ORANGE BEACH, Ala. – Doug Bailey of

Hutchinson, Moore & Rauch Engineers in Daphne tried his best to

maintain his businesslike demeanor at a recent Orange Beach Council

meeting.

And for the most part, he succeeded.

He is the project engineer and consultant on

the State Road 161 Wetland Enhancement and Restoration Project that

is set to begin in the next six weeks or so.

That work will begin as soon as the city

acquires a recently purchased dump truck. The truck was purchased

with money from the sale of what was left of the large floating

boom system placed in Perdido Pass to keep oil out in the summer of

2010. The city received $143,000 from the sale.

“We can’t start digging and moving dirt until

we have our dump truck,” Kit Alexander, Orange Beach Director of

Engineering and Environmental services said.

Alexander brought up Bailey to give more

detail on the enhancement project.

“There will be two aerators in the larger

parts of the open waters that will add oxygen content to the

water,” Bailey said about midway through his presentation.

“Wait a minute,” Alexander interrupted. “You

gotta say there will be three purty fountains.”

Unflustered, Bailey charged forward with his

straightforward description.

“Two or three aerators and they will be

aerators, they’re not just flashy,” Bailey explained.

“And they’re going to have laaights,”

Alexander said, extending the last word with a pronounced Southern

drawl. A round of laughter followed.

Onward went Bailey.

“And they will be decorative,” the project

engineer continued. “It’ll look nice.”

The crux of the enhancement is to take what

has been somewhat of a problem area and turn it into an area that

improves the area aesthetically and environmentally. It is being

funded by a grant from the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program and

the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

“There’s a wetland area that occurs on the

east side of 161 and on the north side of Cotton Bayou Road, just a

little south of where that first wooden foot bridge is,” Bailey

said. “The wetlands that are there, you can see driving by. Every

time it rains there’s some water that ponds out there.”

Bailey said the plan is to remove some

invasive species of plants and trees from the area, make the

wetland deeper and put native plants back in the area. Those

plants, he said, will provide a better filter for the water before

it flows into Cotton Bayou.

“You don’t get a lot of treatment (of the

water) out of what’s out there now, there’s no continuation as far

as the water flow,” he said. “It pretty much goes through there and

if you go by there and stand at the ditch at Cotton Bayou Road,

that water’s constantly trickling through that pipe and straight

out to Cotton Bayou.”

The first part of the plan calls for digging

out the wetland to create a pond that will hold more water.

“The city is going to excavate out an area in

there, take out some of those popcorn trees, old pine stumps and

some debris that’s still in there,” Bailey said. “They’ll get that

stuff out of there and clean that area up and have a little

deep-water area in there which the water will be four or five feet

deep in the middle of it with some open water.”

The pond will be big enough to hold water in

case of a 10- to 25-year rain event and treat it naturally before

it flows into Cotton Bayou, Bailey said.

“It will aid in slowing that down and treat

that water before it goes into Cotton Bayou,” he said. “It’ll trap

some sediment and trap floating debris there, keep that out of the

pipe system and out of Cotton Bayou.”

Bailey said the wetland area will be increased

from about 22,000 square feet to almost 34,000. As the project

nears completion, volunteers may be sought to help plant indigenous

species around the edge. He hopes signs explaining the plantings

and describing the plant life can be included in the project.

“People walking up the sidewalk, they can kind

of see what those species are with some photographs, a plaque,

maybe something to tie into the Sea, Sand, Stars program,” Bailey

said. Sea, Sand, Stars is a nature center maintained at Orange

Beach Elementary School.

“We think it’s going to be a real nice

project. When you can take a project and do some improvement in an

area that’s a maintenance issue, you’re actually increasing the

amount of wetlands and you’re going to be increasing the quality of

water going into Cotton Bayou. It’s a no-brainer.”

And it will have “purty fountains.” With

“laaights.”