Philippe Park, located along the southern shoreline of Old Tampa Bay, provides a highly visible location for the community to learn about the benefits of a living shoreline project while protecting their local popular park.
The project will showcase how living shorelines can increase resiliency to sea-level rise and storm surge and reduce shoreline erosion while enhancing local wildlife habitat.
Philippe Park is a favorite park for locals to enjoy fishing and kayak access. ESA assisted the County in investigating several nature-based shoreline stabilization design options to protect the park against increased storm surges and erosion. Multiple options were designed for this area, including oyster beds, oyster bag arrays, oyster domes, and offshore breakwaters depending upon the site’s wave energy conditions.
All design options were based upon the results of a coastal conditions analysis that utilized modeling data, site-specific survey information, and coastal design calculations to size the material to withstand the wave energy this site has experienced over the past 100 years. Each treatment also includes the installation of native wetland plants to further stabilize the shoreline behind the various wave energy treatments. ESA assisted with permitting, design and construction oversight of these various shoreline treatments.
Volunteers installed 800 oyster bags and 1,000 marsh grasses along the south end of the park’s shoreline during Phase 1 of the project.
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