The Island Moon Published by Island Moon Publishing, LLC 15201 S. Padre Island Drive Ste. 250 Corpus Christi, TX. 78418 editor@islandmoon.com (361) 949-7700
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Island Moon The Island Newspaper
Island Area News ● Events ● Entertainment
November 30, 2011
Photo by By Miles Merwin
The Island where God lights up His parade with a full moon
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com
Glory hallelujah we had rain. Rain! Honest to Goodness water from the sky for almost an hour was followed by twenty four hours of howling wind that blew Ingleside clean over to Aransas Pass and has blown the Red Tide far enough out to sea that we can all go to the beach for a while without hacking and coughing. The great thing about Island cold fronts this time of year is that they aren’t really all that cold and they only last for a day or less. The wind also blew the second crop of Winter Texans down from the Cold North where they’ve had their first good blast of snow. Remember this Chamber of Commerce Weather next August when your teeth are sweating.
Inside the Moon... Port A Baby Named after the Moon!
page A 4
Next Publication Date: 12/14/2011
Packery Dredging Work has begun on the dredging of Packery Channel. The project will be the first major dredging of the channel since it opened in 2005. The work will remove sand deposited in the channel by Hurricane Ike a few years ago and the dredge sand will be pumped through these pipes to the south end of the Mike Ellis Beach and Seawall.
Thanksgiving at Bird Island basin
That’s a Great Pumkin!
Beach sign A new sign has sprung up on the Kleberg Beach. While the unclothed crowd has made that stretch of beach their playground this is the first time they have claimed permanent residence. Tis the season The Island Holiday Season is officially upon us with the starting of the La Posada Lighted Boat Parade season marked by the kicked party over at Scuttlebutts which was a smashing success. This was the first year for the party and it was a good one. Now of course it’s time for the
Page A 19 Local Music Scene
Page A 20
Around Continued on A6
It’s time to La Posada!
37th Annual La Posada Parade Set to Cast Off Under a Full Moon Friday, December 9, Saturday December 10
Nixon is done – start the parade!
History of La Posada Lighted Boat Parade By Dale Rankin This year’s La Posada Boat Parade marks the 37th anniversary of the event and last time we asked for input from those who took part in the early parades in order to piece together a history of the event going back to 1974. From what we heard and have found in the Comprehensive Island Moon Historical Archive – a cardboard box full of stuff we found in Mike’s storage unit – here’s what we know.
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Sand from the original dredging of the channel was used to expand the beach up to almost 400 feet out from the seawall. This $1.4 million project will move about 280 cubic feet of sand with dredging set to begin the next few weeks and continue through the first two months of 2012. The work is not expected to restrict access to the beach as the pipeline will be buried at points where it crosses vehicular paths. When finished the project will leave the channel at a depth of 14 feet from the mouth of the jetties to the basin near S.H. 361.
The parade was begun to commemorate the search by Mary and Joseph for lodging as described in the Gospel books of the Bible in 1974 when Father Patrici from Saint Andrew’s by the Sea blessed the boats as they set out History Continued on A4
For parade maps, registration forms, and everything you need to know about this year’s parade see pages A2 and A3 in this issue.
La Posada 2011 Ornament
Kim Parlasca and Tony Adams at the La Posada Kickoff Party at Scuttlebutt’s
It’s time to get out the Christmas lights, fuel up the boat, and make sure the Lower Unit is still working. The 37th version of the annual La Posada Lighted Boat Parade will take to the canals on Friday, December 9th, and Saturday December 10th.
The event is sponsored by Seashore Learning Academy and the conducted by the Padre Isles Yacht Club. The Friday parade makes its way around the canals on the North end of the Island, while the Saturday event, the larger of the two, travels the canals on the south end.
Organizers this year are setting up a location for spectators to watch the parade from their boats, and also emphasizing the locations where spectators can watch from the shoreline.
It is always a magical night on our Island and the occasion for an outbreak of deck parties.
Don’t Trash The Island
We’re Being Overrun with Plastic Bags, Glass Bottles, and Construction Waste It’s time to do something!
