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I investigated into why there would still be trash in Three Mile Creek after the big Toulminville and Three Mile Creek cleanup. Vice President Councilman Fred Richardson Jr, boasted about all the people the City had working the event. When I ask Mr. Richardson how many City workers were out in a boat removing trash from Three Mile Creek, like City people do when they don't want to tell the truth, they decide to go silent. The councilman's silence pretty much told me the answer. The factual evidence came from a Fox 10 News report as shown above. Look at just how many people it takes to remove garbage from a City of Mobile Park shoreline because the City Parks won't keep their park clean. How many were out on the water in a boat removing trash from Three Mile Creek? ZERO. NADA. ZILCH. Zero is the Typical effort of the CIty of Mobile puts into removing trash from trash impaired waterways. That is why the creeks in Mobile like Three Mile Creek are never clean. Where does much of the trash in Mobile's polluted waterways come from? I went for a bike ride today after having been on an enjoyable vacation Florida. The bike ride brought me back to the realities in Mobile. UGLY! Butt Ugly! Same ol Same ol... Click on any image below to bring up a photo gallery view to see larger size images with commentary. Seeing all that trash seen on the bike ride put me in a sour mood. Then I pass by this guy using a loud speaker to broadcast his preaching across the grocery store parking lot. Hehhehheh. Some of you probably know where I'm going with this. So I went over and politely ask the guy what church he was with. "Don't need a church if you have Jesus." Then he stuck the bible in the air and started babbling Jesus crap to me. That did it. "Hey mister. You really believe in that book?" Guy obvious does. "Can you tell me the ten laws or commandments that are at the foundation of the Bible?" More babble. "Can you name the Ten Commandments?" He says no but he can flip to the page and read them from the Bible. The goober does not know the Ten Commandments yet he is going to hold up a bible in my face and preach about Jesus? Who creates evil? The Lord. The Bible says so in Isaiah 45:7 Then the Lord puts the evil in grocery store parking lots to spew babble in order to get your money in his golden plastic garbage can sitting on a golden plastic pedestal while he tells you basic biblical morals don't matter. Jeesh!
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You'll never hear any transportation planners say it, but words don't always have to be spoken to be understood.
"DEATH TO PEDESTRIANS AND BICYCLISTS!" I was recently in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida and thought I was going to have a stroke. Vehicle traffic took a back seat to people on foot and bicycle. Bicycles had their own dedicated road physically separated from both the sidewalk and cars on main street. Heavily marked pedestrian crossings were up to 35 feet wide. Signs at intersections said, "Turning traffic MUST yield to Pedestrians." Wow! Not to mention there were other major east-west and north-south streets throughout the city with dedicated bicycle lanes like 1st Avenue, 3rd Street, and 31st Street. Nearby parks were bustling with walkers and bicyclers. Then we have Mobile. Above is a Google Earth image of the busy intersection at Beauregard Street and Water Street just north of the downtown Convention Center and several public parks. There is something seriously wrong with Mobile's transportation planning and construction when there is not a single crosswalk provided for people on foot at a ridiculously busy intersection. It should be noted that Mobile's main bus transit terminal is located 200 yards to the north of this intersection. A public housing project is located 200 yards to the northwest of this intersection. Bishop State Junior College is located less than a mile to the west. A middle school is one quarter mile to the southwest. That is a convenience store on the east side of the intersection. Lastly, the Historic GM&O building is on the northeast corner. There are sidewalks on Beauregard Street, Water Street, and Telegraph Road but no place to cross ANY of the streets at this intersection in a safe designated paint-marked crosswalk. Unbelievable. Nearest crosswalk to the Bus Station was at St. Anthony Street almost half a mile away. There are no bike lanes on Beauregard Street yet Google Maps indicates it is a Bicycle Friendly street. Idiots! Any street that has no bike lane or paved shoulder outside of the lane of traffic and is paved only wide enough for a single car is not bicycle friendly. Six inch curb and gutter roads are not friendly to bicyclists. Speeding 2-ton steel projectiles and slow moving bicycles simply cannot safely coexist in the same narrow lane, period. If a road can't be built in a safe manner, it should not be built. It is better to have fewer safe roads than all unsafe roads. Leaders in the South Alabama Regional Planning Commission, the Mobile Metropolitan Planning Organization, and City of Mobile Engineering need to pull their heads out of their ass and wipe the crap off their eyes so they can see. Or they can continue building and repaving all the roads in Mobile in the usual substandard way with the silent objective being, "Kill the Pedestrians and Bicyclists!" Doesn't matter if the objective of Death is on purpose or not. Death is what transportation planners are exposing pedestrians