Sargent Beach Lessons Learned

Introduction and Study Overview

The Port of Bay City, Texas, asked the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to develop potential structural solutions to reduce erosion of critical beach baitat and to increase protection from tropical storms in Matagorda County. The two primary areas of concern are Sargent Beach and a 2-3 mile stretch of beach on Matagorda Peninsula located about a mile east of the Mouth of the Colorado River (MCR). This two-part study investigated the coastal processes of the region and introducted several structural alternatives to reduce erosion. Phase 1 of the study investigated the coastal processes and determined which structural solutions would be evaluated further in Phase 2. Figure 1 shows a map of the project area and region.

This study was presented in a series of technical reports. Phase 1 was published in 2012 while the Phase 2 report is available as a draft. Since this was a very in-depth study and included analysis with several models, the details of the study will not be presented here. Instead, basic details of the GenCade analysis will be shown. In addition, this study allowed the GenCade team learn several lessons related to the model and improve GenCade for future studies. These lessons are presented here to provide additional information for GenCade users.

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Figure 1. Define GenCade model executable