Defending Corpus Christi

摘要

By placing steel sheet-pile walls on either side of the seawall that protectl-lhe city of Corpus Christi, Texas, from hurricane-induced floods, engineers have preserved a piece of the city's past, enhanced life by the bay, and prepared the city for the floods of the future. The idea of constructing structures to prevent flooding in Corpus Christi, which is located in southern Texas on the Gulf of Mexico, dates back to a newspaper article in 1890, but as often happens it took a disaster to bring the idea into reality. Hundreds of people lost their lives in a hurricane in 1919, spurring the city to construct a system of breakwater structures (completed in 1925) and to hire the celebrated Mount Rushmore sculptor, Gutzon Borglum, to design a seawall in 1928. However, plans for the sea-wall were shelved because of a lack of funds until the 1930s, a decade that saw the development of many oil fields in southern Texas. Flush with new prosperity, the city issued bonds in 1938 and 1939 to finance the seawall construction. In an unusual arrangement even for those times, the state gave Corpus Christi its share of ad valorem (property) taxes from seven southern counties to help pay for construction, and the work began in 1939. The seawall was completed in 1941.