Some of the 42 acres of land just purchased for development by Avera Companies are shown here from above, east across the Ship Channel from the San Jacinto Battleground (that’s the bottom half of the star-topped obelisk visible toward the top left).  The property is on a peninsula of land about 2 miles downstream from the I-10 bridge and the San Jacinto Waste Pits. The eastern terminal of the Lynchburg Ferry can be seen here at the end of Independence Highway, with the Lynchburg reservoir lying  to the north.
The company says Kirby Inland Marine is set to be the first tenant for the property, and will use a section of the property to let up to 76 barges tie up and hang out as necessary. Kirby just agreed last month to a $4.9-million settlement with the Department of Justice over its role in that March 2014 barge-meets-carrier oil spill that shut down the Port for a few days and spread oil along roughly 160 miles of Texas coast between Galveston Bay and Padre Island National Seashore. (Kirby Offshore Marine, another of the corporation’s subdivisions, is currently dealing with fallout from last week’s tugboat-meets-shore fuel spill off the coast of British Columbia.)
Here’s a view of the rest of the property, showing a bit of Burnet Bay on the left and the San Jacinto River upstream toward I-10 on the right:
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- Avera Cos. Buys Site on Houston Ship Channel [Houston Chronicle]
- Kirby Inland Marine to Pay $4.9 Million in Civil Penalties and Provide Fleet-Wide Improvements to Resolve U.S. Claims for Houston Ship Channel Oil Spill [Department of Justice]
Photos: United Aerial
I know that Galveston Bay is the economic engine of the Houston area but it’s fun to ponder what 42 prime bayside acres could be other than a barge staging area, or what the bay woulda/coulda been had oil not be discovered nearby. Coulda been San Francisco, got Can Cerisco.
Joe: I think a lot more would have to have been different than just not having oil…the climate and the scenery being the main things. Also, the depth of the bay matters: I go sailing sometimes, and while the whole Galveston Bay complex has the third largest concentration of boats in the country behind Newport and San Diego (or so I was told), it will never be the rich people’s playground that those other two places are because the bay in general is never deeper than 10-12 feet, severely limiting the draft (and thus size) of boats.