DAPHNE, Ala. — During hard economic times, it may be easy to forget that erosion and sedimentation are working to change our area’s topography, thus harming infrastructure; destroying habitats, business and home sites; and killing wild life.

During a Watershed Management Plan meeting on Wednesday, Daphne and surrounding cities worked with county and state agencies, and with engineers and environmental organizations, to form a plan to detain, and ultimately retain, runoff in the D’Olive Watershed — 8,000 acres of waterways that run throughout Daphne, Fairhope and Spanish Fort and empty into Mobile Bay.

Glen Coffee, project manager with Thompson Engineering, explained the problems incurred with the planning.

“What we foresee, according to our fieldwork, is that most streams crossing under bridges aren’t named — so we’ve created a map for nomenclature,” he said.

The map contains letters that represent the bodies of water involved in each part: “D” stands for D’Olive; “T” for Tiawassee and; “J” for Joe’s Branch. The second letters represent tributaries to that body and, in some cases, third letters represent a second tributary that flows into the body.

After identifying all the parts, Thompson believes communication could begin more efficiently.

Workers assessed 25 locations and used stream walks and channel changes by bank sedimentation and riparian-zone vegetation alterations — the repair zone near the body of water where natural vegetation can help recovery from flooding, infiltrating the water or holding it for evaporation, he said.

Factors that effect surface runoff — and therefore, sedimentation — include rainfall, topography, surface soils and underlying geological materials and land use or land cover, he said.

See the rest of this story in the Dec. 12 Daphne Bulletin.