pilings of cottages that once stood hundreds of feet from the shoreline. In the village of Treasure Island, just across the San Luis Pass bridge from Galveston Island, homes built fifty yards from the shore in the seventies now stand...

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