Randy(308) sent this update on Cedar Bayou from the Caller Times.

CORPUS CHRISTI — The effort to reopen Cedar Bayou received another funding boost this past week.
Texas Land Commissioner Jerry Patterson announced a $200,000 grant for the long awaited dredging project. This puts the total collected or pledged so far at $3.425 million for a project estimated to run about $7 million.
Hopefully the funding hurdle won't prove to be as difficult as the decade-long effort to secure a permit for the project from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That battle ended last summer. The permit comes with a five-year deadline for action. But Aransas County Judge Burt Mills said this deadline is easily extended.
At least with funding we're not seeking permission from a 500-pound bureaucratic gorilla with ever-changing federal requirements and an army of additional government agencies that imposed unreasonable and time-consuming constraints on what is clearly nothing more than an environmental restoration project.
This latest grant comes from the Coastal Management Program, which awards grants funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration aimed at enhancing or maintaining the environmental and economic health of the Texas coast.
Few dispute that a free-flowing Cedar Bayou, which historically has divided Matagorda and San Jose islands, would benefit the Aransas-Mesquite bay system, along with the economies of the Coastal Bend.
Unlike Packery Channel, this has nothing to do with beach resorts or boat access to the Gulf. Cedar Bayou is purely a fish pass that would benefit birds, anglers, recreational fishes, shrimpers and all manner of marine life that require gulf access for spawning.
And to document the impacts, biologists and students with the Fisheries and Ocean Health Lab at the Harte Research Institute for Gulf of Mexico Studies are conducting an extensive pre-opening study to determine what is there now, so this can be compared against conditions after the pass is dredged.
This kind of baseline study was conduced at Packery Channel. Greg Stunz, director of the Harte Institute's Sportfish Research Center, said the increased flow through Packery boosted nearby populations of redfish, flounder, pinfish, and blue crab. The benefits also affect shrimp and other forage species that go into creating a healthier and more robust ecosystem, Stunz said.
"I can't imagine how Cedar Bayou would be any different," he said. "This reopening has the potential to greatly elevate the fisheries production for the region."
For more than a decade, the push to reopen Cedar Bayou has been on the agenda of conservation groups, angler organizations, community leaders, politicians, business owners and objective observers who believe when water flows through Cedar Bayou good things happen for everything from whooping cranes to bait shops. A healthy estuary is the engine of a coastal economy that relies on nature tourism and fishing.
For those who believe the effort is useless or that the prospect of an open pass is hopeless, please consider this.
The main argument of naysayers involves the whims of nature opening and closing the pass throughout history.
They suggest nothing man could do, short of unreasonable effort or expense, could keep it open. Others say only a jettied pass would work. Still others have legitimate concerns about whether any canal design could harness the hydraulic muscle required to keep it open.
I do not dispute that Cedar Bayou's flow has been intermittent for centuries and certainly more closed or closing than open during recent decades. Nobody disputes that storm tides have served as nature's dredge over the years. But I believe much of the more recent blame for closures falls on man for diminishing flow between the Gulf of Mexico and the Aransas Bay complex.
Do not discount ongoing contributors to lagging water pressure created by the Intracoastal Waterway, other gulf passes and by reduced freshwater inflow from the damming of rivers and over-allocated water from the life-giving streams that feed the Aransas Bay complex.
And the flow was sharply hindered twice by man in recent history. Once in 1979, when the mouth of the pass was intentionally blocked to prevent an oil spill from entering the bays. And again in 1995 when most folks believe a slug of dredge spoils deposited near the mouth of nearby Vinson Slough weakened the hydrological punch needed to keep the pass flowing.
The hydraulics and dynamics of Cedar Bayou have not been the same since then. All of these factors have slowed the flow and contributed to silt settling in the pass.
This is an attempt to right a wrong.
The project's design, I'm told, addresses many of these concerns. I understand the outcome of a hypothetical model cannot be entirely predictable or certain. But there is one thing for sure. A lot more money has been spent on projects with more dubious merit. That's not my best argument, but it's true.
The project proposes to straighten and deepen Cedar Bayou roughly along its historic path and connect it with a deep channel from Vinson Slough, a nearby system of marshland and lesser waterways that once enhanced the pass' flow.
Dredge sand from the channel will be placed in a semicircle offshore to bolster a natural delta and to diffuse waves that tend to carry sand to the mouth of the pass. No jetty is planned.
According to Patterson, the grant application and design was evaluated by folks at the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality, the Railroad Commission of Texas, the Texas Department of Transportation, Texas Parks & Wildlife, the Texas Water Development Board, the Texas State Soil and Water Conservation Board, the Texas Sea Grant College Program and the Texas General Land Office.
So far, Aransas County has dedicated more than a million in grants and county funds to the project. Another $1.75 million will come from the county's restructuring of a general revenue bond. Judge Mills expect another $200,000 from the National Fish & Wildlife Foundation in March. And the Aransas County Commissioners Court has promised to dedicate $50,000 annually for maintenance of the channel.
Private donors have pitched in another $4,000, Mills said.
CCA-Texas has given $520,000, which includes $20,000 from the Babes on the Bay fishing tournament in Rockport. CCA has hired a fundraiser who has submitted $1.1 million in proposals. We should know something on those within two months, said Robby Byer, CCA-Texas executive director. Additional grant applications from CCA are in the works.