Debris to be removed from Bon Secour River

Debris to be removed from Bon Secour River

Foley City Council voted to approve a project to clear debris and sediment that Hurricane Sally left in the Bon Secour River that is flooding property almost three years after the storm at a cost of about $263,000. Darrel Russell, public works director, said much of downtown Foley and nearby areas west of Alabama 59 and south of U.S. 98 are drained by the river.
He said the river was cleared after the 2020 hurricane, but more sediment and debris from the storm has washed into the stream since then.
“After Sally, a lot of the residents cleaned out the best that they could, but there’s an area when these two (streams) meet,” he said. “There’s a lot of buildup of sand and we’re not letting up the amount of water that this facility needs here. So we also have water backing up on these homes.”
Mayor Ralph Hellmich said city officials have been working with Baldwin County, the state and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to clean the stream bed. He said that once the waterway is cleared, FEMA should pay some of the future costs of maintaining the site.
“This is kind of an area in between, we call it a no man’s land. We talked to the state. We talked for the county and we talked to FEMA,” Hellmich said. “The way it works with FEMA is the same way if you had an obstructed beach as Gulf Shores. Once you build that beach and there’s any degradation from the storm, FEMA will pay you to put it back like it was.”