November Commerce Club Luncheon Featuring Colonel Rhett Blackmon, USACE Galveston District

The Greater Houston Port Bureau welcomed Colonel Rhett Blackmon, commander and district engineer, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (“USACE”), Galveston District as guest speaker at our Commerce Club luncheon on Nov. 14, 2024.

“It's certainly an exciting time to be on the Texas Gulf Coast. The nation has pivoted from an importer to an exporter of energy - and we’ve had significant storms,” said Blackmon. “Ike followed by Harvey, which raised the awareness of our need for improved flood risk mitigation. Those two things combined really created a lot of work and has made it an exciting time to be here.”

The Galveston District is one of seven USACE districts in the U.S. and is an area of responsibility that spans the Texas Coast from Louisiana to Mexico, encompassing 50,000 square miles. As the commander and district engineer, the colonel is charged with executing the Galveston District’s mission of providing public engineering services to strengthen security along the Texas Coast, energizing the local economy, and reducing risks from disasters. 

Blackmon’s presentation reviewed the core missions of USACE - navigation, flood risk management, coastal storm risk (“CSR”) management, regulatory, ecosystem restoration, emergency management and response, and interagency support - and discussed how these missions were playing out in Texas and the port region.

He noted that the Galveston District has had numerous dredging projects the channels in their district. To execute these dredging objects, USACE has between 650 and 700 federal placement areas for dredge material. He said dredge projects around docks are areas where many attendees at the Commerce Club interact with USACE.

“If you have a big project that you're doing, reach out to us and do a pre-application meeting, so our chief of regulatory can talk with you about what you will need and help set expectations,” said Blackmon. “It makes us more ‘user-friendly’ and be a focused organization for you.”

As part of the presentation, Blackmon showed a map of CSR projects on the Texas Coast. Project are the Orange County (“S2G”), Freeport, Port Arthur and Texas City projects, the McFaddin Salt Bayou Dune/Beach Stabilization, the Jefferson County Ecosystem Restoration Study, and the Coastal Texas Study.

Of particular interest to the port region is the Coastal Texas project that includes the proposed Bolivar Roads Gates system for storm surge protection. He explained that Coastal Texas and S2G do support each other but are not “hydraulically linked”. S2G will protect the communities it’s S2G intended to protect, with or without Coastal Texas and vice versa. The projects complement each other in terms of providing protection to the upper Texas coast.

The CSR projects are focused on managing threats largely from storm surge, rather than rainfall or wind. Neither are they linked to the category of a storm. Hurricane Ike, a category 2 storm, pushed in from 15 to 20 feet of storm surge, extending 15 miles upward into Chambers County and did about $29.5 million in damage, in addition to its environmental impacts.

“The Gulf Coast Protection District does a phenomenal job of helping explain the national significance of the Texas Coast,” Blackmon stated while stressing the significance nationally of the Texas coast. “When the federal government has to answer as to why the taxpayer in Iowa should fund this project on the Texas coast, the GCP really helps tell that tale.”

He discussed various aspects of the proposed Bolivar Roads Gates System as well as other components of the feasibility study, including the Galveston ring barrier and ecosystem restoration.

 “We talk to folks, and we learn things … We will stay engaged with you and our partners to make the project right.”

Thank you to our Commerce Club sponsors! 

Annual Table sponsors: 

Callan Marine • Chevron/Kirby • Enterprise Products Partners • Kinder Morgan • Houston Pilots • Intercontinental Terminals Company • Moran Shipping Agencies, Inc. • Pemex  •  Shell • Targa Resources • TGS Ceder Port Industrial Park  • WGMA 

November Table sponsors: 

Great Lakes Dredge & Dock Co.• Houston Mooring Company • LBC Tank Terminals • McCarthy Building Companies, Inc. • Port Houston