Fast forward two years and the same scenario plays out. Heavy rain propels a parade of the public's illegal litter down the City of Mobile storm water ditches, canals, and rivers. Despite the efforts of Dog River Clearwater Revival, and ADEM fining and suing the City of Mobile over storm water management issues during these past two years, the parade of storm water trash in several of Mobile's urban waterways continue unconstrained. But, I expect that because litter is a fact of life so when it rains hard, litter will always get flushed into waterways.
What I cannot accept is the City of Mobile, the residents, the businesses, and all the environmental groups combined do not have a single person removing the dense trash from any of their waterways. The City says it doesn't clean its drainage canals. So, just who is responsible for cleaning polluted waterways? Who is responsible for the integrity of our waterways in Mobile? Does anyone know? Leave a comment. Someone still needs to be fired for ignoring continued violations of the Federal Clean Water Act.
BP stopped their pollution leak and has committed thousands of people to cleaning up their mess.
The City of Mobile has not stopped their waterway pollution and has ZERO people cleaning it up after rains.
Below Photos: Click on a thumbnail for a larger view photo gallery with commentary. Basically, the City of Mobile's only litter trap failed again. I'm no engineer but can see it will always fail in heavy rain due to the design flaw of being anchored in the middle of a high velocity stream. The basket gets pushed against four immoveable objects. The water level in the creek rises but the basket with buoys on it does not rise because of all the force against it. In kayaking terms, it is like getting caught against a strainer where because of the forces of water the kayak is impossible to move.
I don't think the people who are making the decisions about this litter trap realize what will happen if it ever works. A working litter trap in this creek will trap an enormous amount of natural debris along with a little bit of trash. The "debris-trash" jam could be hundreds of yards long or more. City workers will spend days if not weeks removing the tangled trashberg. Why use manpower to remove all the natural debris when someone can go along in a boat scooping up just the trash? I guess the City wants good weight statistics so they can say they removed "X" amount of trash tonnage. Meantime, here is more evidence how the Litter Trap REALLY performs...