AUSTIN — John B. Anderson can offer at least one concrete solution to help fight rising sea levels along Texas’ Gulf coast. 

“There are significant sand resources on the Texas continental shelf,” the Rice University oceanography professor said. “The state of Texas should be in the business of buying dredges and going offshore, collecting sand and nourishing beaches.” 

But sand is just one of the resources Texas needs at the state level to change the fate of over two dozen coastal communities that are jeopardized by sea-level rise.

While a new report, “When Rising Seas Hit Home: Hard Choices Ahead for Hundreds of US Coastal Communities,” shows that Galveston is the biggest Texas city facing inundation, it’s hardly the only one that will be at least partly underwater by 2060, at least if the threat remains unchecked.

Published in the peer-reviewed journal Elementa, the authors call for “robust” state-level policies to meet the threats, but experts say that Texas has yet to adopt a response that’s equal to the problems.

“Not only are they not doing anything; I don’t think they accept that these things are happening,” Anderson said, referring to Texas lawmakers and bureaucrats. “There need to be more compressive efforts, perhaps modeled after the state of Louisiana’s.”

Not that Louisiana, whose coast line and problems differ from Texas’, has everything handled, Anderson said.

“They’re in the ICU and we’re in the waiting room,” Anderson said. “But we don’t know we have a problem.”

Galveston will be 90 percent submerged by 2100 under a one scenario, “in which emissions rise through the end of the century and ice sheets melt faster,” according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Massachusetts-based not-for-profit organization whose scientists, analysts and consultants wrote the report.

The Univeristy of Texas at Austin Energy Institute sounded a similar note in a 2013 report. 

“By 2100, much of the Texas coast likely will be under at least a foot of water, endangering not only the economic vitality of low-lying regions but also areas within reach of a storm surge,” according to UT’s report. “Other Gulf Coast states, notably Louisiana and Florida, have taken significant strides forward to study sea level rise and have begun to prepare for the inevitable. 

“Texas lags behind other states in these efforts and for the most part remains unprepared.”

The impact of even small sea-level increases: exacerbated coastal flooding; contaminated coastal freshwater supplies; shrinking barrier islands; eroded beaches; displaced marshes; magnified hurricane and tropical storm cost and impact.

Louisiana’s Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority is a division of the governor’s office that marshals experts from the Department of Natural Resources, Department of Transportation and Development and other state agencies.

Its mandate: developing, implementing and enforcing a comprehensive coastal protection and restoration master plan.

Louisiana’s CPRA also has a master plan with guidelines for oyster reefs, marsh creation and other projects, and it’s updated every five years. 

“Don’t be too hard on yourself,” said Chuck Perrodin, the Louisiana CPRA’s spokesman. “All these agencies were working on this piecemeal, not in a coordinated way.

“We did not have anything like this until (Hurricane) Katrina.”

Tracy Hester, a University of Houston Law Center environmental law professor, said while there’s “lots of focus on storm resilience,” Texas’ approach to dealing with rising sea-level is a “patchwork.”

“Most sea-level response planning has been done at the local level,” Hester said. “We are not as proactive as a lot of states; we are behind the curve.”

But while Texas doesn’t have a sea-level czar, Erika Spanger-Siegfried, a senior climate analyst who was one of the Union of Concerned Scientists experts who wrote the new report, said that cities can do can work on local solutions: paying attention to local zoning laws that govern coastal areas, for example.

Yet, given local limits on expertise and money, states have to play a key role. 

“It’s something that Texas would be wise to invest in, and something Texas could be forced to do in the not-too-distant future,” Spanger-Siegfried said.

John Austin covers the Texas Statehouse for CNHI’s newspapers and websites. Reach him at jaustin@cnhi.com.