Never boring: Bayou to Bay:

Where is Your Watershed?

Last week, I participated in a new series of courses entitled "Headwaters to Baywaters," offered by Get Outdoors Houston! and the Environmental Educators Exchange.

I began my watershed journey Wednesday with a pontoon boat tour (with Buffalo
Bayou Partnership) along Buffalo Bayou, Houston's birthplace. We started at Allen's Landing. In 1836, the Allen brothers selected the convergence of Buffalo Bayou and White Oak Bayou as the site for a port that would become the new city's hub of activity and commerce (hence, Commerce Street and the Merchants and Manufacturers Building).

The brothers laid out the city on a grid, oriented not to a compass but instead aligned with the Bayou. Tidally influenced rather than rain dependent, Buffalo Bayou provided a depth of at least ten feet and included a natural turning basin where it joined White Oak Bayou. The thriving port offered a place to load cotton, rice, salt, molasses, lumber, and other Texas goods onto ships for transport.

From Allen's Landing, we travelled east to the Ship Channel, a widened and deepened section of Buffalo Bayou that links ocean-going vessels from Houston to the Gulf of Mexico via Galveston Bay. Now nicknamed "Bayou City," Houston was once referred to as "Drawbridge City." Beginning with an iron draw bridge in 1883, Houston eventually constructed a series of ten drawbridges over Buffalo Bayou between Main Street and the Turning Basin. The bridge shown above was built by Joseph Strauss, the engineer who would later design the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.

Buffalo Bayou is home to an impressive coastal ecosystem. However, our waterways must constantly battle floatable debris and non-point-source pollution. Last year, the Buffalo Bayou Partnership skimmer boat collected 3000 cubic yards of trash from the bayou. Trash that blows into streets washes into storm sewers, flows into our bayous, and floats out into the Bay. Any liquids (paint, oil, cleaners, etc.) dumped onto streets or parking lots or into the storm sewers also find their way into the Bay, untreated. Similarly, any pesticides and fertilizers we use on our lawns eventually washes off into the Bay.

We continued our watershed journey on Friday at Galveston Bay. We began by examining watershed maps to identify our individual watershed addresses. It may seem obvious that Houston's water ultimately drains into the Bay and that water from the five states bordering the Gulf finds its way into the Gulf of Mexico. However, the Gulf of Mexico watershed covers almost two million square miles. It is watershed for 31 states (including New York and Montana!) and 33 rivers. Most of the United States drains into the Gulf of Mexico.

Next, we headed outdoors with Artist Boat to investigate the Bay. We used a seining net to discover fish and invertebrate marine life that exists in the protected bay waters.

We performed a series of water quality tests, including temperature, salinity, turbidity, and pH. Then we hopped in kayaks and paddled into the estuary.