Editor’s note: This is part two of a three-part series. The reporter of this story lives on property adjacent to the construction site.

FAIRHOPE, Ala. — The city lifted its stop-work order this week on the Point Clear construction project of William Dorgan that it halted two weeks ago, according to city officials.

“I will be pulling that stop-work order this morning,” Barry Fulford, building official, said Thursday. “I have been in touch with (Baldwin County) and the (U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) this week. We wanted (Dorgan) to do a little more than the Corps required.”

Fulford said the city would defer to the county and the Corps to handle all permitting for the project that Dorgan started last year. But he said he also made recommendations to those agencies on how to limit environmental impacts at the site.

On March 26, the Corps issued an “after-the-fact” permit requested by Dorgan that day “to discharge fill material into 0.24 acres of medium-quality jurisdictional wetlands for the purpose of constructing a drive through wetlands” on property he owns between Scenic Highway 98 and Calloway Drive in Point Clear.

According to a nationwide Corps permit, the portion of the road passing through wetlands is about 535 feet long by 20 feet wide. That permit states, “Recent work on your property has also included the maintenance of existing drainage ditches orginally constructed by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the early 1900s; the maintenance work has consisted of restoring the ditch channels to their original depth and cross-section by removing accumulated sediment and debris.”

The permit sets out several special conditions including the installation of “appropriately sized culverts where the drive passes through the wetland area,” as well as purchasing credits from a Corps-approved mitigation bank “as compensation for the unavoidable loss of 0.24 acres of medium-quality forested bay swamp.”

The after-the-fact permit is the second time Dorgan has sought permitting after construction had already been done. Last year he obtained a permit from the county after he had already begun the project. However, the most recent construction was not authorized by that permit, according to county officials.

Dorgan had also not sought a city land disturbance permit prior to the recent construction, which resulted in the March 20 stop-work order.

“Mr. Dorgan put in some .28 acres of fill to put in a driveway for access to his property,” said Patrick Robbins, spokesman for the Corps office in Mobile. “He said that he did not know that he needed a permit from us or that he needed a permit from the city.”

County officials said Dorgan will be allowed to connect the road from Scenic Highway 98 to Calloway Drive pursuant to the existing permit issued after the fact last year.

“What we’re looking for is compliance,” said Joe Ryan, county code enforcement officer of the Baldwin County Planning Department. “Dorgan was willing to do whatever was required. There’s no need to issue a new permit.”

Fulford said Dorgan is being required to restore some of the property he cleared of trees before the project was halted recently, and that a planned parking lot will not be allowed to be built there. He said any additional construction would require new permits from the various permitting agencies.

None of these agencies plan to issue any fines for the construction already done without permits.

“If he’s allowed to do this, the property owners on either side can do the same thing,” said Richard Coram, who lives on Calloway Drive. “They keep chiseling away at the wetlands. The Nationwide Permit program is just an exuse to let developers do whatever they want.”