LA PORTE, Texas (AP) — An alliance of Southeast Texas government officials and business leaders on Wednesday embraced the idea of building a nearly 60-mile-long barrier of covered concrete dunes and water gates along the upper Texas coastline to ease damage from hurricane storm surges.

The Bay Area Coastal Protection Alliance said the levees and flood gates designed by a professor at Texas A&M University at Galveston — and dubbed the “Ike dike” — would be modeled after a successful similar project constructed about 25 years ago in The Netherlands.