READERS CHIME IN ON PROPOSED BOCA CHICA/SPI TUNNEL & FINANCING

Dallas Morning News

Frequently, our readers make for sense than the public officials dealing with issues like the proposed tunnel connecting Boca Chica Beach with South Padre Island:

It doesn't matter who pays for a tunnel or a road, it is a very bad idea. 

Where on Boca Chica will the entrance/exit be? 

And it won't be a simple tunnel mouth. It will have to be above the high water line to avoid flooding and that means it will have to rise way above the surface of the sand. 

And, since the beach is not always passable, are they going to maintain a road on it somehow or just plow through the dunes or the wild lands behind the dunes? 

By the way, the dunes and the property behind the dunes are, with the exception of some scattered private holdings, USFW protected lands. 

And it won't be much of a benefit to the people of Brownsville, the traditional users of Boca Chica Beach. It will add miles and an hour or more to a trip to the beach when we have to drive to the Island, some days fighting the holiday traffic we go to Boca Chica to avoid.

Build a road. 

Another great bad idea. Build it where?Through the USFW refuge property? 

Along the ship channel, mowing down mangroves and impeding the flow of water into the tidal flats?

I think it likely the county will bend over for Musk and SpaceX and give him as much of the beach as is in their power to give as they have in the past. 

These foolish sons of bitches are going to take away one of the reasons people live in .

Another reader, particularly in the last half of his comment, deals with prospective financing for the proposed tunnel:

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin is suing NASA because they gave SpaceX a 2.9 billion dollar contract.

Jeff Bezos personal worth is 189 billion. He could today, sell Amazon stock to fund the entire 2.9 billion himself, volunteer to cooperate with NASA to develop the alternate lunar lander as a team with vast goodwill to explore space together, rather than sue for them for access to taxpayers' dollars.

I hope Musk doesn't behave the same way with the boring hole. If he wants it, build it, demonstrate it. Don't hassle one of the poorest counties in the country to pony up tax dollars scraped from the few successful people here, when Musk is himself a billionaire.

I hope these men show some understanding of the relative poverty of the rest of the world, and even our government agencies, compared to their own vast wealth.