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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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The
Island Moon The Island Newspaper since 1996
Island Area News ● Events ● Entertainment
August 30, 2012
The Island where more than half the fishermen think they’re above average Next Publication Date: 9/5/2012
Around The Island
By Dale Rankin editor@islandmoon.com
Hurricane Isaac has thrown itself at New Orleans and failed take out a single levee. It pushed a little water up on our beaches but that was about it. We got the outer cloud bands Tuesday night and some overcast that provided relief from the heat but no rain. The reaction here on our Island was pretty much that we would take 80 mph winds if we could get twenty inches of rain. We get winter cold fronts with higher wind than that on a regular basis.
The Island is filling up There are now somewhere around sixty houses under construction on The Island. You can tell there are a lot of construction guys running around by the number of hot dog weenies rolling around on those machines in the Stripes stores. Those things are getting rare as tourists after Labor Day on The Island and 24-ounce Roofer Beers are almost as scarce. The recent spate of home building was spurred by the low cost of vacant lots which could be had hereabouts for as low as $20,000 just a few months ago…but no more. Due to the demand lot prices are heading back up and at some point will likely work to slow down the home building spurt.
What’s In the Canal Water?
The latest was at the end of June and on July 5, 17 and 20 TCEQ issued Letters of NonCompliance to the City of Corpus Christi. According to test results released this week by TCEQ the latest test at the end of July found that the Enterococci level in the outflow was 271 times the maximum allowable levels. Engineers for the City of Corpus Christi have said fixing the problem will require a new $5 million ultraviolet light filter system but have set no date for its installation. But what do the accelerated levels of Enterococci coming out of the plant mean for water quality in Island canals? Dr. Russell Miget, with the Department of U.S. Fish and Wildlife Services at Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, has been sampling canal water every two weeks for the POA for over thirty years. However, he doesn’t test regularly for bacteria.
Can anyone help Hoja?
My name is Hoja and this is my story. (Part 3)
Well, as a matter of fact around here that’s not true. Our canals and waterways are in constant need of dredging and all that sand has to go somewhere and when it gets pumped up from the bottom…presto! New land!
Dredging Speaking of dredging the City Council on Tuesday approved $1.5 million to dredge Packery Channel next year. When the channel was opened about six years ago $4 million was set aside for what was expected to be a need to dredge the channel each year. But as it has turned out that hasn’t been necessary as the channel has actually widened and deepened due to a higher than expected water flow though it and there have been only two major dredging projects during that time. The last one, early this year, had to be cut short due to the beginning of turtle nesting season and left a plug of sand just inside the channel’s mouth. For reasons having to do with water flow across the channel opening it is unclear if it is best to leave some or even all of that sand in place and the studies to determine that are ongoing. But in case dredging is necessary the city set aside the $1.5 million from the money raised by the Island Tax Increment Finance District for that purpose.
PAC meetings Mark your calendar for the evenings of September 19th and 26th. Those are the nights that Islanders will gather to decide who to back in the city elections in November. The Island United Political Action Committee, made up of all of the registered voters on The Island caucus to vote on who they want to throw their support behind. The meeting on Wednesday, September 19 will be to choose candidates in the races for Mayor and for the seat for City Council District 4. The following Wednesday, September 26, it will be to decide on candidates in the race for three At-Large council seats. The site for the meeting has yet to be determined but we should know by the next issue. Around continued on page A5
High Tides from Hurricane Isaac Hit Local Beaches
On the last day of each month a city worker goes down to the Whitecap Water Treatment Plant and takes a sample of the outflow as it flows into the Island canals and the results of that sample are sent to the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality. Since 2009 that sample has been over the allowable limit for the bacteria Enterococci 21 times.
Canals continued on page A13
The next crunch may be a run on waterfront lots – “wetlots” in Island parlance – since there are now only about 200 of them left on The Island. One of the unique things about our Island is that we confound the old axiom in the real estate business, you know the one, where the “expert” throws his head back and stuffs his hands in his pockets and says, “You can’t go wrong buying real estate because they aren’t making any more land.”
Year 15, Issue 438
By Dale Rankin
“I used to test for it,” he said. “But never found any so the regulatory agencies stopped requiring tests for it in the late 1970s.”
