Residents concerned about plan to commercialize Port Mansfield

PORT MANSFIELD, TEXAS (ValleyCentral) — On an overcast Tuesday afternoon in mid-February, as fishermen cast lines in the Laguna Madre, a series of barges floated past Port Mansfield.

The barges don’t stop in Port Mansfield, where most people are focused on fishing — not shipping.

“The water and the beauty of this place is addictive,” said Miller Bassler, 72, who started fishing in Port Mansfield during the 1990s and leases a home on the harbor. “And the peace and quiet is very much appreciated.”

Bassler and many other people in Port Mansfield, though, are concerned the Willacy County Navigation District plans to transform the quiet fishing town into a commercial port.

“It makes no sense,” Bassler said. “We just couldn’t see how it could happen.”

THE HISTORY

Charles R. Johnson, a real estate developer who served as mayor of Raymondville, pushed Willacy County to build Port Mansfield in the 1940s.

Voters backed the plan and created the Willacy County Navigation District, which borrowed money to build the port.

Port Mansfield opened in 1950.

Willacy County also borrowed money to cut a channel through Padre Island from the Laguna Madre to the Gulf of Mexico.

“Twenty-one major and independent oil companies, seismograph, and exploration companies originally endorsed the need for this channel to the gulf, and eight more have since secured oil leases on submerged land in the area,” Johnson said in a statement submitted to Congress in 1960 when he asked the federal government to maintain the channel and the harbor at Port Mansfield.

Questions about whether Willacy County needed a port dogged the project from the start.

In July 1965, the Wall Street Journal published a story about Port Mansfield with the headline: “Port Nowhere.”

“The little port, which has 200 residents, is surrounded by rough grazing land and some irrigated farms,” according to the article. “It has but a speck of locally produced commerce to export. Nor are there markets or manufacturing facilities anywhere near to consume or to process imported cargo.”

In an interview, Johnson defended the project and scolded his critics.

“These big ranchers and landowners who are against me live in their own little world. They don’t understand the operation or possibilities of a port,” Johnson told the Wall Street Journal. “One of these days, Port Mansfield will be recognized for what it is — the economic salvation of this area.”

THE PORT

Not much changed during the next six decades.

When oil companies started drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, a few setup shop in Port Mansfield. The small harbor supported a fleet of shrimp boats and the U.S. Coast Guard stationed ships in Port Mansfield.

“Then, when the oilfield left and the regulations got too strict for the shrimpers, all that kind of dried up,” said Port Director Ronald D. Mills, who runs the Willacy County Navigation District.

Even the Coast Guard packed up and headed to South Padre Island.

The navigation district, however, didn’t shut down. It kept running Port Mansfield and kept collecting property taxes.

People who own property in Willacy County pay the Navigation District 8.81 cents per $100 of a property’s valuation. That adds $88.10 to the annual tax bill for a home valued at $100,000.

“The people in Willacy County outside of Port Mansfield — for 70 years — have been paying taxes to have a commercial port,” Mills said. “And it’s never happened.”

Port Mansfield became a quiet fishing town instead.

The lack of commercial activity didn’t become a problem until 2008, according to Mills, when the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers shifted resources to Iraq and Afghanistan.

As part of the shift, the Army Corps of Engineers decided to stop dredging small ports.

“They created a mandate that says: If a port doesn’t produce a million tons of cargo per year, they don’t get federal support,” Mills said. “So, since 2008, there’s been very little dredging done in Port Mansfield.”

That created a major problem.

Without regular dredging, both the harbor and the man-made channel that separates Padre Island from South Padre Island would slowly fill with silt.

The Army Corps of Engineers conducted an emergency dredging project after Hurricane Harvey, Mills said, and returned in 2020 after Congress allocated $25 million for Port Mansfield.

In February 2021, as the dredging project wrapped up, an official from the Army Corps of Engineers met with Mills and the navigation district board.

“He told us to our face that under no circumstances were they ever going to dredge the port again if we squandered that $25 million,” Mill said, “and didn’t show any commercial development.”

Dredging the channel isn’t just important for Port Mansfield, said retired Texas Game Warden Capt. James Dunks. It allows the Laguna Madre to breathe.

“That is extremely important to the sustainability of our fishery down here,” Dunks said. “Without the freshwater inflow, our bay system would basically just deplete itself. Seagrasses would go. Shrimp would go.”

Dunks discussed the importance of dredging on Valentine’s Day when he attended the navigation district board meeting and signed up for public comment.

“If that requires any type of commercial activity, you know, you gotta give a little bit to take a little bit,” Dunks said. “We have to have the channel open. At all times.”

THE PROJECT

After meeting with the Army Corps of Engineers, the navigation district began searching for ways to commercialize Port Mansfield.

In December 2023, the navigation district board approved a 50-year “Marine Terminal Services Agreement” with North American Standards Inc.

“They were hired as a marine terminal operator,” Mills said. “All that means is: Their job is to make sure cargo moves through that port. And they’re going to hire all kinds of subcontractors to actually do the work.”

