Texas' Beaches Are Disappearing, Leaving a Wake of Worthless Waterfront Houses

People need to accept that coastlines are fluid in nature, they have always been in, and will always be in a constant state of flux.

Haven’t you heard the old saying don’t build your house on the sand? Soft ground is completely unpredictable, and you shouldn’t act like this is something surprising.

This is exactly the cost of living by an ocean. In nature's game, the ocean always wins.

Taking out the mangroves and sea grasses was the first mistake made. Building houses on the coast was the next one.

Reminds me of a story I once read about a guy in California. He lived 3 or 4 houses from the ocean near a cliff/beach. About every decade a house would dissappear due to erosion. With every disappearing house he got that much closer to a scenic Ocean View. The closer his house got the ocean the more valuable his house became. He sold a few years after the house across the street collapsed.

A very long time ago my grandfather built a shack in surfside on the beach. Had no foundation and was pretty much just a roof and walls. It was just a nice shack. could sleep up to 12 people and was great to just get away from the city and spend some time fishing on the gulf. We had large family get-togethers every year to either fix it up or rebuild where it was because it had washed away. which happened a few times. But it was always just bare minimums on everything. nothing fancy. When the family wasn't there, we really ddn't care who used it. It was pretty much a throw away temp house.. Eventually, a relative from Florida bought the property and built a big house. Like the shack, it got washed away and so did a very large section of the beach. That property is now hundreds of feet out in the gulf.

In an up side, when someone with an inland house decides to put it up for sale they can boast "soon to be waterfront "

All beaches are going to change. Can't stop mother nature.

Something Florida does is they collect used concrete culverts that have been donated, then they lease a barge and push it 1-1.5 miles off shore and dump them. This creates a man made reef to help against currents that causes erosion. On top of that, they have people go out and attach plants to bring fish in closer to the coast. Pretty smart of you ask me, I’d like to see that in Texas

Most of these are secondary homes and many owners wouldn’t mind having a storm wipe the slate clean so they and their insurance can build a new sandcastle. Beach replenishment isn’t a bad idea, but they need sandbars, dunes, and vegetation.

I think a lot of people missed the point. It's the dam's that reduce the amount of sediment going into the Gulf. This sediment continually supplies the beach with clastics to even out the effects of erosion. Hurricanes can erode large amounts of beach away as well.

If flooding is so common in an area that you need to build your house on stilts, that is nature's way of telling you not to live in that area.

This is the continued idiocy of building on the shoreline and closely thereof. Even after Hurricane Sandy here on the East coast in 2012 the answer was to raise the homes where the first floor was approximately 10-12 ft above ground level. The continued thirst by municipalities for tax revenue seems to trump all.

Shorelines and river paths aren’t permanent, never have been. People think if they build stuff on the edge that it’s permanent. Problem is that Mother Nature didn’t get the memo.

Thanks so much. Born in Galveston in 1943, I love this and all of your very informative videos.

This has happening from the time the first beach house was built there in the 50s and 60s, it's not something new.

I can't imagine why anyone would want to vacation there. It looks stark.

Do what we do in Melbourne, Australia. We use sand pumps to suck up sand that was dragged into the deep by waves and pump it back to shore. You can't stop nature from caving in beach sand but you can reclaim it with sand pumps. Try it and within weeks you will have a luscious beach. Don't be disappointed about it. It's the way nature works, it's the way the sea claims land, drags it to the bottom and finds itself inland in the form of gulfs and other shapes, including gouging into rocks to form caves and blowholes. If you like the area and like the beach, then get the sand pumps and get to work.

I visited freeport and Galveston and drove by surfside in 2019. I loved all the different colored houses. Also the flood insurance is astronomical.

Surfside beach, TX is my beach, and I love it here. 🥰