The Book of Texas Bays

1. Spirit of the Mud

3 My place, the Texas coast, is a plain that gently emerges from the Gulf of Mexico, a mud platform ascending slowly from the ocean’s grip. Rainwater joins with the mud and establishes the base of life on the coast. No rocks, no mountains—just mud and water. Over the years, I have developed a spiritual connection with the coast and I act to protect it. Place is where you are, your anthropological, ecological, and geological center. If we understand place, we are more likely to care for it. Place may be the most important concept in environmental protection today. I am an environmental lawyer , and my sense of connection to this coast has proven a driving force in my career. The muddy coastal plain is not obviously a world-class habitat or scenic splendor; yet the more closely I have looked, the more convinced I am. My aim in this book is to share what I have seen. The coastal plain was formed over the ages by the erosive action of rainfall working on the higher ground far to the west. The rivers that course through the plain—the Sabine, Neches, Trinity, and San Jacinto, the Brazos, San Bernard, Colorado , Lavaca, Guadalupe, Nueces, and the Rio Grande—have banks and beds that carry their normal flow. But these incised channels cannot contain the larger storms that overflow the banks and spread out into the secondary river channels, the floodplain. Over the centuries, these rivers have changed courses through the mud many times, leaving behind lakes and meander scars and depressions that dot the landscape, mute testament to the geological forces still shaping the coast. Our legal system pretends that the essence of these waterways is limited to their beds and banks, but the pretense is altogether misleading. Instead, part of the natural cycle of these rivers, creeks, and bayous is to flow over the adjacent land, often for days or weeks, leaving behind the sediment that elevates the land surface and provides the base for floodplain forests offering visual relief within the flat During the growing season, the lush green landscape of the Texas coast is revealed. The Spartina alterniflora marsh grass grows adjacent to the open water of the estuary, flanked on the landward side by the rice fields that dot the prairie from Sabine Lake to the Matagorda Bay system. Spirit of the Mud Spirit of the Mud 1 4 The Book of Texas Bays coastal plain. These same floods provide the topsoil that supports lush farmlands as well as native grasslands. We get rain on the Texas coastal plain—bucketfuls of rain. The moisture often comes in from the Gulf, the water evaporated by the sun, the river flow recycled. These rains are sometimes generated by the counterclockwise rotation of low-pressure systems that we name and fear: Allison, Beulah, Carla, Frances, Alicia , Claudette, Brett. The storm clouds unleash torrents of rain that reestablish our region’s water meadows and saturate the prairies and marshes and their water -loving plant life—lush, alive, literally teeming with primal energy. The Texas coast is a green place, full of plants and the habitat provided by these plants, forming distinct ecological systems. On the upper to mid-Texas coast, salt and brackish marshes are found adjacent to the bays. These marshes are filled with plants growing from two to five feet high and are wet almost year-round. They are flanked by prairie systems that are flat and hold large amounts of water in wet times, classic seasonal wetlands. Today, large areas of these prairies are farmed for rice and soybeans. Along the rivers, forested wetlands and floodplain forests grow in the lush topsoil deposited by the receding floods. The term wetland is a general term that includes several different systems . Marshes are tallgrass wetlands that are saturated year-round, and swamps are forested wetlands that are also saturated year-round. Additionally, there are numerous depressed areas all across the coastal plain, some adjacent to the rivers but most within the flat, poorly drained prairies. These depressions are sometimes called potholes, or flats, and they are usually flooded seasonally, as opposed to yearround . Together, all these areas are referred to as wetlands, and they are green and lush and productive. As one moves farther south on the coast, the rainfall diminishes, dropping from nearly sixty inches per year near the Louisiana border to less than twenty-six inches along the Mexican border. The lower coast is geologically...