SPANISH FORT, Ala. — One year after the unveiling of a Comprehensive Watershed Management Plan for Baldwin County’s wide-reaching D’Olive Watershed, proponents have found a starting point and potential funding to jumpstart stabilization and restoration efforts.

Roberta Swann, director of the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, said one of the plan’s first recommendations was to bring together an integrated task force representing the interests of Spanish Fort, Daphne, Baldwin County, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the estuary program.

The D’Olive Watershed encompasses some 7,700 acres.

The Alabama Department of Transportation’s road widening project along U.S. Highway 31, however, has helped bring those representatives as well as residents of Spanish Fort’s Westminster Village to the table much more quickly than expected.

“It was very fortuitous for us that ALDOT began these improvements on 31, which crosses Joe’s Branch. It presented an opportunity for us to focus specifically on Joe’s Branch and leverage the ALDOT interest and road construction,” Swann said.

The comprehensive watershed management plan, penned by Thompson Engineering, outlines detailed strategies for addressing sedimentation, creek bank erosion, flooding and other issues associated with land-use changes and development in the Daphne, Spanish Fort and Malbis communities as well as unincorporated areas of Baldwin County.

Specifically, that means forces eroding the watersheds of D’Olive Creek, Tiawassee Creek and Joe’s Branch must be addressed.

The immediate plan, Swann said, is to apply for ADEM grant funding via a U.S. Environmental Protection Agency mechanism by mid-July.

“It’s our way of seeking out assistance from state of Alabama and addressing some of the degradation staring us right in the face. Clearly, we understand we need to do a better job of managing the watershed and that it’s going to take some pretty major restoration efforts to get things stabilized, but as they say, the journey of a 1,000 miles begins with a single step,” she said.

Focusing on Joe’s Branch makes sense, Swann said, because the problem is just “not something I ever expected to see.”

“We are facing severe mass wasting. The volume of stormwater and velocity running through that area of Joe’s Branch is just deepening, and there’s a real concern it’s going to compromise the road bed,” she said.

The erosion is carrying sediment further downstream and filling in wetlands, causing a compounding effect, she said.

“The volume and velocity comes rushing through, the headwaters pick up speed and deposit the sediment, it fills in the wetlands downstream, and it’s our goal to manage that volume and velocity in a natural way,” Swann said.

“It’s a question of how can we naturally design a stormwater-management measure to help slow the velocity and allow some of that volume to infiltrate the ground.”