These photos were taken along a 3.5 mile stretch of Eslava Creek & Dog River.
It is the dreaded tidal zone where storm water litter accumulates after every big rain.
How many people does the City of Mobile have cleaning up this Disaster Zone? Zero.
The City of Mobile has another violation of the Clean Water Act in the (plastic) bag.
These photos were taken along a 3.5 mile stretch of Eslava Creek & Dog River. It is the dreaded tidal zone where storm water litter accumulates after every big rain. How many people does the City of Mobile have cleaning up this Disaster Zone? Zero.
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Storm water trash passing black line #7 is the sum total of the trash coming from points #1 thru #6 which are other tributaries and ditches. City of Mobile public works says the new Litter Trap is expected to catch 70 percent of the trash floating past Point 1 in Eslava Creek. Storm water trash will continue to flow freely from tributaries #2 thru #6 and can be expected to accumulate downstream in Dog River where it typically ends up after heavy rains. Downstream Dog River residents should not expect much more than a 12-20 percent reduction of litter if the City of Mobile can ever get the Litter Trap working. A costly project for such a low reduction of litter.
Why doesn't the City of Mobile just put a worker out in a boat removing the trash after each heavy rain? It would produce way better results and probably be would be cheaper than installing and maintaining a dozen litter traps... So, you've seen photos and videos of the accumulations of trash down in Dog River caused by heavy rains. Where does that trash come from? Click on a photo to see who is contributing to the pollution of Dog River. All this litter on commercial property violates City of Mobile municipal litter ordinances. Regardless of where the litter came from, the fact that the City is not enforcing its own municipal code is the major cause of trash accumulations downstream in Dog River. Someone in the City should be fired.
Dog River is the City of Mobile's garbage chute. Since the City of Mobile employs no one to remove trash after rain propels it through their storm water ditches, City officials obviously don't care about the Federal Clean Water Act. Not even after two law suits. The City of Mobile didn't have a single person out removing their City spawned garbage, again. The City of Mobile puts about 177 public works people out at each Mardi Gras parade. The City of Mobile put out exactly ZERO public works people to clean up after a rain generated litter parade. That is about as irresponsible as you can get. But, that is just my opinion. What do you think? Do you care if garbage rots in Mobile's waterways or not? Click on any thumbnail for a large photo gallery view. Light rain sent almost no trash downstream. The litter basket caught about a dozen pieces of trash.
I saw no garbage get by the litter trap today. What little garbage there was came from downstream outfalls. Sadly, the City of Mobile is doing nothing to remove trash downstream of the litter trap. Nice shoreline scenery downstream of the Litter Trap eh? Note: These photos shot yesterday are taken DOWNSTREAM of Mobile's new litter trap. A month has passed since documenting garbage flowing down Eslava Creek past the litter trap. Why hasn't the City public works removed any of this trash in the past month? Future generations are screwed because this generation has no one removing the garbage from waterways. Click on any photo below to bring up a larger photo gallery with comments.
How many City of Mobile workers does it take to remove about 2 bags of public litter from Eslava Creek? Nine to watch and learn. This is comical. No wonder why the City of Mobile has serious budget problems. Great photo by Tonya. It reminds me of scenes where a half dozen construction workers are seen standing around watching the one non-English speaking laborer doing all the shoveling. All chiefs and no indians. As the City workers stand with their hands in their pockets or lean on the bridge railing, below is a photo showing what the bank of Eslava Creek looks like 100 feet away from them. Why didn't a supervisor instruct the workers to remove the garbage from the creek banks around the litter trap installation? Only people who don't care would mow through mounds of trash and leave it there. Not a single public worker removes garbage from Mobile's urban waterways that I am aware of (except from this single trap). It is urban waterways where public litter accumulates after rains and no one removes it. A dirty city will leave vacationers with an ugly memory of their visit. But, maybe leaders do not want visitors to come to Mobile. Recent scuttlebutt among Dog River residents have them thinking the Litter Trap did its job because they did not see the usual litter in front of their properties where it normally ends up. A small stream of garbage was seen flowing down the creek only a few hundred yards downstream of the trap. Most of the trash coming down Eslava Creek was trapped on the shoreline before it ever reached the residential areas. A Bamboo Tree caught more trash than the Litter Trap. The other creeks that usually generate lots of trash did not generate much either and that was expected. Why?
