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.