Houston Lighting & Power Company, The Port of Houston Authority, and the National Marine Fisheries Service jointly sponsored a Galveston Bay National Estuary Program Action Plan Demonstration Project to construct a 5-acre oyster reef in Galveston Bay utilizing 12,100 cubic yards of coal combustion byproduct pellets in the spring of 1993. The primary objective of the product was to demonstrate that a relatively large oyster reef constructed with coal combustion product in Galveston Bay could be both biologically successful and cost effective, relative to natural shell.