and bicyclists to by continuing to omit pedestrians and bicyclers from metropolitan transportation plans. No crosswalk? Jeesh... Someone over in St. Petersburg must have realized a Pedestrian and Bicycle safe city is a Friendly City. People like friendly cities - especially tourists. Who wants to live in or visit a city in which you can't move around safely? Maybe that explains why the population of Mobile actually decreased during the last ten year Census. The much anticipated Three Mile Creek Cleanup headquartered at Lake Drive Tricentennial Park occurred yesterday, November 23rd, 2013. Above are the before and after photos of City property across the creek from the park. A very noticeable difference. Fred Richardson, the City Council member who has never bothered to reply to any of my email or letter complaints about the trash pollution in Three Mile Creek watershed over the past two years, says, "We want canoes, kayaking, we want people to be able to walk and jog up and down Three Mile Creek, have picnics," as quoted from a FOX10tv report. Really Fred? You already have people trying to walk up and down the creek along the park trail, people trying to kayak Three Mile Creek. People are already able to do that. Trouble is, they can't enjoy the experience because the City won't keep Tricentennial Park clean nor will it remove the trash from the trash impaired waterway. Plus the City allows some garbage cans to overflow all year long at Tricentennial Park. Get a clue Councilmen. Nor is there a single trash filter in Three Mile Creek which has a serious storm water trash issue. Mow the trails, remove the trash and people will come. Sandy Stimpson, the new Mayor of Mobile says, "Start doing something instead of just talking about it." Stimpson's business, Scotch Gulf Lumber is located along Three Mile Creek not far downstream from Tricentennial Park. Stimpson owns the only boat ramp along Three Mile Creek (now off limits to motor boats) which is an area always littered with trash. I don't hold a lot of hope for ever seeing Three Mile Creek clean in my life time because the Mayor and the City think keeping waterways should be work done by volunteers and the the Mayor and City continue to ignore the trash on their own properties. Neither the City nor State has anyone working full time removing trash from Mobile's many trash impaired waterways. Because of that, storm water trash just builds up and gets denser along Mobile's many urban ditches, creeks, rivers, and canals. In essence, the City and State have planned and implemented a successful way to keep Mobile's waterways polluted with garbage year after year. Where is ADEM? They've fined the City of Mobile twice and nothing has happened to correct the problem of there being no one removing the trash from the trash impaired waterways. The City chooses to rely on Volunteers to keep its waterways clean and every event, including this one has failed to remove much of the trash from the waterways. The Three Mile Creek clean up event was organized by Mobile Bay National Estuary Program which is the same group that organized the "Clean Up the Bottom" event two years ago that failed so miserably to get the trash removed from Maple Street Canal - a 1/4 mile long canal which is still full of trash two years later despite multiple complaints to multiple agencies. I took a looksee today to see how effective yesterday's Three Mile Creek cleanup effort was. Indeed, the banks of Three Mile Creek along Lake Drive Tricentennial Park and on the other side of the creek on the City's property had been picked clean of most storm water debris. See the before and after photos above. 600 bags of trash removed is 600 bags of trash gone and the difference was very visible. That is the success. However, using volunteer effort once a year to remove trash from only a short portion of a large watershed is the same as putting a bandaid on someone who is cut from head to toe. Ignoring the rest of the garbage in and along Three Mile Creek for another 364 days is irresponsible. Now the public can sit on the bench at Tricentennial Park and look across Three Mile Creek at the shoreline of Mobile Infirmary, a shoreline still covered with trash because Mobile Infirmary seems to never remove the trash from their property's shoreline. I think something reeks of City Parks department corruption for it to take such a large contingency of volunteers to come in and remove the trash from a City Park shoreline because the Parks department ignored the trash all year long. Someone should be fired! Anyway, kudos to all the volunteers for doing the City's work and removing the land based trash near Lake Drive Tricentennial Park. Thanks. But, who is going to remove the trash from Three Mile Creek and Tricentennial Park Lake? Much of it is still there. Below are a few photos taken today. If you think the City of Mobile Parks Department neglect at Lake Drive Tricentennial Park is an isolated incident, look around Arlington Park, Municipal Park, and Dog River Park. No one removes the trash near the waterways at those parks either. The below photos were taken today at Dog River Park.
I don't know who mows Conception Street Road but their boss should be fired.
Leaving the roadside right-of-way looking like a fresh trash dump after mowing only entices those traveling the road to dump their trash too. Click on any thumbnail image below to see a larger view of Mobile's UGLY habit of ignoring litter. |
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