Houston Regional Group - News

Your Comments Needed On Grand Parkway, Segment B

Brandt Mannchen

The loop to nowhere, known formally as the Grand Parkway (GP), but known by nature lovers and fiscal conservatives as the Grand Porkway is rearing its ugly head in Brazoria and Galveston Counties. The Federal Highway Administration, Texas Department of Transportation, and the Grand Parkway Association are holding a public scoping meeting for Segment B on Thursday, September 12, 2002, 5-8 p.m., at Alvin Community College, Nolan Ryan Center, Room 109, 2925 South Bypass 35 in Alvin, Texas. The meeting will be informal with exhibits to view and comment forms to fill out.

Segment B would begin at State Highway 288, near Iowa Colony (Brazoria County Road 60), and would end between League City and Santa Fe, about 25 miles away. A four lane divided freeway would be built with additional lanes (2, 4, or more) added in the future. The overall cost for the entire 170 mile GP is estimated to be between $2-4 billion.

Segment B is rich in important wildlife areas, rural communities, and farmland. The communities of Iowa Colony, Alvin, Manvel, League City, Friendswood, Dickinson, Texas City, and Hitchcock will be most affected by the GP. The GP will create or encourage sprawl which increases road building and urbanization, heavy traffic, noise pollution, air pollution, light pollution, loss of rural community and atmosphere, flooding, water pollution, degradation of wildlife habitat, and destruction of farmland. There will be a severe loss of quiet, solitude, and the rural and farming way of life.

Important wildlife areas in Segment B include migratory bird and rookery habitat, native prairies, prairie potholes, wetlands, streams, bottomland hardwoods, and bays. Bottomland hardwoods and wetlands on Chocolate Bayou, the West Fork of Chocolate Bayou, Mustang Bayou, Halls Bayou, Chocolate Bay, and West Galveston Bay will be destroyed or degraded by filling, paving, run-off water pollution, sewage effluent, dredging, draining, and ditching.

Farmlands, several hundred acres of native (never rice farmed) prairie, and prairie pothole wetlands will be paved over or developed. By creating and encouraging sprawl development the GP will put more people and property in harm’s way during hurricanes. The use of the GP as a hurricane evacuation route will be hindered by flooding of the GP itself and the smaller roads that lead to the GP.

Here’s What You Can Do!!!

1) Come to the GP public scoping meeting on September 12, 2002 in Alvin.
2) Look at the exhibits and fill out a comment form using this fact sheet.
3) Write letters in opposition to Segment B to: Mr. David Gornet, Executive Director, The Grand Parkway Association, 4544 Post Oak Place, Suite 222, Houston, Texas 77027, Mr. James G. Darden, P.E., Texas Department of Transportation, P.O. Box 1386, Houston, Texas 77251-1386, and Mr. John R. Mack, District Engineer, Federal Highway Administration, Federal Building, Room 826, 300 8th Street, Austin, Texas 78701-2483.

For more information contact Peter Tyler at 713-861-2202 or Brandt Mannchen at H713-664-5962 or W713-640-4313.

October 2002

Last updated:  10/02/2005.   Content © 1999-2002 by the Sierra Club.