SR County is home to Florida's largest gully. Solution is part of $24M grant award.
Holding the distinction of being home to the largest gully in the state of Florida certainly hasn't generated any tourism dollars for Santa Rosa County, and in fact has proven detrimental, as the Sandy Hollow Gully dumps about 20,000 tons of sediment into the Escambia River every year.
Corralling erosion from the gully and halting the trek of soil to the Escambia River has been a goal of the Santa Rosa County environmental division, and now, armed with a hefty grant provided courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, it can become a reality.
An engineering group called Southern Site and Utility Design was at the gully Tuesday, according to company officials, the agency will be paid $249,400 to accomplish such tasks as identifying points of discharge affecting the gully, calculating runoff data and designing methods of slowing the flow of water.
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Assessing gullies and determining how to contain the pollutants running off of them has become big business, according to Jerry Couey, a member of Santa Rosa County's Watershed Protection Committee.
"We're learning the gully business is not a single playbook. They're all unique. You have to use all the tools in the tool box to figure out what works," Couey said. "You used to see grants used to plug the dikes, so things would quit getting worse. Now they're really pushing restoration. They study it, see how best to fix it and the best way to do it."
The grant that came to the county from NOAA provides a total of $1.5 million to use to halt erosion in the Sandy Hollow, or Pugh, gully and end the direct discharge of sediments into the Escambia River.
The gully restoration represents just a fraction of a $24 million grant awarded by NOAA to the Pensacola and Perdido Bays Estuary Program to fund a total of three projects in the bay watersheds. The Sandy Hollow Gully work falls under a Pensacola Bay Oyster Restoration Initiative for which the Estuary Program received $10.9 million.
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Another $12.8 million will be put toward a Perdido Watershed Initiative and an additional $300,000 has been provided for the EscaRosa Oyster Shell Recycling Program, a news release announcing all of the grant awards said.
Matt Posner, the executive director of the estuary program, called the grants "a transformational opportunity to advance coastal restoration in our region that would normally take decades to implement."
The Pensacola Bay Oyster Restoration Initiative, which will be administered by the Estuary Program, proposes to restore 1,482 acres of oyster habitat within the Pensacola Bay system over the course of the next decade.
Phase one of the project will involve looking at sedimentation in the bay system and prioritizing oyster restoration locations. A goal is to construct oyster habitat to cover about 247 football fields, the press release said.
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The Nature Conservancy is among several agencies partnering with the Estuary Program on the Pensacola Bay Oyster Restoration Initiative. TNC representatives from across the state converged on East Bay near Milton in March to celebrate with local stakeholders the completion, after 13 years, of its largest oyster reef restoration project to date.
Ann Birch, The Nature Conservancy's Oceans and Coasts Strategy Director for Florida, called the latest undertaking −and the funding that will help make it happen − "unprecedented."
"This project is an unprecedented and transformational approach to revitalize the area’s oysters and estuaryat the speed and scale needed for recovery and sustainability of oyster habitat, oyster fisheries, andtheir ecosystem services never before seen in the Gulf of Mexico,” Birch said.
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The Nature Conservancy will work with conservation groups in Florida as well as Alabama to enhance ecosystems and community resilience through the Perdido Watershed Initiative, the news release said.
Dollars will be used to conduct shoreline habitat vulnerability assessments and complete restoration designs for the city of Orange Beach Waterfront Park Living Shoreline, Gilchrist Island, Robinson Island, Walker Island, Lillian Swamp, and Bronson Field Living Shoreline and Hydrologic Restoration, the release said.
The Pensacola and Perdido Bay Estuary Program will take the lead in implementing the Living Shoreline Cost Share Program and design of the Bronson Field Living Shoreline and Hydrologic Restoration Project, it said.
The EscaRosa Oyster Shell Recycling Program has provided oyster shell recycling services and workforce development opportunities for young adults in the community for the last three years, the news release said.
The infusion of $300,000 from NOAA "will ensure program sustainability and support the collection of recycled oyster shells from participating restaurants for use in coastal restoration in Pensacola and Perdido Bays," the release said.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: NOAA grant helps oyster beds, erosion control in Escambia, Santa Rosa