Schlitterbahn Water Park in Galveston
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I’m sure that some of you remember me from last October 2011 and the things that I have been through during my short life of 3 years. For those of you who have never met me before on these pages I will tell you a little bit about my life to date. I was found last October under a tree dying from a head injury, multiple pregnancies, starvation, dehydration, internal organisms, heartworms, and red ants. I was not expected to live through the night when I was brought to the veterinarian hospital; and this is where I thought my problems would end; finally.
In a bad place Well to my surprise as well as too many others I made it through the night and for the next thirty days I lived at the hospital and slowly I began to heal. During that time the family that saved me worked very hard to think about what would be the best option for me and the remainder of my life. After much thought and research they decided that when I was strong enough to be moved that I should be placed at a pit bull refuge and training center. Here I could finish my recuperation in peace, the medical issues that I still had would be addressed, I could be with others much like myself, and I would receive care and training directly related to my breed and abuse. I would then be placed using a strict policy of research and proper matching. I was placed at a facility called Spindletop Pit bull Refuge in Willis, Texas.
Spindlebottom If you have not heard the refuge was raided based on the information of former employees and their accounts of the cruelty that went on here towards the animals. Please look up Spindletop Refuge on your web pages and read the articles concerning the facility. I and 300 hundred other dogs were abused, mistreated, re-bred, medically deprived, and we were kept as prisoners in our own excrement in cages all the while that this organization was lying to the people who really cared for us. Many of the Hoja continued on page A10
Hurricane Isaac may have hit 550 miles away from us but it still brought high tides to Island beaches. The storm hit just four days before the full moon when tides are normally the highest anyway. The water didn’t make it all the way to the dunes but was high enough that Padre Island National Seashore was closed to traffic. It also brought severe rip currents to our beaches resulting in one rescue on the beach north of Packery Channel on Tuesday.
Island United PAC
Volunteers Needed for ‘The Walk’ October 9th & 10th The Island United Political Committee needs 100 volunteers to step forward and offer their time to distribute Door Hangers to Island residents on October 9th and 10th. These door hangers, which the PAC have distributed before, will contain information about the Endorsed Candidates voted on by Island voters on September 19th and September 26th. The hangers will also contain relevant information about the voting and ballot process. Past distribution of door hangers have increased Island voter turnout at the polls. The combined November election is a new process in Corpus Christi and the ballot will be longer entailing the need to familiarize oneself prior to going into the voting booth. The PAC’s PAC continued on page A10
A little Island history
Raid on Progresso, South Texas is Depopulated, Don’t Mess with Old Man McAllen Editor’s note: This is the latest in a series of stories on the Border War which launched South Texas into the front lines of a conflict between the United States and Mexico in late 1915. By Dale Rankin By early September, 1915, there were more than 6000 U.S. Army troops stationed in the southern tip of Texas from Kingsville south. There was daily fire across the Rio Grande from both sides and the American general in charge of the Army was asking for another 2000 troops.
Americans looking for prescription drugs and cheap liquor – was attacked by a band of about 80 raiders who crossed from the Mexican side. Progresso then consisted of a combination Post Office/General Store guarded by a three-man outpost of the 12th Cavalry. An eight-mile stretch of the river above and below Progresso consisted of several resacas – bends in the river cut off when the Rio Grande shifted course which were covered with tall vegetation and were too swampy for the cavalry to ride horses across.
It was a very bad time to be an American of The eighty attackers Mexican decent in South were bent on fomenting Texas. Most of them an armed revolution loaded up their belongings called the Plan de and headed south to San Diego that would Logo of the McAllen Ranch Today Matamoros where they eventually overrun had been promised a Brownsville, Corpus pardon if they would cross the border before Christi, and Austin and return Texas to September 16 – Mexican Independence Mexico. The group consisted of guerrillas Day – and had been promised work at good wages. Many left crops in the field. It all left and Mexican Army Regulars who crossed Anglos in the area nervous that the members the river by boats in the pre-dawn hours and of the Mexican diaspora knew something looted the store and torched it. Two of the U.S. cavalrymen guarding the post managed they didn’t. it turned out they did. to escape but one, Private Richard j. Johnson, was captured and taken across the river. Raid on Progresso The firefight lasted two hours as American By the middle of the month the Border War reinforcements arrived and the raiders rewas letting up enough that photographers crossed the river under the cover of fire from for the Associated Press, the Chicago News 100 Mexican troops on the south riverbank. and the International News Service were The Mexicans fired more than 2000 rounds heading home. That was until September 24 when the town of Progresso on the American and the Americans 1000. One U.S. trooper side - now the favorite border crossing for History continued on page A2