Baldwin County Commission approved a $60,000 agreement with the Dauphin Island Sea Lab and Mobile Bay National Estuary Program to expand efforts aimed at understanding flooding and guiding future growth in the Styx River Watershed.

The project will create computer-based hydrologic models that show how a river responds during storms, giving county officials tools to evaluate flooding risks, protect homes and property and make informed decisions about development.

Over the next year, Baldwin County and partners will develop the models, upload them into a specialized system and complete documentation.

Jason Kudulis, director of the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, said the organization has spent years developing similar models for watersheds that drain directly into Mobile Bay and is now extending those efforts to fast-growing areas farther east.

"Understanding that the growth and urbanization is now stretching out to other parts of the county, we're looking to develop these models to support those decision makers and other watersheds," Kudulis said. "Styx River obviously being one that's dealing with some challenges."

The model, originally developed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, will be integrated into software known as AGWA, which allows local governments to evaluate how proposed developments could affect stormwater runoff and flooding.

"Municipal staff can evaluate proposed changes to the watershed," Kudulis said. "They can look at the analysis of detention basins, discharges, land use change, and when they're evaluating planning or land-use zoning developments, they can run the scenarios to make sure that the proposed plan meets county subdivision regulations or whatever type of policy a municipality has."

In addition to helping planners, the system can serve as a tool for emergency management officials by identifying areas that could flood under different storm scenarios.

"They can run different discharge stages to see areas of potential flooding, so it's almost like an emergency management support tool as well," Kudulis said.

The latest agreement builds on work that began last year when the estuary program and Baldwin County installed stream gauges and weather stations throughout the watershed to collect environmental data. Kudulis said gathering information from storms of varying intensity improves the accuracy of the models.

"You want to collect a wide spectrum," he said. "You want a small rain, a medium rain and a big rain because all those are going to make the model more accurate, so when we run those future scenarios, you can have more confidence in the product."

Kudulis said the models could help identify factors contributing to flooding, including bottlenecks in the river or increased runoff caused by changes in the landscape.

"What this model will help do, though, is realize maybe something upstream or maybe there's some choke point in the river or some area where they're getting a lot of runoff, just due to some changes in the landscape," he said. "Maybe that would improve some of those impacts downstream. It's a good tool to add to the toolbox."

He said the project provides decision makers with science-based information to prepare for emergencies and manage growth responsibly.

"We want to give resource managers, elected officials and decision makers as much information as they can have to make appropriate decisions on emergency management preparation, approvals and changes in land use based on applications and the growth that we're seeing submitted to the county zoning and planning," Kudulis said.

According to Kudulis, the Styx River project expands a resource already available in several Baldwin County watersheds and provides the same level of support to an area experiencing rapid growth.

"It's making sure this new one that's really big and really challenging, and seeing a lot of growth, has that same level of opportunity," he said. 

Gabriella Chavez is a Report for America corps member who writes about growth and development in Baldwin County and our natural spaces for Gulf Coast Media. Your donation to match our RFA grant helps keep her writing stories like this one; please consider making a tax-deductible gift of any amount today by visiting https://tinyurl.com/yaf8yf5n.