North American Standards was created in October 2019, according to documents filed with the Texas Secretary of State’s Office.

The company’s mailing address is a house north of San Carlos in Hidalgo County. Documents filed with the Secretary of State’s Office don’t list a phone number.

“They actually came in the door four years ago wanting to build houses,” Mills said.

When the navigation district started the search for commercial investment, North American Standards stuck around.

“So we gave them an opportunity to attend some training by an organization that does strategic planning,” Mills said. “They gave them a course on the fundamentals of how to run a marine operation.”

North American Standards also recruited new partners.

“One of their members is one of the biggest maritime logistics movers in Mexico,” Mills said. Another runs an engineering firm that handled a major arena, “most of the Walmarts in Mexico” and several malls.

“They’re not small potatoes,” Mills said. “They’re people who do large construction projects for a living.”

Under the agreement, North American Standards will pay $1,400 per month to rent about 3.4 acres of property in Port Mansfield.

The company is also required to pay the navigation district additional money based on the amount of cargo that passes through the port.

Mills said the company plans to bring cargo from Mexico to the United States on barges.

The barges would stop in Port Mansfield once or twice a week, Mills said, to unload 300 or more containers.

“I suspect it’ll be somewhere between, initially, 300 a week to — they may someday get up to 1,000 a week,” Mills said. “But that’s optimistic.”

THE COMMUNITY

News about the plan shocked many people who live in Port Mansfield.

“I started coming to Port Mansfield when I was probably 10 or 11 years old,” said Randy Case, 70, who retired and moved to Port Mansfield about nine years ago. “It’s always been a very special place for me and my family to come and fish and just enjoy the outdoors.”

Case said he’s concerned Port Mansfield’s infrastructure simply can’t handle commercial cargo.

Residents already contend with regular power outages, especially when it rains. State Highway 186, which connects Port Mansfield to Raymondville, is just a two-lane road. And the tiny town lacks a full-time fire department.

“Where’s the plans for the emergencies that are going to happen? We haven’t seen those either,” Case said. “There are a lot of unanswered questions. And there are a lot of concerns from the people here.”

Case shared his concerns with the navigation district board in December when he signed up for public comment.

“I watched the development of a container port destroy my childhood community,” Case said.

Case grew up in Shoreacres, Texas, a small town on Galveston Bay that’s located north of the Bayport Container Terminal.

Shoreacres wasn’t prepared and the city’s infrastructure couldn’t keep up.

“The thing I remember the most was the noise,” Case said. “The noise never stopped — 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Constant noise.”

Trucks polluted the air, Case said. Barges polluted the water.

“Bayport forever changed Galveston Bay,” Case said. “Boat ramps still have signs that tell you not to eat the fish that you catch.”

Neil Machen, 69, of Port Mansfield had similar concerns.

“I think this is still in the top 10 places to fish in the United States — Port Mansfield is,” Machen said. “And I’d like it to stay that way.”

Dolphins and manatees frequent the harbor, Machen said, and the navigation district should conduct an environmental assessment before allowing barges to stop in Port Mansfield.

“A manatee is an endangered species,” Machen said. “Every species of manatee is endangered.”

Mills, the port director, said the navigation district hadn’t conducted an environmental assessment on the potential impact of the barges.

“We did do a strategic study to see if it was feasible,” Mills said. “But as far as impact on the environment? No.”

THE PUSHBACK

As word about the project spread, people from Port Mansfield started making the 30-minute drive to Raymondville for navigation district board meetings.

Jack Ficklen, 69, a carpenter from Port Mansfield, frequently sits in the front row.

Ficklen began attending board meetings about 30 years ago when the navigation district condemned a piece of property that he owned.

“And I’ve been fighting with them ever since,” Ficklen said.

Ficklen said the navigation district had focused on residential development for years.

“They’ve promoted this place as a recreational destination and retirement area,” Ficklen said. “And I don’t think the people that live here want this.”

On Valentine’s Day, a standing-room-only crowd joined Ficklen in Raymondville for the board’s monthly meeting.

Patsy Nolte, a local real estate agent, signed up for public comment to warn the board that barge traffic would drive residents away.

“I’ve already had buyers come to look at Port Mansfield, find out about the potential of barge traffic here in this town and they say: ‘We’re out of here,’” Nolte said.

Port Mansfield residents are calling too, Nolte said, asking if they should sell.

Nolte urged the board to meet with Port Mansfield residents.

“Property owners are scared and they don’t know what to do,” Nolte said. “Because, I tell you what, if this does go through, our property values are going to hit rock bottom.”

Along with attending board meetings, residents started filing public information requests, investigating the navigation district’s business deals, and preparing for the next election.

“We vote these gentlemen and ladies into office. And we control policies in the end,” said Patrick Tyler, 72, a former correspondent for the New York Times who built a home in Port Mansfield in 2003. “And maybe we’ve gotten lazy. Maybe that’s our fault because we let this happen. But we can stop it.”