Opening Slates:
 
1) Due to Hurricane Ike
the beaches of Galveston, Texas
have been littered with debris
and suffered a large loss of sand.
 
2) The No. 1 tourist attraction
of Galveston is the beaches.

3) If the beaches are not restored,
it could devastate the local economy.

Transcript:
 
Lou Muller
 
The importance of re-nourishing the beaches on an emergency basis is two-fold. Number one, what we���re doing right now is to encourage tourism and revitalize, help to revitalize the island tourism base. The other aspect of the nourishment project we���re doing right now is to also protect the underside of the sea wall itself because the older section of the sea wall in Galveston was actually built on piled, timber piles.

We���ll actually be restoring probably two thirds of the beach area in front of the sea wall from Sixty-first Street back toward Tenth Street. It���s approximately four hundred thousand cubic yards of beach quality sand, and the sand is coming from the east end of the island where the beaches normally accrete and we are also dredging some of the sand at a borrow site just east of the ship channel jetty���s. And that sand is then being trucked to the area in front of the sea wall between Sixty-first and Tenth Streets.

In a recent economic impact study on tourism that the Park Board did, we have approximately five-million visitors to Galveston Island on an annual basis. The beaches are still the number one reason that people come to Galveston for tourism purposes. There are many other attractions on the island as well but the beaches are still number one.

It���s determined that the amount of money spent on beach re-nourishment will come back to the city four times. In other words, for every one-dollar spent on beach re-nourishment, four dollars comes back to the city in tourism. So it is very important for this project to be successful, to help get our tourism industry back up on the island.

Ending Slate:
 
1) For more information, visit:
www.fema.gov