FAIRHOPE, Ala.- The city received a $500,000 grant this week to fund a second line of oil spill protection defense in addition to existing booms already in place along Fairhope’s shoreline from south of town to north of Fly Creek.

“I wanted to have some other strategy ready to collect the oil if it gets on the other side of the boom,” Mayor Tim Kant said Thursday. “It’s been shown that the booms might stop maybe 25 to 50 percent of the oil, but once it gets on the other side, it’s just wide open to the beach and wetlands. That’s what I’ve been concerned about.”

Funded by money given to the state of Alabama by BP and distributed at the county level, the grant will be used for two contingency plans to back up existing booms.

The plans will include shallow-water skimming and a beach and shoreline cleaning operation, said Assistant Public Works Director Ken Eslava, who is the city’s incident commander for oil spill response.

“These contingency plans, of course, will be engaged by our contractor and are in addition to the response by BP and their subcontractors,” Eslava said Thursday. “The response plans (for skimming and beach cleaning) are (each) valued at $250,000 per function for a total of $500,000.”

Baldwin County has received a total of $50 million in state grants funded by BP, of which $4 million remained until this week when that amount was distributed at a Tuesday meeting of county and city representatives in Robertsdale.

In addition to Fairhope’s grant, the following amounts were distributed from those remaining funds for local oil spill response efforts, Eslava said: Baldwin County, $850,000; Orange Beach, $755,838; Magnolia Springs, $498,000; Daphne, $465,000; Perdido Beach, $442,115; Foley, $252,025; and Gulf Shores, $237,022.

The current grant is the second major funding received for oil protection efforts in Fairhope. An earlier grant of $650,000 was used to install the first line of booms along the shoreline.

Those booms were installed by Pittman Tractor Co., which is owned by state Rep. Trip Pittman, R-Montrose, pursuant to a no-bid contract awarded unanimously by the City Council at a special meeting on June 4. The council declared an emergency at that meeting, which allows for the award of such contracts without the usual competitive bidding process.

“I don’t believe it’s going to him this time,” said Kant, referring to Pittman’s company and work to be done under the contingency plans funded this week. “We will probably be buying the materials directly and working with the Vessels of Opportunity that are around here now and our own fisherman out of Fly Creek. There’s also the possibility that we might be hiring some additional people or using our volunteer firemen that are certified to be able to do that. If we have to bid out services, we will be able to do that.”

The contingency plans funded this week were described in an application submitted by Eslava in June to the Baldwin County Emergency Management Agency, which sought $1.3 million for the project, of which $500,000 was funded by the state grant and received by the city Tuesday.

“The shallow water skimming operations would encompass our contractor utilizing a small, shallow draft skimmer in waters less than four to five feet deep, working between our containment boom and the shorelines, in an effort to prevent oil (and oil sheen) from actually making it to shore,” Eslava wrote. “We have over 150 piers in our area, all of which would be very difficult for a larger vessel to maneuver in between.”

For the beach and shoreline cleaning operations, a contract tractor pulling a sifting mechanism would be the method of choice, Eslava wrote.

“Our contractor will deploy additional absorbent booms in shallow waters of one to two feet deep by hand and staked out and absorbent pads as required between this absorbent boom and the shorelines,” according to the grant application. “Absorbent booms in shallows of this type are very mobile and can be shifted by hand in accordance with the shifting threat of oil.”

The beach cleaning contingency plan will also include a significant degree of hand cleaning of the shoreline using the traditional shovel-and-bag method, according to the application.

“This will be a labor intensive effort whereby haz-mat trained volunteer firemen will lead cleanup crews working the shorelines between piers and boathouses in order to capture the bulk of the beached oil,” Eslava wrote.