ROBERTSDALE – A $6.5-million project to improve water quality and reduce sediment problems in the lower Fish River area will begin this year, said Jason Kudulis, restoration project manager for the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program.

Kudulis told members of the Baldwin County Commission on Monday, Jan. 3, that the NEP has received $6.5 million from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation for projects in Baldwin County.

"The purpose of this is to improve water quality in the lower Fish River watershed," he said.

"There's a number of water quality problems. What we did is an exercise to sort through those to try to prioritize where we wanted to use this investment," he added.

About $2 million of the fund will be used for improvements on an unnamed tributary flowing into Fish River in Marlow near Baldwin County 9 and 32, Kudulis said. Bids are being prepared for that project and work is expected to be completed this spring, he said.

"You see that huge sediment bloom," Kudulis said. "Those poor folks have had to dredge that a few times, but even more so, that's putting sediment into Fish River that shouldn't be there at that level."

Studies of the sedimentation problems first looked at Fish River, but most of the material seems to be coming from the Magnolia River, he said.

"What we found was that none of those appear to be the actual cause of sediment and water quality issues downstream, so we expanded that umbrella to include the Magnolia River and that's where we're going to be focusing our efforts moving forward," Kudulis said.

The project will focus on three tributaries of the Magnolia River watershed. The tributaries include School House Branch, where the streambank will be stabilized to reduce erosion. Two other unnamed tributaries are also included in the plan.
Kudulis said the total cost of the project will be about $2 million more than the available funding. The $6.5 million will pay for the Marlow work and engineering on the Magnolia River project. He said the Mobile Bay NEP will seek more NFWF funding for the rest of the project.

He said the Mobile Bay NEP has been working for several years on stream restoration in other areas of Baldwin County, such as the D'Olive Creek watershed in the Daphne and Spanish Fort area. Those projects have reduced erosion and sedimentation problems and have held up to storms and other challenges since being completed.

"I can tell you that at least from our experience with the $15 million invested in D'Olive, we haven't had a failure that anyone else had to be responsible for," Kudulis said. "In the case of Marlow because of the sensitivity to the homes on both sides, we have over-engineered that and so we intended to use hardened structures throughout to restore that stream and make sure that it's able to handle what we're dealing with in Baldwin County climate-wise."