Effects of Adding Barge Lanes Along Houston Ship Channel Through Galveston Bay, Texas

The U.S. Army Engineer District, Galveston, is making an environmental assessment of the addition of barge lanes along the Houston Ship Channel through Galveston Bay. The proposed barge lanes are to allow barge traffic to safely coexist with the deep-draft navigation. In support of this assessment, the Galveston District requested that the Galveston Bay numerical model developed by the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center, Coastal and Hydraulics Laboratory, be used to predict the month-average salinity changes that will occur in Galveston Bay resulting from the addition of the proposed barge lanes. This report presents the results of that numerical model investigation