Six coastal restoration projects worth a combined $63 million have been approved for Alabama’s Gulf Coast, bringing new money to habitat and shoreline work stretching from Dauphin Island and Bayou La Batre in Mobile County to Gulf Shores and Bon Secour in Baldwin County.
The funding comes from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, which oversees the Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund on behalf of the state. That fund was created to direct criminal fines paid by BP and Transocean following their guilty pleas in connection with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon disaster, a case resolved in U.S. District Court in 2013. It is separate from the RESTORE Act and from Alabama’s own civil settlements with the two companies, which are administered through different channels.
With this latest round, Alabama has now received a total of $356 million through the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund since the settlement was finalized. Of that total, roughly $115 million has now been committed across 19 coastal restoration projects statewide, touching barrier islands, river systems, wetlands and undeveloped beachfront up and down the coast.
The newly approved projects reflect a mix of land conservation, engineering work and long-term environmental monitoring. The single largest award, at $36 million, will fund the acquisition and management of 113 acres known as the Gulf Highlands tract, described as the largest privately held stretch of undeveloped beachfront remaining anywhere on the Alabama coast. Preserving the land is intended to protect it permanently from development and maintain it as habitat for shorebirds and other wildlife.
In Baldwin County, $12.5 million has been set aside to acquire wetlands in the Bon Secour-Oyster Bay area near Gulf Shores, protecting about 935 acres of varied coastal habitat that supports fish nurseries, migratory birds and storm buffering for nearby communities. Officials say wetland systems like this one play an outsized role in filtering runoff and absorbing storm surge before it reaches populated areas.
On Dauphin Island, $3.5 million will go toward acquiring roughly eight acres of the island’s remaining undeveloped beachfront, along with construction of protective fencing and a dune walkover designed to keep foot traffic from damaging fragile dune vegetation. Coastal scientists have long pointed to intact dune systems as a first line of defense against erosion and storm damage on barrier islands.
Near Bayou La Batre, $6 million has been approved for the acquisition and restoration of more than 100 acres at Lightning Point, located at the mouth of the Bayou La Batre River. The project is meant to stabilize a stretch of eroding shoreline that has historically flooded during storms, while also restoring marsh habitat important to the area’s commercial and recreational fishing industries.
A related $1 million award will fund the first phase of engineering and design work for the Fowl River Watershed restoration project, focused on stabilizing coastal spits and marshland in the lower Fowl River. That phase is expected to lay the groundwork for a larger construction effort in future funding rounds.
The final $4.4 million in the package will continue a multiyear program of fisheries and ecosystem monitoring in Alabama’s coastal waters and the broader Gulf of Mexico, funding the third and fourth years of data collection meant to track the long-term health of fish populations and the habitats they depend on.
State officials say the string of NFWF-funded projects reflects a broader, sustained effort to rebuild and protect natural resources along the coast in the years following the Deepwater Horizon spill, with additional rounds of funding expected as more restoration and conservation proposals move through review.