John Cutts watched an oak tree fall at Alba Beach in south Mobile during a storm. It was astonishing to him to watch an oak tree sink into Mobile Bay from his home next door.
A few years later, hurricanes Sally and Zeta hit, and the retaining wall along Cutts’ property and an adjacent road washed out from the flooding.
“I became aware that coastal erosion was happening very quickly,” Cutts said. “I thought about the cost of rebuilding and maintaining the bulkhead (retaining wall), and I thought ‘how is that a solution?’”…