T

he charm and identity of our 
“Luckiest little fi shing village” 
is built upon our waterways.  
Fortunately for all of us living 

here on the Emerald Coast, an intelligent and 
farsighted group of idealists came together 
over 20 years ago to form the Choctawhatchee 
Basin Alliance.  This alliance included 
representatives from the Florida Department 
of Environmental Protection and other 
governmental agencies, along with members of 
the business community and elected offi cials.  
Northwest Florida State College was used as 
a catalyst to get the Alliance moving because 
of their status and location in the community.  
The sharing of concerns from participants 
along with the discussion on philosophies of 
ecosystem management from the FDEP and 
Eglin AFB is what sparked a partnership for 
sustainable development that is now known 
as the Choctawhatchee Basin Alliance of 
Northwest Florida State College (CBA).

The CBA assures the local waterways to be 

healthy through monitoring, maintenance, 
education, restoration, and research.  Be it 
fi shing, tourism, or quality of life, everything 
depends upon a healthy watershed. As 
environmental threats and the way the human 
lifestyle can affect nature, threats continue to 
impact these critical natural areas. 

Of the many positive things the CBA does, 

one of the most impactful is educating.  The 
Alliance works in the schools to teach children 
at an early age about our waterways and these 
citizens of tomorrow often know more than 
their parents because of these efforts. They 
do this by teaching hands-on environmental 
science to over 2500 students in Okaloosa 
and Walton Counties every month through 
CBA programs including Grasses in Classes, 
Dunes in Schools, and Spat On!.  Lessons 
are designed to give children a direct role 
in local habitat restoration and instill in a 
lifelong stewardship ethic.  They grow grasses 
at school and learn to maintain salinity, they 
grow sea oats and learn about barrier islands, 
beach habitats and coastal lakes, and through 
Spat On! they learn oyster biology and how 
to cultivate them and maintain clean water 
chemistry.

Along with the school programs the CBA 

has made an impact by collecting from local 
restaurant partners 40 tons of oyster shell for 
oyster reef restoration in Choctawhatchee 
Bay. Combining native plants grown in 
school programs and oyster shell gathered 
in the shell recycling program has restored 
approximately 6 acres of habitat. Highlights 
include a 1700 linear foot oyster reef in Alaqua 
Bayou, 5 homeowner living shoreline sites, and 
completion of a multiphase living shoreline site 
at Marina Cove in Rocky Bayou.  

CBA has also impacted the community by 

recruiting, training, and equipping 25 citizen 
scientists to participate in their brand-new 
oyster gardening program.  Oyster gardeners 
grow their own oysters in cages from personal 
docks, to be planted in restoration sites in 
spring of 2018.  They have coordinated staff 
and volunteers to monitor 132 water quality 
sites each month and they oversee monitoring 
of approximately 30 seagrass sites. The CBA 
is also responsible for analyzing and compiling 
monitoring data to produce a water quality 
report for the coastal dune lakes.  And, one 
other simple way that they positively change 
the water system is by installing fi shing 
line collection containers to prevent plastic 
pollution and fi shing line entanglement.

The CBA has volunteer opportunities on their 

Facebook page and newsletter or check their 
website, basinalliance.org. 

story by

 

Greg Alexander

 

  |  

photos by

 

Sean Murphy

February 2018   |   105

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