Been dry so much of the rain was quickly absorbed. Tides that day (6th) were minimal. Currents were minimal. Muddy water barely reached Dog River Park. Water rose only about a foot up by Halls Mill road. A gully washer can raise water levels 5 feet or more and cause a current strong enough to make it impossible to paddle upstream. Strong water velocity is what carries trash down stream and velocity was weak on Dec. 6th. Many factors play a role where the public litter ends up after a gully washer - like tide, water level rise, and wind, but predictably "floatables" end up accumulating somewhere along a 3 mile stretch above or below Dog River Park. I'm betting the usual downstream residents who normally get trashed by heavy rains will be in for an ugly surprise when the heavy rains come next summer. As long as no one is removing the garbage from area waterways and creek banks the garbage will continue its trek downstream when the conditions are right because the shorelines are currently loaded with plenty of garbage. How much? One volunteer this summer was filling one large bag of garbage for about every 6 feet of shoreline he cleaned. Unfortunately he quit and the areas he cleaned already have new accumulations of litter. In my opinion, the litter trap method of cleaning waterways will not solve the downstream litter problem unless the City puts in a litter trap in front of every stream propelling significant amounts of public litter downstream. Based on the way the City is placing litter traps now, they need at least four more to capture the garbage inundating just the Dog River Park vicinity. From where the current litter trap was installed in Eslava Creek by Holcombe Avenue, they need another litter trap 100 yards downstream to catch the garbage from the huge double barrel box culvert that drains the Holcombe Avenue area. Then then need another litter trap 0.6 miles downstream of the double box culvert to catch the garbage from a drainage canal that drains the Birdville and Michigan Avenue area. Then they need another litter trap 1.0 miles downstream from that drainage canal to catch the garbage that comes from I-65 East Beltline Highway, Highway 90 and all the way from Bel Air Mall (Bolton Branch). Then they need another litter trap 0.5 miles downstream from Bolton Branch to catch the garbage that comes from Dauphin Island Parkway and Perimeter Road by Brookley (Rabby Creek). Then they need to remove the garbage that is currently in the water and on the creek bank so that there are no more piles of garbage to be carried downstream by a heavy rain. Installing a litter trap without removing the downstream garbage is like a doctor leaving garbage in a wound he or she sutures up - a dumb thing to do. With those four additional litter traps, and a garbage free creek, then and only then will the residents down around the vicinity of Dog River Park get some relief from storm water runoff generated litter. Those five traps would filter out most but not all of of the trash affecting just one tributary on Dog River. Unfortunately, there are about a half dozen more tributaries in the Dog River Watershed, some suffering the same garbage problems. Plus, Mobile has several other Watersheds each having several of their own tributaries. Putting in one litter trap on a County wide drainage system that has no filters and is bleeding garbage is like putting a single dinky spot bandaid on someone who has a cut from head to toe. The intention may good but the outcome is predictable. No change. The bleeding of garbage into State Waters will continue not only in Dog River Watershed, but also in Three Mile Creek watershed, Garrows Bend watershed and all the way down to the Bayou La Batre watershed. Hence my opinion that Mobile simply cannot afford to install and maintain enough litter traps to do an adequate job at filtering out the garbage from its many waterways. They would get much better results by employing people to physically remove the garbage from the waterways. If the waterways were clean, it could be something done only after heavy rains but because the pollution has been ignored for so long it is becoming a What a novel idea - using manual labor to remove the public garbage from waterways that are full of garbage. One Public Service worker could keep most of Mobile waterways clean all year long for $20,000 to $30,000. City and County got no money to clean their waterways? It is public trash polluting these waterways so pass a tax on the containers polluting the waterways to fund removal of the public pollution. Naaa, let's leave all of Mobile's urban waterways full of garbage so it will attract visitors. Let's leave the garbage in the water and on the creek banks so the trash will continue to pollute State waters downstream which is a violation of the Clean Water Act. Naaa, instead of hiring someone to clean up the garbage, let's do nothing and then waste tax money by paying thousands of dollars in fines for violations and paying expensive lawyer fees to ward off law suits. Naaa, let's waste untold man hours dealing with MS4 issues and the wrath of ADEM who keeps getting inundated with complaints about waterway pollution that are being ignored. The nine what appear to be city workers pictured above are supposedly learning how to remove trash from the litter trap - a trap that may only have to be emptied a couple times a year depending on significant rainfall events. If only Mobile could learn from other cities that use litter traps and get them emptied for free while incorporating significant a educational program into the mix teaching about about the detrimental effects littering has on the environment. Click Here to read more. If you keep doing things the way you always have, you'll always get the same results. We need radical change to alter public habit concerning convenience containers and illegal littering. If leaders really wanted to solve the problem at the source, they need to use consequence to change peer pressure and expectations. People litter because individually there is almost no chance they will get caught and even if someone sees them few will say anything. Collectively people ignore the roadside garbage because almost all can say they did not personally put it there so it is not their problem. Simply put, there is no peer pressure mechanism to stop the littering habit no matter how much money you spend on education. The solution is for a leader with big nads to stand up and say, "We're closing this road, or that one, until our litter crew safely removes your garbage." This includes the state highways and interstates. Closing roads while a crew goes from one end to the other removing the public's garbage from the roadsides and ditches sets the consequence. I bet a high percentage of people would change their habit if they knew their life could be severely inconvenienced at times by road closures. Seriously, do you know how much tax money is wasted just to remove public trash from the sides of roads? The second thing to do is fire the public works director in Mobile because plenty of the garbage in the roadside ditches come from City and commercial garbage truck operation spills which happen often. I have never once seen a worker stop to pick up the trash his truck left. If the City doesn't care, why should its constituents? Change starts at the top. Although not a gully washer there was about 1.5 inches of rain as a fast moving cold front moved through this morning. It did generate some water in the ditches so I did a site visit to the new Eslava Creek Litter Trap which yielded some interesting observations. There were 4 (FOUR) City of Mobile vehicles in the area, one stopping in the middle of the bridge to get out and look at the Litter Trap. I wonder how much gas money that wasted considering none of them actually did anything.
