TEXAS CITY — It will be about a year before the Texas City Dike reopens after being badly damaged by Hurricane Ike.
That hasn’t stopped hundreds of people from venturing onto the closed 5-mile-long pier. Almost 400 have been issued tickets for doing so.
At $260 per violation, some complain the tickets are excessive, and at least one of the cited said he was ticketed for fishing in the waters near the dike and wasn’t on the world’s largest man-made fishing pier at all.
Others are fighting the misdemeanor citations and have even asked for juries of their peers to decide whether riding a bike or strolling along the dike should be illegal.
The city maintains the dike has to be off-limits because it’s dangerous.
“It’s not about keeping people away from having fun, it’s about public safety,” Texas City Police Department spokesman Sgt. Joe Stanton said.
Police usually beef up enforcement on the weekends when the crowds pick up, Stanton said.
The dike has been closed to the public since Ike washed away much of the road and wrecked its fishing piers and bait camps.
John Ringer is the latest to get a ticket for the offense of Intruding on Premises.
The 81-year-old Texas City resident said he rode his bicycle to the end of the dike Saturday. By the time he returned to the dike entrance, four police officers were waiting, he said.
Ringer said he knew it was against the rules to be on the dike, but with the pier closed, hundreds of cars of anglers who would normally be on the dike are now packed in along Skyline drive on the hurricane levee.
“I didn’t know I could cause so much trouble,” Ringer said. “But it wasn’t as dangerous riding my bike on the dike as it would have been on the levee.”
Ringer said three men who were crabbing in an area where the levee connects to the base of the dike also were ticketed.
According to municipal court records, six people were issued dike intrusion tickets Saturday.
The court even set up a special category of citations just to keep track of the violations at the dike.
Evangelos Koutougeras, of Pasadena, also was ticketed recently but claims he was never on the dike and that the officer who issued the citation called him over from nearby Mosquito Island.
“I took my kayak from the levee and went out to Mosquito Island and this cop he calls me over to the dike with his bullhorn,” Koutougeras said. “I had to walk in the water to meet the cop. He tells me ‘you are trespassing,’ I told him I wasn’t on the dike until he called me over.”
Koutougeras, 54, said he has been fishing in the area since 1992 and that while he doesn’t think the dike should be closed, insisted he never was on the dike when he launched his kayak for a day of fishing on Nov. 4.
Stanton said citations are supposed to be issued only to people who are on the dike and not in the water, on the levee or on sandbars such as Mosquito Island.
Koutougeras said he was so angry he threw all the fish he’d caught back in the water. He said would fight the ticket.
He won’t be alone when he goes to municipal court. Court supervisor Ellen Guerrant said about six people already have requested jury trials to fight their tickets, and one person who was cited had his case dismissed.
Others have been granted deferred adjudication by the judge, meaning as long as they keep their records clean for 90 days there won’t be a conviction on their record, although they had to pay a fine.
Ringer hadn’t decided whether he would fight the ticket or just pay the $260 fine.
“I don’t think it’s fair,” he said. “I knew I wasn’t supposed to be there, but I didn’t know they would give me a ticket for it. I think they should just give you a warning unless you keep going out there.”
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Dike trespassers
VIOLATION: Intrusion on Premises, Class C misdemeanor
