Park Board Maintenance Department

Whether it’s a cold, rainy day in February or a steamy early morning in July early in the morning figures walk along the beach in front of a pickup’s lights. By 5am the west end crew of the Park Board Coastal Zone Management Department are already out handpicking trash left beachgoers or washed in with the tide. They find some large logs and cut them up and throw them into brush trucks to be removed. Two other crews work other parts of the beach simultaneously, and there will be another crew up on the seawall during the afternoon.

The Park Board Maintenance Department cleans the beaches of 15,000 tons of seaweed and debris each year. Other responsibilities include maintaining access ramps, assisting with special events, maintaining a garage and work area, servicing the beach parks, and helping the Lifeguards with the towers. All of this has to be in compliance with State, Federal, and Local regulations, so it’s a real balancing act.

One thing they deal with that touches a lot of lives is seaweed. Some people want it, some don’t, but everyone has a strong opinion! You’d be surprised how many people flag down the Beach Cleaning crews asking them to push seaweed in front of their property. Unfortunately, the Park Board isn’t allowed to single out individual property owners.

Seaweed can’t be removed from the beach because it has too much sand in it. Generally, the strategy is to run it through special machines that break it down and mix it with the sand. This works pretty well under normal conditions. But special challenges arise when seaweed comes in heavy, as it will do every few years. Every attempt is made to handle this in a way that doesn’t adversely affect residents or tourists.

I love seaweed for a number of reasons. One of these is that it’s a natural material that helps maintain our beaches and prevents or slows down erosion. But my favorite reason goes back to when my daughter was small. We’d take a bucket out to the beach in front of our house and shake seaweed into it to see all the cool animals in there. The coolest ones would make their way into our saltwater aquarium and we’d learn all about them. These seaweed mats form whole biospheres that support all kinds of creatures.

We’ve had a good run of relatively seaweed free years, but we know our luck won’t hold out indefinitely. In fact, it sounds like there may be thick mats of sargassum seaweed out in the Atlantic looking for a landing spot. If this happens here, we’ll be turning towards the already busy Coastal Zone Management Team to come to the rescue.

So much is done under the cover of darkness to make the beach run well, but Ninja like, the Beach Maintenance Crew slips away before we can thank them. They work hard and take a lot of pride in our beaches. Truly some of Galveston’s unsung heroes!