Dauphin Island officials have applied for funds to restore a 7,000-foot-long swath of eroding shoreline along the island's eastern end.

The project would require a $3.3 million slice of the $51 million that Alabama stands to receive this year through the federal Coastal Impact Assistance Program, which is intended to compensate states for the effects of offshore oil and gas drilling.

The island project would restore a stretch of beach, much of it public property, from historic Fort Gaines to the Audubon Place subdivision, said Mayor Jeff Collier.

Its most important function would be to protect the town's main freshwater aquifer, located beneath the island's

nationally popular Audubon Bird Sanctuary, Collier said.

"Erosion could eventually bring saltwater into the aquifer," destroying the water supply, he said.

Coastal engineers have said erosion could cause the aquifer itself to become part of an accelerating erosion process within the island's 164-acre bird sanctuary.

The erosion of the island's western end, which is far more dramatic and endangers hundreds of structures -- mostly rental homes -- has received much more media attention than the less drastic but nevertheless urgent erosion problems on the eastern end, which is wooded and more densely populated, Collier said.

But a beach restoration on the east end would be much easier legally, since it is mostly public property. The entire west end beach is privately owned by either individual property owners or by the private nonprofit Dauphin Island Property Owners Association, so it's difficult to use public money on that land, Collier said.

Association members voted in March to transfer to the town the 3½ miles of west side beach owned by the Dauphin Island Property Owners Association since 1953. The vote authorized the association's nine-member board to transfer the land to the town, making it eligible for public beach restoration funds.

But the board has not yet taken that vote pending the outcome of a challenge in Mobile County Circuit Court. The measure's critics filed a lawsuit shortly after the vote, claiming any sale or conveyance of the property would be illegal.

As for the location of the planned east end project, a large stretch is owned by the Dauphin Island Park and Beach Board, which also operates the public beach toward the island's western end, while another stretch is owned by the U.S. Coast Guard, Collier said.

The Coastal Impact Assistance Program was created as part of an energy policy overhaul enacted in 2005. The island is surrounded by natural gas platforms.

The town submitted its beach restoration application in June to the State Lands Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, which is managing the state's share of the federal money, Collier said. The Lands Division is currently accepting applications for projects to be funded over the first two years of the four-year program.

Jim Griggs, State Lands Division director, said his office has received applications for several projects. Within the next few weeks, his office plans to prepare the projects for public comment, then prioritize the projects based on that public input. No public meeting dates have yet been set, he said.

"If a project isn't funded in this plan, that doesn't mean it might not get funded under the next two years' plan," Griggs said.

The restored beach would extend about 400 feet into the water toward its eastern end and about 100 feet into the water at its western end, with man-made dunes piled up to 40 feet high toward its center, Collier said.

Alabama and its counties stand to get $51 million over the next two years through the program. The state will get some $33.2 million for fiscal 2007, which began in October, and fiscal 2008, according to the office of U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions, R-Mobile. Mobile County will get almost $10 million during the same two-year period, while Baldwin County's share will amount to almost $8 million.

Sessions was a sponsor of the 2005 bill establishing the program.

The program's funds come from oil and gas royalties that would normally go to the federal treasury. Their distribution is based on oil and gas production in each coastal state.