Dolly just the ticket for Bahia Grande

Thanks to Hurricane Dolly, the Bahia Grande got a shot in the arm with a massive infusion of fresh water.

It came just in time.

"It definitely helped because it decreased the salinity levels," said John Wallace, manager of Laguna Atascosa National Wildlife Refuge. The Bahia Grande is part of Laguna Atascosa.

The Bahia Grande is between Port Isabel and Brownsville north of State Highway 48.

Seventy-nine federal, state and local agencies, along with private individuals, took part in the Bahia Grande restoration.

"This time of the year, you usually have high salinity levels and limited organisms in the water," Wallace said.

"Also, the area south of Highway 100 is flooded and will probably stay flooded for the next four to six months," he added. "It will be great for shorebirds, including curlews feeding on fiddler crabs."

Counting the adjacent Laguna Largo and Little Laguna Madre, 10,000 acres of the basin are now under water, which is close to capacity.

Exactly how much water the Bahia Grande received is not known, but "to the naked eye, it's substantial," Wallace said. "Most of the flat areas now have water.

"At this time of the year, it's usually dry with high temperatures and prevailing coastal winds," Wallace said. "Salinity levels, especially at the northern end, were increasing to the point where marine life can't live there.

"The marine life had to move closer to the tidal inflow from the pilot channel," he said.

The influx of new fresh water should make the Bahia Grande a stopping-off place for migrating ducks and shorebirds this fall.

"I guess you could say Hurricane Dolly was good for wildlife but bad for people," Wallace said.

The process of reflooding the Bahia Grande began five years ago when it appeared Tropical Storm Erika might hit the Rio Grande Valley, bringing water with it to refill the dry bay.

In an effort to beat the storm's arrival, the last few yards of dirt separating the Bahia Grande from the Brownsville Ship Channel about 600 yards to the south were removed.

Erika eventually made landfall in northeastern Tamaulipas.

Wallace said the pilot channel, which is 50 to 60 feet wide, will eventually be replaced by a 200-foot main channel.

With the exception of rainfall, the Bahia Grande can only be filled by the tide's ebb and flow via the Brownsville Ship Channel through the pilot channel.

"I'm anticipating the main channel being constructed in 2009 along the same alignment as the pilot channel," the refuge manager said.