CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Coastal Bend and North Padre residents celebrated a major milestone for the Whitecap project Monday as developers unplugged and connected the Whitecap canals to the Gulf of Mexico.
According to Ashlar Development president Steve Yetts, it's been a long time coming.
"The [Don] Patricio Bridge and the connection of the existing canals on North Padre and the Gulf of Mexico has been in the works for 20 to 25 years," Yetts said.
He said over the last two to three years they have spent a large amount of time creating more than 60 acres of new canals.
"Yesterday, the contractors carefully started removing the 'earth in' plugs — lets call it the dams — in such a manner that it allowed the waters to merge together and rise together with the current, current that is out there," he said.
According to Yetts, they had to be careful not to cause damage when merging the two ends of the canals connected to salt water, one end being Lake Padre and the other Laguna Madre, because of their tidal flows.
"In the canals we built were full of fresh ground water, so when we pulled the plugs the saltwater and the ground water mixed," he said. "That's a slow process and probably still continuing right now."
As far as water quality is concerned, one of the goals of the interconnected canals is to allow for healthy water flow.
City engineer Jeff Edmonds said in addition to the Don Patricio Bridge, another bridge currently in the works is the Commodores Water Exchange Bridge.
"That bridge is being built by Whitecap and their support from the City through the Tax Increment Reinvestment Zone financing and that bridge has scour protection built into it," Edmonds said.
Yetts said the Commodores Bridge is expected to open up in a year and will connect the Laguna Madre to the Gulf through the Whitecap community.
"Which will enhance the water quality, the salt water quality and we think that will help tremendously with a lot of stagnant water issues that are out there right now with some of the canals," Yetts said.
He said the debris or foam is part of the flushing process which and normalize after time.
Also he says people are wasting no time and there were already people fishing.
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