WASHINGTON – With hurricane season right around the corner, Texas U.S. Sen. John Cornyn said Wednesday he is introducing legislation to expedite a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers study on a coastal barrier to mitigate storm damage along the Texas coast.

The measure, the Coastal Texas Protection Act, is directed at advancing the construction of a long-awaited "Ike Dike" or Coastal Spine – proposed after Hurricane Ike in 2008 – to better protect the Gulf Coast from storm damage.

"We've been working with local stakeholders as well as state officials to try to encourage this process to move along quickly," Cornyn said. "The Corps of Engineers is an instrumental part of this, and we want them to finish these studies and come up with a plan that the stakeholders and the state can agree upon, and then we will work hard to make sure that coastal protection plan is funded."

The proposed system of flood gates, dikes and sea walls has an estimated price tag of around $11 billion for the six-county coastal region surrounding Galveston and Houston. The project has taken on greater urgency since Hurricane Harvey hit the region with severe flooding last August.

Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican in the Senate, indicated that the measure would be included in a pending water resources bill. The state's junior senator, Republican Ted Cruz, is a cosponsor of the coastal protection bill.

It is at least the second move by Cornyn and other Texas lawmakers to move the project along. In 2016, Cornyn advanced legislation signed by then President Barack Obama to streamline the Army Corps engineering studies.

According to a Cornyn aide, the 2016 bill prevented the Corps from duplicating efforts by requiring them to take into account studies that had already been conducted by the Gulf Coast Community Protection and Recovery District (GCCPRD).

The new bill would direct the Corps to expedite the completion of the Coastal Texas Study. It also provides a necessary exception for the project under the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA). Currently, the CBRA restricts the expenditure of federal funds associated with coastal barriers to avoid encouraging development of such barriers.

"My hope is that the Texas Coastal Protection Act will soon be part of the law and help expedite the process," Cornyn said.