Tortuga Dunes
A Development Stuck in Time Is Waiting for the Market to Rebound By Dale Rankin
Four years ago Tortuga Dunes kicked off with a flurry. It was billed as a 146-acre development on the beach at the end of Zahn Road and in no time the dunes were being rebuilt, roads, drainage, and utilities put in. The developers, market was booming. Packery property tax revenue was Forestar Real Estate Group channel had just opened and estimated at $4.5 million paid for improvements to the things were moving. with the bulk of that, $10.6 road that included a brick million going to the Flour Tortuga Dunes would driveway, handicap ramps, Bluff ISD, $5.6 to the city of be a Mediterranean style and great sidewalks. Forestar Corpus Christi and $3.5 to development of 30 acres on was backed by Temple Inland Nueces County. It was exactly the 146-acre site with the which is a Fortune 400 what The Island needed, a remainder to be landscaped company in forestry, banks and forward thinking world-class around wetlands. The investments, and real estate development that preserved development would include development with hundreds the wetland and didn’t create 139 villa homes, 97 luxury of similar developments all controversy by asking for a townhomes and condos, a pool over the world. Tortuga Dunes semi-private beach. and clubhouse, and 37,000 was the first of the many But there were always square-feet of retail space developments that were sure to with a walkover to the beach. rumblings. Real Estate people follow in its wake. Completion was due in the did the math and couldn’t The money was there, the spring of 2009. figure out how the individual will was there, the knowhow residences could be sold at Once it was done the annual was there and the real estate competitive prices and allow the developers to make any money. The infrastructure would be too costly for the relatively few number of lots and residences to be sold. And what about flood insurance? Locals wondered out loud if anyone from the company had checked the crowd on the beach North of Zahn road during spring break and other busy holiday weekends. Would someone pay top dollar for the real estate adjacent to that free-for-all?
By Dale Rankin Let’s not beat around the bush here folks. Our Island is being trashed. The sad truth is that we’re all getting so used to it we don’t even really notice it anymore.
We have regular dump sites where truckloads of leftover building material and household garbage are being dumped on an ongoing basis. Drive to the end of almost any empty cul-de-sac on The Island and you will find the leavings of a weekend of beer cans, trash bags, and leftover carpet remnants, from some contractor’s remodeling job. The next time you’re driving down SPID take a look in the If you need any old carpet grass alongside the road and pick some up at the Household see the beer bottles and plastic Waste Dump Site at the end of bags that were thrown out of Windward Drive car windows or blown out the back of Island pickups that are now part of the permanent Island landscape. Some have been shredded by lawmowers as part of a Smaller Is Better Approach.
Now, a tour of the grounds shows excellent amenities, streets, lighting, full infrastructure including streets and drainage and utilities, and a nice walkover to the beach. But so far, no sales. A real estate agent from Austin checks the property once per month but otherwise the real estate office is locked up. She said that the development has been “put on Tortuga Continued on A6
The fisherpersons who ply the waters there say they try to pick up what they can but a close inspection shows household waste that has been dumped there for nearly a year is still there. They say if they Trash Cont. on A12
In the absence of code enforcement trash heaps multiply on the sand until they are scattered by the wind or become a permanent part of the landscape.
We see it so often we take it for granted. It’s terrible. For Household waste visible along years one of the first reactions SH 361 near Packery Channel we get from new Island The Island’s hotel district is residents is how much trash the backdrop for this trash there is scattered around on the heap visible from Whitecap on Island, then after a few months the way to the beach they get used to it and don’t notice it anymore.
The Aquarius Street Dump Site is home to piles of yard clippings
Then the real estate trouble hit.
A full array of finished streets, brick walking trails, drainage pipes, a walkover to the beach, and sewer pump station all built at the developer’s expense wait amongst the weeds for further development.
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Island birds fight over Island litter - you got to get there early if you want the good stuff
The entrace to Cane Harbor marked by a trash bag
The next time you are driving over the Packery Channel Bridge on SH 361 look at the western shore of Packery Channel where the fisherpersons line up. At first glance it looks like a flock of white geese have landed in the dunes but a closer inspection will show that the “geese” are really just a flock of windblown plastic bags that have taken up permanent residence there. Some of them have been there for more than a year but they just keep hanging on as a semi-permanent piece of the landscape as more and more of their friends show up. There was so much discarded fishing line along the Packery Shore that a man and his wife from Fort Worth drive down once each month to pick it up to keep it from killing wildlife.
This flock of Island Trash Bags has formed a permanent roost on the dunes just north of the SH 361 Bridge along Packery Channel
Sooner or later the trash ends up in storm drains where it washes into our canals