First odd thing - something was bubbling to the surface like blobs of oil behind the litter trap. They probably put grease on the unit so it can rise and fall as the water levels change. Second odd thing was more trash went underneath the trap and continued on downstream as compared to the amount of trash the trap actually captured. That would be less than a 50% capture rate based on my short observation. A bamboo tree downstream of the litter trap caught more trash than the Litter Trap. When the next heavy rain comes along, all that garbage by the bamboo tree will be carried on down into Dog River because the City still does not have a single person removing garbage from its creeks and rivers. The costly Litter Trap removed 1-2 bags of garbage today matching what one laborer could do in an hour. The City of Mobile now has to use an expensive crane, a crew to get the crane there, man hours to do the work to remove the garbage from the Litter Trap and man hours to haul off the garbage. The cost to remove those 2 bags of garbage using Dog River Clearwater Revival's demanded Litter Trap is enormous and Eslava Creek is still sending garbage downstream. The reality of garbage in the water is - as long as no one is removing it, the garbage will stay trapped in the tidal zone until a gully washer sends it downstream. Based on today's kayak trip there is no change in Eslava Creek, Bolton Branch, nor Dog River - the garbage is still there. Here are some photos taken today. The City of Mobile recently installed a Litter Trap after being threatened with a 50 Million dollar lawsuit over violations of the Clean Water Act. The new Litter Trap does absolutely nothing to remove the garbage currently in the river downstream which can be seen in the below photos.
A news reporter contacted me and wanted to do an interview on my thoughts about this new litter trap. I declined. I'd rather keep taking photos of what the City is NOT doing and what reporters are NOT showing. Here is my take on the litter trap. It is a small bandaid on a single waterway in a large watershed gushing trash after rains and it will not provide much relief to downstream residents in my opinion. Plenty of trash will be washed into the same waterway just downstream from the litter trap location. The lawyers got their money. The City of Mobile conceded and installed a litter trap in a spot guaranteed to allow litter to continue to be flushed into Dog River. ADEM is continuing to monitor Mobile's NPDES permit compliance. Despite the media fanfare for the new litter trap and ADEM's monitoring, the problem of garbage in Dog River, as you can tell from these photos, has not been resolved at all. The lazy ass workers who installed the litter trap did not even bother to remove the garbage from the creek bank where they were working but you won't see video of that on the news. To my knowledge Mobile still has ZERO people employed to remove garbage from Mobile's polluted waterways, other than the maintenance of the one litter trap. Really? No wonder why Dog River's shoreline is full of garbage. When the oceans are completely covered in minute particles of plastic affecting the sun's reflectivity and the ocean's temperature, the consequence for future generations may be severe. At the rate we're ignoring waterway pollution, the consequences may come sooner than expected. If you lined up just the water bottles produced in one year, they would stretch over 4,700,000 miles. To put that in perspective, the plastic water bottles would stretch from the Earth to the Moon and back about 10 times. Houston, we have a problem. Meantime, I pessimistically expect to video document Mobile's public garbage flowing over this cheap plastic litter trap after the next heavy rain event. The solution to the local waterway pollution problem is to put someone out there full time removing the garbage from area waterways. To continue to ignore hazardous material rotting in our waterways is criminal in my opinion and a violation of the federal Clean Water Act. Click on a photo below to view larger images with commentary. Over the past year there has been plenty of documentation of streams of garbage entering Eslava Creek severely polluting Dog River downstream. Where does it all come from? Here is one example: The vacant lot across from Wal-mart that a development company is holding onto, is littered with trash. City of Mobile Parcel Number: R022806244000002.003 Owner: Delaney Development, Inc Mobile Municipal Tax Paid: $2,150.12 Walmart has money. The City has money. The property owner is responsible by city code to keep their right of way free of litter. Yet here is all this garbage, some of it already poised to go down into a drainage inlet that leads to Eslava Creek a few hundred feet away. Solution: Shut down the road in front of this property until the garbage is removed. If Wal-mart wants to stay in business, they will have an employee out there removing their Wal-mart trash to get the road opened quickly. Use video cameras to document where the litter is coming from and then hold the guilty party accountable to keep the property clean for the next year. |
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