The Alabama State Port Authority faces high annual dredge maintenance costs due to limited management options. The Upper Mobile Bay Beneficial Use Wetland Creation Site Project offers a transformative opportunity to shift the Port’s dredged material management toward methods that advance sustainability, reduce costs, and enhance environmental resilience. By applying Engineering With Nature® principles, the project beneficially uses dredged material to create wetlands that have been rapidly eroding along Mobile Bay whilst ensuring commerce in the public berths. The 1,200-acre site will be incrementally constructed over 20 years using containment features designed to protect created emergent and intertidal wetlands from wind and wave energy.  A long-term sediment management plan will guide future wetland development, placement schedules, and containment configurations, while adaptive design will ensure reliable use of material from recurring maintenance dredging events. Despite its ecological value, the project has faced extensive regulatory challenges. Satisfying federal agencies (NOAA, EPA, and USACE engineers) onerous inquiries and general understanding of how beneficial use projects are conducted has resulted in a four-year permitting process whilst conversely an ocean dumping permit only took 12-months. None of these federal coordination inquiries resulted in changes to the original design submitted over four years ago but did result in a cost of some $64K per day in unrealized natural capital gains of wetlands habitats and expensive, business-as-usual upland waste of dredged materials for the Port. To achieve future beneficial use restoration projects in the future, there will need to be more coordinated and innovative interagency processes. Programmatic beneficial use of dredged material demonstrates how navigation, cost efficiency, and ecological enhancement can be jointly advanced when regulatory pathways support timely implementation.