Abstract
Together with the City of Bayou La Batre, the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, Mobile County, and the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Nature Conservancy implemented a large scale restoration project committed to protecting and preserving the coastal community of Bayou La Batre from future storms and coastal hazards as well as revitalizing the locally important waterfront area by restoring, enhancing, and protecting the shoreline habitats and providing improved community access for recreation and fishing opportunities. Designed with Moffatt & Nichol, the Lightning Point Restoration project included about 1 mile of overlapping breakwaters, 40 acres of marsh, tidal creeks and scrub shrub habitats, and more than 240,000 cubic yards of repurposed dredged material to create the new habitats and storm buffer along the community’s waterfront. This restoration project began in Fall 2019 and was completed in less than 10 months in Summer 2020. The implementation of Lightning Point Restoration project was successful due to the project team addressing various potential barriers before construction began. These barriers involved community acceptance, technical feasibility, funding limitations, political support, legal concerns, cost and benefit of actions, and consistence with community and regional environmental goals. By understanding the logistics and the impact of the Lightning Point Restoration project on the local coastal community of Bayou La Batre, The Nature Conservancy and Moffatt & Nichol were able to translate these concerns to the contractor to ensure that the project was constructed with integrity and set the stage for future complex restoration projects.
