I used to go to the beach down that way (Freeport) at Surfside just to get away from all the people and rules at Galveston.
It was okay to have cars on the beach, camping and huge fires at night.(Well. back in the 70's-80's... don't know what it's like there now)
Surfside now requires parking/entry permits, unless you go further toward Galveston to Follet’s Beach. But then you start running into the thugs that have been run off of Galveston’s beaches. There is practically no beach in “old” Surfside....they had to put riprap on the seaward side of Beach Drive to slow erosion.
Quintans is almost gone thanks to LNG. Bryan beach has been annexed by Freeport, who thinks beach maintenance is to regularly scrape the beach; there’s no dunes left and if you’re lucky you can access the mouth of the New Brazos at an extremely low tide, but don’t stay too long.
I’m not personally familiar with the area, but the concentration of chemical and petro installations along the Houston ship channel is enormous. I used to sell equipment to Dow Chemical in Freeport and they bought a literal mountain of stuff from me. And they are only one (albeit a big one) of many, many petrochemical installations on the channel. I’m not familiar with the geographical distance between the ship channel and the “civilian” parts of the general area.