Pascagoula, Mississippi lies on the Gulf Coast as an unassuming sleepy town. Despite its reputation, it is a pillar to the region. The town quickly became an economic hub after International Shipbuilding Company opened a plant in 1918. From there, it blossomed into a shipbuilding and oil refining backbone and caught the eye of the US Navy. Over the years, Singing River Island developed as a result from beneficial dredging materials from the port channel and was claimed as a naval base in 1985. Due to budget issues, the base was sequentially closed in 2006 and has since been forgotten by the community. 

Just off the coast of Singing River Island, Round Island is also consistently under duress. It is divided into two sections, a natural thriving ecosystem, and a more recent dredged material section. Although the island is another asset to the community, it is also left behind in the wake of Pascagoula’s flashy neighbors such as Biloxi and Orange Beach. It is littered with trash and tar balls, and not many residents currently use it for recreational use, which was the intention of building the island up in the first place. 

Our goal of this project is to first and foremost protect the people and productional lifeblood of Pascagoula. The strategy for this includes sediment capture designs carefully placed at the mouth of the Pascagoula River to increase the marshland cover and health. We also focus on increasing land mass on Round Island while maintaining and expanding the plant life ecosystem on the island. Lastly, we want to take the unused buildings and spaces on Singing River Island and transform them into green spaces that consider what the community lacks and fulfill those needs.