DAPHNE, Ala.—A form of fun for some is causing erosion of stream banks and sedimentation in many Eastern Shore tributaries to Mobile Bay—and law enforcement officers said they will take steps to stop trespassing and property damage.

Ashley Campbell, the city’s site containment inspector, said that people on four-wheelers have followed trails onto oftentimes private property and caused damage to soil and vegetation—leading to erosion and its subsequent issues.

“Sometimes it takes one or two brakes in a critical area to cause the project’s failing,” she said. “Water’s hard to control. There’s enough pressure for it to function on its own, without any outside forces like four-wheelers.”

Campbell said the city has had particular problems in the D’Olive Creek area—under U.S. Interstate 10, also accessible from Douglas Road off U.S. Highway 90—and it plans to start enforcing no-trespassing areas.

The D’Olive Watershed Management Plan team—including the cities of Daphne and Spanish Fort, Baldwin County, Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, AT&T, Malbis Properties, and Lake Forest Home Owners Association, among others—has collected data for the D’Olive and Tiawassee watersheds; it’s nearly completed work on D’Olive Creek and plans to design other sedimentation-control projects and to carry them out when funding is available, Campbell said.

Four-wheeler trespasses in D’Olive Creek could damage the work already done to that area including erosion-control blankets, rock-stream beds and stump burial, she said.

“The stream’s in pretty good shape (now), but the types of soils are highly erodible in this area,” she said.

She will provide a list of known four-wheeler trails to the Daphne Police Department, which will take the lead from there, Campbell said.

Capt. Danny Bell will lead the project’s enforcement. “We’ll be looking for, citing and possibly arresting trespassers,” he said.

Campbell said the joint effort will succeed because, “we know where they (four-wheelers) go and we’ll be having more surveillance in this area.”

“We may even video it,” she said. “Whatever it takes is what we’re probably going to do—and that means arrest people.”

She said trespassers often litter in addition to tearing up soil and plants. “They have come out and thrown beer bottles,” she said.

With many people working to stop sedimentation, Campbell hopes four-wheeler drivers won’t destroy their efforts, she said.

“With the amount of water coming out of the four culverts (at D’Olive Creek), we had to use riprap to push the water to the center,” she said. Riprap is a wall of unorganized stones often used on an enbankment slope to prevent erosion.

Chris Metcalf, an environmental scientist with Coastal Hydrology, designed and helped construct the erosion-control plan for D’Olive Creek.

“We used a natural channel design approach along with vegetation management,” he said. “We used erosion control blankets to promote grass growth.”

Campbell said that four-wheelers, rapidly decreasing permeable surfaces, and other side effects of urban sprawl cause a chain of erosion-related issues.