Tour Information

Welcome to ANEP 2025: Rising With the Tide! This page contains the itenirary and tour information for 2025 ANEP Fall meeting.

D'Olive Creek Watershed Tour Information

The D'Olive Creek Watershed Tour is on Wednesday, November 12h from 2:00-5:00pm. Vans for the tour will load at the Mobile Bay NEP office at 2pm. Attendees can expect an afternoon in Spanish Fort and Daphne visiting the Mobile Bay NEP's multitude of stream restoration sites in the D'Olive watershed.

Pine Run
Project D9 Pine Run was completed in late 2024. This project stabilized 1,860 linear feet of severely degraded channel. Shortly after construction the project experienced not one but two extreme precipitation events requiring adaptive management.

Melanie Loop
Project DAF-1a Melanie Loop, a tributary to D’Olive Creek, could not accommodate increased runoff flows from upstream development, leading to stream incision, headcutting, and widening.

Tiawasee Montclair
Project Tiawasee Montclair underwent 1,050 linear feet of restoration in 2020. This project included exposed wastewater infrastructure, more than a dozen landowners, and coupled an NRCS Emergency Watershed Grant project with the City of Daphne.

Gator Alley Boardwalk
Gator Alley Boardwalk is a passive park that also functions as a demonstration site for a step pool stormwater conveyance system and Low Impact Development techniques. It is a popular location adjacent to a major thoroughfare with a boardwalk and water access. D’Olive Creek runs across the property with a Litter Gitter installed to capture waterborne debris.

Participants

Daniel Kolodny

Kalle Matso

Caitlin Sweeney

Joseph Earman

Kathy Hill

Jasime Zimmer-Stucky

Qiyamah Williams

Amy Stauber

Blake Simmons

Kerry Flaherty Walia

Matt Posner

Stan Hales

Curtis Bohlen

Claudine Rehn

Erin Bergman

Michelle Felterman

Bren Haase

Prassede Vella

Kim Cressman

Evelyn McQueen

Eric Sparks

Danielle Moore

Elaine Placido

Kristi Foster

Tom Ford

Eric Sherwood

Heather Burdick

Georgia Tunioli

Nick Haffner

Christer LaBrecque

Austen Stovall

Amy Sauber

Joyce Novak

Rich Innes

Three Mile Creek Tour Information

The Three Mile Creek Tour is on Wednesday, November 12th from 2:00-5:00pm. Attendees can expect to tour the Leeds Street neighborhood for an overview of the Mobile Bay NEP Rain Barrel program, and end at Tricentennial Park for a session about stream restoration and watershed revitalization by the City of Mobile. It is recommended that attendees wear warm clothes and closed-toe shoes.

Toulmins Spring
Neighborhoods surrounding Toulmins Spring Branch have been adversely impacted by chronic flooding due to the area’s low-lying elevation, increased urbanization, and infrastructure inadequate to deal with volumes of stormwater runoff routine along Alabama’s coast. Additionally, a comprehensive management plan for the Three Mile Creek Watershed, which includes the target area, indicates these communities should expect to experience impacts associated with sea level rise and increased frequency of storm surge events. Daily realities for many in this region, currently experiencing poverty rates of 45%, relegate topics of climate change to the back burner, but persistent and pervasive flooding routinely rises to the top of community concerns.

Tricentennial Park
Located along the lower reaches of Three Mile Creek, Tricentennial Park was developed in the early 2000s as part of Mobile’s celebration of its 300th birthday. The park centers on Day Lake, with a paved loop trail, fishing access, kayak launch, picnic shelters, splash pad, and playground. Tricentennial Park is a key hub on the Three Mile Creek Greenway Trail, a long-envisioned linear park and path system, highlighted in the TMC Watershed Plan, connecting neighborhoods to downtown and other green spaces upstream. Recent phases extended the trail from Tricentennial Park to University Hospital with a new pedestrian bridge, as the City continues to build towards completion of a contiguous 6.5 mile corridor. Tricentennial Park carries the City’s history in its name, honors a local public servant, and serves as a gathering point for surrounding communities. With the Greenway knitting together parks, hospitals, and neighborhoods, the site is both a community asset and a building block of Mobile’s larger vision for connected, healthy public spaces.

Participants

Melodie Grubbs

Kathryn Tunnell

Rosario Martinez

Mary Baker

Martha Maxwell-Doyle

Kathy Klein

Clare Magargal

Kevin Smith

Kevin Walker

Kim Abplanalp

Roman Jesien

Jill Carr

Kiersten Stanzel

Sara Martin

Carley Zapfe

Erin Wallace

Isabelle Stinnette

Lisa Marshall

Christophe Tulou

Bryan Ochs

Susan Glendening

James Muller

Robert Pirani

Christian Rines

Diana DiMarco

Darcy Young

KJ Ayres-Guerra

Aaron Baxter

Lisa Havel

Laura Logozzo

Valerie Virgona

Emily Patrolia

Ryan Gandy

Natasha Daniels

Kim Abplanalp

Dauphin Island Tour Information

The Dauphin Island Tours are on Thursday, November 13th from 2:00-5:00pm. The tour will be led by golf cart and broken up into three sessions that attendees will each rotate through. Stops at Graveline Bay, Aloe Bay, and the East End Public beach will showcase different restoration efforts across Dauphin Island and their impacts on the local environment and residents.

Graveline Bay
In 2021, the Town of Dauphin Island received funding from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund to restore coastal marsh habitat in Graveline Bay, a priority project identified in the US Army Corps’ Alabama Barrier Island Restoration Assessment Report (ABIRAR). In 2023, approximately 270,000 cubic yards of material was used to create 55 marsh mounds over a 60 acre area that was planted with appropriate vegetative plantings (salt meadow cordgrass, smooth cordgrass, and black needle rush). 600 cubic yards of recycled oyster shell were also placed along the northern edge of the project area to enhance oyster settlement opportunities. A follow-on effort was conducted to show how the project was reducing flooding, to engage insurers on reducing adjacent homes insurance premiums.

Aloe Bay
Aloe Bay is the heart of Dauphin Island’s maritime identity, where restoration is paired with a revitalized working waterfront. Marsh benches, low profile breakwaters, and shoreline plantings protect moorings and reduce storm damage while public space welcomes visitors without displacing commercial use. The goal is physical and fiscal resilience. The town has faced repeated disasters including the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. In 2019 and 2020 it spent nearly $2 million dollars beyond disaster assistance on recovery, more than half of its $4-million-dollar annual budget. Aloe Bay must therefore both protect assets and generate stable revenue through seafood, eco-tourism, and small businesses.

East End Beach
On the Island’s East End, dune and beach restoration combine coastal protection with public access and a strong sense of place. Identified as a priority project in the ABIRAR, The East End Beach and Dune Restoration restored vital habitat that had been lost and provides additional resilience to adjacent maritime forest, extensive primary and secondary dune systems, and culturally significant resources like Fort Gaines. With funding secured from NFWF’s GEBF and National Coastal Resilience Fund, the restoration consisted of placement of 1.2 million cubic yards of sand resulting in 60 acres of new beach habitat, 20 acres of created dune habitat, 12,400 feet of dune fencing, and 691,000 native dune plantings (eg. bitter panicum, sea oats, and Gulf bluestem) and was completed in 2024.