The Fairhope Docks Marina celebrated its certification as a Mississippi-Alabama Clean and Resilient Marina with a flag ceremony on Jan. 14. The Clean and Resilient Marina flag presentation recognized the Fairhope, Alabama, marina’s commitment to protecting water quality while preparing for severe weather and other coastal hazards.
“Fairhope’s proactive approach to upgrade the marina improves water quality in Mobile Bay while ensuring that the marina is better prepared to recover quickly after storms,” said Steve Sempier, director of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, which led the Clean and Resilient Marina Evaluation Team. “This certification reflects a tremendous amount of work by the city and a dedicated evaluation team.”
The Clean and Resilient Marina Program promotes environmentally responsible operations and resilience planning at marinas throughout the Gulf Coast. To earn certification, marinas must meet standards for design and siting, evacuation procedures, erosion controls, and marina operator and boater education. Marinas also must demonstrate best management practices in areas such as fuel and sewage handling, stormwater management, emergency preparedness, and boater education.
Fairhope Docks Marina, which has 80 operational slips, practices careful fuel-handling procedures, maintains a pump-out system and provides absorbent boom and other materials for hazardous spill prevention and response.
The marina also incorporated many recommended features, such as vegetated areas and pervious surfaces to reduce erosion and stormwater runoff and keep pollutants out of surrounding waters.
Resilience planning also is a key component of the certification. Fairhope Docks leaders maintain emergency and evacuation plans, train staff regularly and communicate expectations to boaters during severe weather events. It updated employee handbooks to include training on coastal hazards, power pedestal extraction, power shutdown and more.
To optimize resilience, the marina’s dock systems and utilities are designed to withstand high winds and storm surge. The marina also installed a weather station to give boaters and others real-time access to conditions at the marina.
“The weather station along with spill cleanup supplies for the fuel dock, green cleaning supplies for slip holders and education signage kiosks were the last pieces of the puzzle that were needed for the designation,” said Nicole Love, the city’s grants coordinator. “They were provided through a grant funded from the Gulf of America Alliance.”
The Gulf of America Alliance (GOAA) helped financially support those clean and resilient measures through a grant it received from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Office for Coastal Management, according to GOAA’s Director of Strategic Planning and Partnerships Christina Mohrman.
The marina provides opportunities for people to get out on the water and be part of the community while demonstrating environmental stewardship, she said.
The certification review was conducted by a six-member team including Stephen Deal, Rusty Grice, Heather King, Stephen Sempier and LaDon Swann, all of the Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium, and Rhonda Price of the Mississippi Department of Marine Resources Office of Restoration and Resiliency. The team performed site reviews and offered recommendations and suggestions for the marina to reach Clean and Resilient Marina status.
“Sometimes people don’t see the hard work, they only see the flag raising and the ceremony,” Price said. “This was a long time coming. Congratulations.”
Fairhope Docks Marina joins Saunders Yachtworks in Gulf Shores as an Alabama Clean and Resilient Marina.
Meet the author
Melissa Schneider
Communications Coordinator
Melissa Schneider coordinates public information, educational media and communication services for Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant. Some of MASGC's communications projects include our website, social... Read more
Phone: 228-818-8838
Email: [email protected]