Trash floating in Mobile County's Chickasabogue Park swimming area. You would think park personnel would remove the trash from the swimming area since they have canoes right there at the beach. Trash polluted Chickasabogue Creek is the consequence of the cities of Prichard and Chickasaw not having any system in place to ensure their storm waterway generated trash is regularly removed and disposed of.
The Storm Water Trash Pollution Saga in Mobile continues. A year ago Tom Herder, Watershed Protection Manager for Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (MBNEP) begged me to come to their office to provide input on an expensive year long Three Mile Creek Watershed Plan. While attending the meeting with Dewberry representatives, it was said the trash pollution in Maple Street Canal along with the other Three Mile Creek tributaries was going to be removed to my satisfaction. Fantastic! Finally some relief from having to kayak through pollution. Fast forward another year. Same old trash is STILL floating in Maple Street Canal and even more trash is filling up the adjacent wetlands. The City of Mobile STILL has no trash filter in Maple Street Canal nor does the City of Mobile remove any of the trash from the canal or off their adjacent property even though the City's storm water system is totally responsible for directing the public's illegal litter into Maple Street Canal and other trash impaired tributaries. Why no change? So, I called Tom Herder today to ask when the Maple Street Canal trash pollution is going to start being removed and he immediately started bitching at me and was very rude accusing me of screwing him and the very people who are trying to help me achieve "my plan." My Plan? My plan is to keep documenting Mobile's waterway trash pollution and bitching until there is someone responsible for keeping Mobile area waterways clean at work full time because the amount of garbage in Mobile County waterways is unacceptable. Tom, you're the Watershed Protection Manager in Mobile so it should be no surprise if I direct waterway pollution complaints and personal opinions to your office. Mobile Baykeeper accused me of the same thing about a year ago - attacking the environmental community. Now, why on earth would I be negatively judgmental against Mobile Baykeeper, Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, Alabama Department of Environmental Management, and the City of Mobile and other agencies. Seen any my photos yet? Everyone seems to be in agreement that litter is going to keep happening because people and nature are unpredictable. There is no incentive to keep one-time use disposable containers in cars. No amount of education is going to stop roadside litter and debris from entering into storm water systems and being flushed into some of Mobile's navigable waterways. So, just as there are a multitude of land based litter removal programs going on, there should be at least one water based litter removal program but there aren't any. I keep complaining because once the public's illegal litter gets flushed downstream into Mobile's navigable waterways the pollution is continually ignored. I whine to agencies, property owners, and environmental groups responsible for the health of our waterways for not doing anything to get the trash pollution removed - YEAR AFTER YEAR. Tom Herder is really sore at me for continuing to be critical of his office and the City for STILL ignoring the public waterway pollution despite the many many complaints. Mr. Herder's recent 15 minutes of fame arrest for cussing out the police who momentarily detained him for not having any identification shows his two-faced nature. It is ok for TOM to complain and bitch, but not me? That reminds me how Tom told me about the sorry ass Dog River folks who wouldn't volunteer to help MBNEP's Dog River Park shoreline restoration project. Tom not only thinks very lowly of me, but of all the Dog River folks. Tom must have overlooked the fact that the only group in Mobile who has stood up to the City of Mobile concerning the increasing waterway trash pollution is the Dog River Clearwater Revival group, not his office or Baykeeper's office. It was this Dog River resident with a handsaw out cutting through water weeds in Maple Street Canal to clear the path for MBNEP's "Clean Up The Bottom" event. Too bad no one showed up to remove any trash from Maple Street Canal at the City sponsored event. It is this Dog River resident who has and still is documenting the trash pollution in 2-3 dozen different tributaries in Mobile County for several years now to provide the Environmental Community with enough evidence to prove there must be a waterway trash removal work force developed to remove the unacceptable amount of garbage in our area waters. Sadly, money continues to be wasted on education instead of long term waterway trash pollution removal solutions. It was this Dog River resident who upon Tom's request, joined in on a treacherous exploratory Three Mile Creek paddle from Municipal Park to Lake Drive Tricentennial Park, providing GPS