FEMA Gives $18.1 Million For Texas Beach Cleanup After Ike

"FEMA is strongly committed to helping Texans get their state cleaned up in the wake of Hurricane Ike," said Federal Coordinating Officer Brad Harris. "Public Assistance grants of this nature demonstrate that commitment."

Hurricane Ike was the third most destructive hurricane ever to make landfall in the United States. Ike made U.S. landfall at Galveston, Texas early in the morning of September 13, 2008 as a Category 2 hurricane with winds of 110 miles per hour.

Preliminary post-storm damage estimates in the U.S. were placed at $18 billion. Eighty-two deaths were reported in the United Ststes, including 48 in Texas and eight in Louisiana. Many homes were totally washed away by Ike's 20-foot storm surge.

Debris left on a Texas beach by Hurricane Ike (Photo Jocelyn Augustino courtesy FEMA)

FEMA has awarded two grants totaling $18,119,958 to pay costs associated with debris removal along public beaches and in waterways.

For the beach cleanup effort, the work is to include sand-sifting to separate sand from debris.

Beach quality sand was then to be returned to the coastline. Because these expenses were for debris removal, FEMA is reimbursing 100 percent of the total.

Once FEMA reimburses the state of Texas, further management of the funds, including disbursement to organizations performing the services, is the responsibility of the state.

The obligated funds are a portion of $826 million in total Public Assistance disaster funds sent to the state since September 2008.

"Getting debris cleaned up from our beaches and waterways has been a major undertaking," said State Coordinating Officer Joan Haun. "These federal funds are providing welcome support."

The state also got some help removing debris on the weekend after Earth Day. A total of 6,954 volunteers - including President George H. W. Bush, former Secretary of State James Baker III and Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson - picked up more than 212 tons of trash off of Texas beaches in the 23rd Annual Texas General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach Spring Cleanup.

On the Bolivar Peninsula, a narrow strip of land in Galveston County separating the eastern part of Galveston Bay from the Gulf of Mexico, the Texas General Land Office Adopt-A-Beach Program, the Bush Clinton Coastal Recovery Fund and the Points of Light Institute joined forces for the first time to bring national attention to the peninsula’s ongoing recovery from Hurricane Ike.

All along the Texas coast, volunteers combed the beaches for trash. Among other items, they found a live snake, a TV remote, an ice chest full of beer, a jockstrap, a pregnancy test, a mattress, a record player, a Dallas Cowboy pinky ring, a turquoise toilet, bottles from Rome and Germany, a cheese slicer and candy from Mexico and China.

Texas beaches continue to receive large amounts of marine debris due to a convergence of currents in the Gulf of Mexico. Since 1986, more than 382,000 Adopt-A-Beach volunteers have picked up more than 7,300 tons of this debris, some of it originating from as far away as South America.

Volunteers record data on the trash to learn more about the causes of marine debris and to help mitigate pollution along Texas’ 367 miles of coastline. The next coastwide cleanup will be the Fall Adopt-A-Beach effort scheduled for September 26, 2009.

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