land that been missing from the horizon off Fort Morgan for

generations, reappeared last month after the Mobile District of the

U.S. Army Corps of Engineers completed a $6 million restoration

effort. Now, the 138-year-old landmark lighthouse that anchors the

island – for decades left teetering on its stone foundation

surrounded by a small rock pile – is buffered by nearly 1.4 million

it seemed to come out of nowhere,” said Capt. Hal Pierce, who as a

founder of the Alabama Lighthouse Association presented the

restoration project to the Coastal Recovery Commission after the BP

oil spill last year. “The Corps came in and made it

projects for the Corps for 31 years, credited Congress for a $6

million supplemental appropriation to mitigate impacts from the

oil. The money was used to pay for dredging which relocated the

sand from a “beneficial use area” to the shallows surrounding the

on the bottom of the Gulf and if that were true, this would help

keep it from moving into sensitive areas and estuaries,” Rees said.

She explained that Mobile Bay’s natural flow rate would prevent any

oil from moving up the deep pass, but nothing was in place to

prevent it from creeping up the western flank, where there are no

bid to determine how many cubic yards of material we could place,”

20, workers with Great Lakes Dredge and Dock Company created a

teardrop shaped island estimated to be 2,500-2,700 feet long and

300 feet wide, tapering to 50 feet at its western end. The

"FONT-SIZE: 11pt">Jim Hall, a Dauphin Island resident who convinced

the city to take ownership of the lighthouse after looking for a

permanent caretaker for years, expects the island’s restoration to

lead to a greater focus on the long-term maintenance and

legacy and there are really no really landmarks left from that era

except the two lighthouses (there is also Middle Bay Light, circa

1885),” Hall said. “I can tell you being a boat captain, whether

there is a beacon atop a lighthouse or not, when you come in at

exhausted with the dredging, and there really are no expectations

as to how long the sand will stay put. There are no current plans

to reinforce the sand with native vegetation or outlying wave

"FONT-SIZE: 11pt">“Likely it will not stay there forever,” Rees

said. “It depends on how many storms we have, but just as before,

restoration projects off the Mississippi coast, also hoped the

project would spur interest in funding a permanent restoration