Dolly, the season’s first hurricane in the Gulf Coast, probably destroyed most of the cotton crop in the Rio Grande Valley.
Webb Wallace, executive director for the Cotton & Grain Producers of the Lower Rio Grande Valley in Harlingen, Texas, said his organization represents growers of 90,000 acres (36,422 hectares) of cotton. Texas is the biggest U.S. cotton-growing state.
Dolly spared most of the region’s oil and natural gas facilities, forcing less than 10 percent of the Gulf of Mexico’s 717 platforms to evacuate, said Bill Bryan, a deputy assistant secretary at the U.S. Department of Energy in Washington.
The White House declared south Texas a disaster area and promised federal help.
The storm, a Category 2 hurricane at landfall Wednesday, caused no fatalities in the U.S. and one in Mexico.
