Sprol

It’s weird, but in the midst of closing bases everywhere the city of Brownsville, Texas is getting a new reserve center. What is it about this place? Share your thoughts below.

Sprol Again: UPDATED with new images, this piece originally ran April 26th.

In addition to a operating a fleet of shrimp boats at the southernmost point of Texas, the Port of Brownsville, Texas has the distinction of being the terminus of the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway (GIWW). This is a fascinating construction that is amazing to follow from space.

This shipping lane is a 12 foot deep, 100-foot wide channel that cuts straight through the Laguna Madre of Texas, a large, shallow, hypersaline lagoon. It connects the ports of Mansfield, Harlingen, Port Isabel and Brownsville with points north, and must be dredged of the same sediment every year by the Army Corps of Engineers. This costs around $4 million or so a year, every year. According to the Texas Center for Policy Studies, this dredged material is then dumped into the open bay, which has been blamed for a 40% loss in seagrass beds, important for juvenile shrimp production.

The point of the continued dredging of the channel is economic prosperity. Yet in the last ten years most of the use of this port has been for shipping in inexpensive gasoline and petroleum by barge. The plan seems to be to build the refineries and power generating stations in Mexico, and then send the electricity and refined petroleum products back over the border. Outsourced pollution. Free trade.

In this image you can see downtown Brownsville including the airport and the current U.S. National Guard Armory, a 12,600 square foot facility on Porter Drive that was renovated in 2003.

Can you spot where Texas ends and Mexico begins?

It’s a bit easier in this image to see the difference between the U.S. and Mexico in terms of land use. Can you see the border now?