ORANGE BEACH, Ala. — More than a year has passed since Orange Beach approved improving a wetland along Alabama 161 near Cotton Bayou, but still no work has been done.

In February of 2012 the State Road 161 Wetland Enhancement and Restoration Project was slated to begin within six weeks, but adhering to a redesign by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management kept the project from starting.

“The wetlands there is heavily inundated with like a torpedo grass, an invasive species,” Orange Beach Community Development Director Kit Alexander said. “What we wanted to do is go in and literally remove the wetlands and replant. We were going to create more wetlands and have a littoral shelf and have it more like an open water wetland area.”

The state suggested a different approach.

“They said instead of doing that they would approve us not excavating any of the existing wetlands and hitting it with an herbicide that would kill the invasives but leave the wetlands alone entirely,” Alexander said. “That required us to go back and redesign the whole grading of it. It turned out to be three surface bodies of water, but now it’s four with the wetlands kind of being in the center.

“We did have to go back and redesign it in light of ADEM’s concerns about that.”

The first delay back in the spring of 2012 was waiting on a new dump truck to arrive. Orange Beach sold a large boom that was placed in Perdido Pass to keep out oil during the 2010 oil spill and took the money, about $143,000, to buy a new dump truck.

By the time the dump truck arrived, the ADEM still hadn’t OK’d the plans drawn up by Hutchinson, Moore & Rauch Engineers in Daphne. When it starts, the work is being funded by a grant from the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program and the Dauphin Island Sea Lab.

“They wanted minimal excavation if any at all in the existing areas, Alexander said of ADEM’s concerns.

An immediate problem is what to do with the sand that is excavated once the project is started.

“One of the things we have to get permission for is what to do with the sand that we are hauling out of there,” Alexander said. “Because we need to use a track hoe, which would require us to use a contractor, the cost of the project could be greatly decreased if we can allow that sand to be potentially available for utilization by the contractor elsewhere, but it’s not my sand.

“I’m working with the department of conservation about what we are allowed to do with that sand. If it’s there sand they may want to keep it and put it someplace else.”

But the final bureaucratic hurdles have been cleared, Alexander said

“We have gotten the approvals from ADEM and the Corps to go ahead,” she said. “We’re now doing a cost breakdown to verify that we are within budget.”

Part of the plan was to use city workers on as much of the project as possible, but the fast-approaching busy spring and summer may keep Public Works employees busy with other projects.

“Public Works is doing a significant part of the work so we may need to delay it until after mowing season because of the work load for the Public Works employees to pull them off and have to do the work over there,” Alexander said. “We may have gotten too close. Us not having a really cold winter and it being so warm the mowing season very well may start real soon. So that’s something I have to work out.”

The crux of the enhancement is to take what has been somewhat of a problem area and improve it aesthetically and environmentally.

“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,” designer Doug Bailey of Hutchinson, Moore & Rauch Engineers told the city in February of 2012. “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 was 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.”

Plans for two aerator fountains with lights are still included in the project.

Alexander also said she plans to involve area youth groups in the process to help with work and placing informational signs along the walkways there now.