BRIDGE TO NOWHERE
SOMEWHERE ALONG THE ROAD FROM BROWNSVILLE to South Padre Island, at the southern tip of Texas’ Gulf Coast, things take a turn for the picturesque. Clues of the Port of Brownsville’s transportation industry—cranes, storage tanks, floodlights—vanish. To your left, the Bahia Grande, a 6,500-acre tidal basin, yawns into the distance. To your right, a swath of salt-tolerant black mangrove recedes toward the ship channel, sheltering nesting birds and filtering water. Tricolor squadrons of blue herons, great white egrets, and roseate spoonbills stalk their prey as enormous brown pelicans battle through heavy currents overhead. Somewhere, a rare ocelot lurks in a patch of thornscrub.
This is a land of exceptions. The Bahia Grande forms the heart of one of the largest wetland-restoration projects in U.S. history; just 15 years ago, the basin was a desert, cut off from Gulf waters by the construction of the ship channel in the 1930s. One of only two ocelot populations left in America—about 60 of the endangered cats remain nationwide—clings to survival in the surrounding refuge. East, past a string of small coastal communities, lies the Laguna Madre, one of only a handful of lagoons in the world that’s saltier than the ocean, supporting unique wildlife and seagrasses. Across a causeway over the lagoon is South Padre, a tourist town at the tip of the longest barrier island in the world, home to some ofthe best beaches in Texas. In all, the area is among the state’s last coastline unspoiled by murky water and views riddled with smokestacks, refineries, and offshore rigs. All that, however, is likely to change.
Beginning just across the highway from the Bahia Grande and extending nearly to the town of Port Isabel, a trio of fossil fuel companies is planning an industrial complex the likes of which Texas’ Rio Grande Valley has never seen. The scheme calls for the destruction of some 2,300 acres of wetland, thornscrub, and thickly vegetated clay hills, known as lomas, distinct to the area. A long-held dream of connecting Texas’ ocelots to their brethren in Tamaulipas would likely be dashed.
The companies are planning to build liquefied