data and photos to MBNEP. Dog River folks aren't as bad as you think Tom. I'm not mad at Tom. He's probably been upset by recent media attention to his unfortunate arrest. I still respect Tom as a person but as long Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, other environmental groups, the City of Mobile, and ADEM can't seem to get garbage removed from a mere 1/4 mile long waterway that eventually connects to Mobile Bay, I will continue to be highly critical of city, county, and state agencies along with all the environmental groups concerned with clean water in Mobile and Alabama. Picture yourself in an office around a water cooler. Visualize the unusually huge water cooler reservoir being clear glass. In the water cooler is litter - pill bottles, syringes, condoms, rusted spray cans containing who knows what, acetone cans, acid containing batteries, lighters, gasoline containers, etc. You can probably imagine how office workers would react seeing what they had to drink out of, even if the cooler had an end filter. If office environments would not tolerate garbage floating in a public water cooler, why is Mobile Baykeeper, Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, Alabama Department of Environmental Management, the City of Mobile and others STILL ignoring the unmonitored garbage floating in Mobile's public water supply called Big Creek Lake, which I've complained to Mobile Area Water and Sanitary Sewer about for the past two years, not to mention public trash in 2-3 dozen other Mobile County tributaries that is accumulating and getting denser each year? Tom is obviously still angry with me because I was critical of Mobile Bay NEP's cutting of individual shoreline reeds at Helen Wood Park while pointing out that no one is removing trash from waterways. To me it is ridiculous to be killing NATURAL vegetation with a good root system that can limit shoreline erosion while dense waterway pollution is ignored. I stand by that belief. Oddly, MBNEP cut those wetland reeds back in October 2013, made several debris piles on what little park grass there is at Helen Wood Park, and has left the trash piles there to continue to uglify Helen Wood Park. I'd like to remind MBNEP that Grass Clippings are identified by the City of Mobile in a recently produced brochure by the City of Mobile public services executive director as Illicit items to be properly disposed of instead of being left to be swept into area waterways. Sorry Tom, I'm going to keep bitching and being a real pain in the environmental community's posterior as long as there are ZERO people working full time to remove the public's illegal trash from Mobile's MANY trash impaired waterways. As long as there are ZERO workers employed to remove the plentiful waterway trash, there is ZERO effort to remove the pollution from these polluted waterways. That simply is not acceptable stewardship of a Mobile area waterways. In Mobile County, essentially, the Clean Water Act is a farce - a law ignored. Many of Mobile's waterways are like a trash can. If you never empty your home kitchen garbage can that you continually add trash into, it will overflow and the area is going to get ugly looking and become unsanitary. The City's solution of asking volunteers to come in once a year to empty your kitchen trash can isn't going to help much because the house will still be trashy the other 364 days of the year. Mobile's trash cans (waterways) need to be emptied regularly after trash gushing rains and that is not happening in Mobile County. The waterway trash problem in Mobile County is hardly complex. Even one person working full time could keep a navigable watershed the size of Three Mile Creek or Dog River relatively clean all year long. Paying for removal of public litter is hardly an issue. Where is the litter coming from? The Public. What is the majority of litter composed of? Disposable items. Solution? Add a tax to the disposable items found polluting the environment to generate the revenue to hire the army of full time workers needed to pick up behind the illegal litterers all year long. There should be no discussion. Pass the tax. The public will grow angry but it has no argument because just look at the roadsides and waterways in Mobile. Can't hide the ugly truth. Tell the complainers that when the public littering stops and there is no need for the services of litter removers, the litter tax will be rescinded. Many Mobile County waterways in Alabama are polluted with a sickening amount plastic and styrofoam and other of trash because of WEAK leadership at the city, county, and state levels. The public has money to buy these items so it can afford to pay an extra nickel or dime on those disposables to keep the roadsides and waterways clean all year long in Alabama. If Mobile County and the City of Mobile and the State of Alabama lack the money to remove the public's illegal pollution, the public shouldn't pollute in the first place. TAX THE PIGS to Keep Alabama Beautiful and to Keep Mobile Beautiful! |
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