I’ve canoed beneath freeway overpasses in Seattle’s Union Bay, but I somehow never undertook anything like this: San Antonio Express-News reporter Colin McDonald is kayaking the length of the Texas Gulf Coast, some 370 miles of alternating natural shoreline and industrialized landscape. He’s blogging about the journey at Uncharted Coast, so named because the constantly shifting line between land and water has frustrated map-makers for centuries.
Having so far avoided the barges and tanker ships that ply the coastal shipping lanes, McDonald documents the unholy mix of wildlife diversity and intensive industrial use. He encounters a lot of remaining damage from Hurricane Ike and chats up locals who regale him with tales of pirates (of the insurance company variety, but still).
It’s a nice bit of explanatory journalism that shows just how little separates resort-lined beaches from toxic sites like the McGinnes storage pits. McDonald also wrote an overview of the trip for the Express-News.
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ret0dd Posted 8:18 am
21 Jan 2009
Sadly, this is no longer the case. What's worse, the Bay Area/Houston ship channel (Galveston Bay, not the other Bay Area), with all it's petro-chemical plants and a huge population, is a catastrophe waiting to happen. It would make Bhopal look like a minor mishap.
Glad someone is shedding some light on what's going on there (and thanks to Grist for giving it some more exposure).
The face of a child can say it all, especially the mouth part of the face.
-Jack Handey
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