D’Olive Watershed Management Plan
Engineering for the Environment
Lauded as one of the premier Watershed Management Plans in Alabama, Thompson Engineering’s work to address the negative impacts of increased sediment loadings in the D’Olive Watershed is meaningful and realistic in its goal of addressing long standing environmental problems stemming from urban development. In partnership with the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program and the D’Olive Watershed Working Group, Thompson Engineering developed the management plan for the 7,700-acre watershed drained by D’Olive Creek and its principal tributaries, Tiawasee Creek and Joe’s Branch. The watershed flows into D’Olive Bay, a small embayment at the north end of Mobile Bay.
The Watershed Management Plan has several primary components: plan objectives, a comprehensive assessment of impacts, recommended management measures, cost estimates and financing options and community outreach. Months of evaluations and data analysis were necessary to develop the plan. Work included:
- Synthesizing existing data within the context of the current watershed conditions;
- Organizing the D’Olive Creek Watershed into watershed management units based on common features;
- Examining areas of current and potential wetland degradation with a focus on potential corrective measures;
- Determining the nature, scope and location of sedimentation and stream stability issues and recommending potential management measures;
- Developing specific objectives to ensure attention to ranked problems and the appropriate restorative or hard-engineering corrective solutions;
- Identifying potential funding sources for implementing corrective and management measures;
- Reviewing existing and proposed regulations and ordinances and providing realistic recommendations for improving them; and
- Compiling work products of the steps mentioned above to create an EPA-compliant watershed management plan.
The plan, which was recognized by the Baldwin County Commission with the 2010 Environmental Achievement Award, provides detailed recommendations for actions to be taken, including the establishment of a “Watershed Restoration Task Force” to guide and monitor implementation of the watershed management plan. To learn more details of the plan, click here.