July 2, 2024–Much of the once accessible backwater habitat on the Apalachicola River is now cut off by mounds of sand blocking flowing water from going into and out of sloughs. Sloughs are naturally occurring streams fed by a main river. They carry water to floodplain swamps and backwater ponds and lakes creating a rich and diverse ecological system. Apalachicola Riverkeeper’s slough restoration project will return several of these sloughs to a more natural flow regime. The sediment removal phase of the project will begin in late August along Spiders Cut off the Chipola River and Douglas Slough off the Apalachicola River.
For millennia, the river flowed naturally through these reaches during high water levels nourishing the floodplain and then flowed out of the backwaters taking with it life sustaining organic matter to feed the great biological diversity of the river and bay. These river-born nutrients even made their way out into the Gulf of Mexico supporting fisheries for hundreds of miles out to sea.
The Mighty Apalach pulsed with an ancient natural cycle of water and abundant life that supported a culture of river people for thousands of years. That cycle began to change in 1957 when dredging operations by the United States Army Corps of Engineers created major obstructions to the over fifty sloughs along the rivers between Blountstown and Sumatra. For the next fifty years, the Army Corps of Engineers dredged the main river channel removing over a million cubic yards of sand a year. They either deposited the dredging “spoils” in the floodplain destroying habitat or piled great mounds of sand on the riverbank and then used bulldozers to push it back into the river when the water was high. Their theory was that the swift moving water would simply take it “away.”
The Corps’ plan failed to consider the environmental impacts that occur when sand naturally drops out of suspension in places where water slows. The Apalachicola is a river of ten thousand slow places and many of those critical to its ecological integrity are the mouths of the sloughs. Over time, the sand built up in the sloughs like a dam trapping and killing fish and keeping nutrients from getting to the river. These dams also kept water from reaching the floodplain to nourish the forests during low flow periods. High water can overflow the sediment dams, but in the summer and fall of every year water levels in the Apalachicola River fall to a drastically low point where no water can enter nor leave the sloughs because of these dams. Species in the system evolved moving in and out of the backwaters for spawning and feeding along with the seasonal high and low river flows. Floodplain forests also depend on the seasonal wet and dry periods for survival and reproduction. With the interruption dredging brought, everything that evolved with that seasonality of flow began to suffer losses.
This phase of this restoration project will demonstrate how removing major obstructions at the mouth of the sloughs, can allow needed waters to again flow into the floodplain swamps and backwater ponds and support the rebound of floodplain trees including the Ogeechee tupelo, the unique flowering tree so important to the honey industry in this area. It will also demonstrate how returning natural flows to and from the floodplain will benefit both floodplain and riverine habitats and improve the long-term freshwater distribution to Apalachicola Bay.
Floodplains act as sponges, releasing water slowly back to the river through braided streams and looped channels where the water picks up important nutrients and carries it to the bay. Prolonged freshwater input and increased nutrients drive the productivity in the bay for oysters, shrimp, blue crabs and countless other important species. Ninety percent of species caught offshore spend some portion of their life in estuaries. The Apalachicola Bay system is one of the most important remaining natural systems in the Gulf of Mexico.
Slough restoration is just one of the many ways this organization works to support the natural resources in our floodplain and bay. Apalachicola Riverkeeper, through our partnerships with the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation, The Partnership for Apalachicola Bay, the Riparian County Stakeholder Coalition, Florida agencies and diverse stakeholders is working to protect, preserve and restore this internationally recognized watershed. The current slough restoration project is supported by Gulf Environmental Benefit Fund of the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation. Updates and background can be found here.
More on connectivity of the floodplain and river.
By Susan Anderson, a founding member of Apalachicola Riverkeeper. Susan serves as Executive Director and can be reached at [email protected]
