Work to improve drainage in the Beulah community and the environment of Wolf Bay is going forward with help from state funding.
The Foley City Council accepted a grant from the Alabama Department of Environment Management. The funding will allow the city to continue improvements to the Beulah Heights Regional Stormwater Facility in southeast Foley.
Foley is updating a 480-acre city project that began in 2008, Mayor Ralph Hellmich said.
“The water was going directly into Wolf Creek and degrading it, because there was no retention,” Hellmich said. “This put that water into a retention basin and that worked really well.”
The mayor said the current project will help Foley expand drainage and water quality improvements.
“When you get this system in place, you can start going upstream and replacing pipes,” Hellmich said. “That won’t do any good without the improvements. It’s really a regional program to fix the Beulah Heights area.”
Foley Sustainability and Natural Resources Director Leslie Gahagan said the project will reduce flooding and the chance of damage to the stormwater drainage system.
“This project is to retrofit it to fit more in low impact development, to increase the capacity so that that stormwater in that area will now have a place to go,” she said. “The stormwater will be filtered out for pollutants before it discharges to Wolf Creek in the south.”
In addition to the ADEM grant, Foley also received funding from the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program that paid some of the costs of the project.
“This is a really good project, and we’ve received funding already for this project from another source of money, and so this is a second source that’s come in that will help close the gaps,” Gahagan said.
The new project will also include a system to trap sediment before the material settles into the retention pond. In the past, Foley Public Works Department crews had to use machinery to dig the sediment out of the pond to keep the retention system from filling in.
“That wasn’t very feasible,” Gahagan said. “This allows us to maintain it in perpetuity.”
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