03/18/2012 - Three Mile Creek & One Mile Creek

An article on March 17th, 2012 by Ben Raines, Mobile Press Register, talks about how Groups want to turn Three Mile Creek into a park.

Local, state and federal officials toured Three Mile Creek on Friday and included Rae Richardson with the City of Mobile, and Nancy Stoner - a senior EPA official. Ben quotes Stoner as saying that a first step toward creating a Park would be conducting a survey of wildlife. Yup, here we go with wasting taxpayer money on studies instead of using taxpayer money to remove the trash. Heck, I can tell you what kind of wildlife is present in that area. Look at the first six photos below for a sample of what life you can see.

Local, State, and Federal officials and local environmental groups should be ashamed of themselves. Get the trash out of the water and wetlands FIRST before considering spending money to construct a Park! Mobile is about to close some of its parks due to budget problems, so to consider constructing a new Park is pure stupid.

The article had a photo showing the group walking past a "heap of stuffed animals and garbage that volunteers had pulled out of the creek." Volunteers didn't pull an entire bag of stuffed animals out of the creek. Someone drove into the vacant lot and dumped their household garbage there. Look at the photos below to see what is in the creek. Anytime you want to go kayaking to see what I'm seeing in the creeks Ms. Stoner, I have a spare kayak.


(1) Above left: Because ADEM won't deal with all the abandoned tires despite complaints, there are definitely many breeding grounds for mosquitoes in that area. (2) Above right: There are crabs (8 visible in this photo) along the banks of the creeks. If you look closely at the plastic bottle with the yellow label, 9 states offer a refund if you recycle this bottle. Alabama isn't one of them. Contact your Alabama legislators and encourage them to pass a disposable container recycle bill (bottle bill).


(3) Above left: There are raccoons in the Three Mile Creek, One Mile Creek, and Maple Street Canal areas. This one was dead. (4) Above right: Apple snails are abundant as you can tell by all the pink egg sacks.


(5) Above left: There are turtles in the creeks. This one just recently died. Could the plastic bag have played a role in its death? (6) Above right: Here is a turtle that was very sick with fluids dripping from its swollen eyes, barely able to move, and looked like it was about to expire. Are the turtles dying from natural causes or from cancer? Looks like a reason to fund another expensive study of the wildlife of the area to see how the trash is affecting them instead of removing the trash.


(7) Above left: Could chemicals in the water be hurting turtles? Here is a can that says it contains chemicals known to cause cancer. Xylene, Toluene, and Acetone are listed as some of the hazardous chemicals. When a can rusts the remaining chemicals inside will disperse into the water and air. (8) Above right: Most pressurized spray cans that blow never show signs of what happened however, in this photo the results of a can that rusted through while on a creek bank can clearly be seen.


(9) Above left: Did this floating sheen come from a spray can or is it organic? If the waterway wasn't currently used as a garbage dump, that question would not need to be asked. (10) Above right: Here is a little waterfall coming from the old Hickory Street Landfill into Maple Street Canal. I wonder what chemicals lurk in that water. ADEM officials have ignored my email complaints and concern about the old Hickory Street Landfill. Looks like I need to write a paper letter.

(11) Above left: How ironic, a City Of Mobile garbage container in front of City of Mobile property. (12) Above right: Trash piling up in the water at the RR track by Telegraph Road. That RR trestle is a blessing because it blocks large trash bergs from entering Mobile River.


(13)(14) Above left and right: This polluted waterway (Maple Street Canal) is a little over ONE mile from Mobile Baykeeper's office. These pictures show how effective Mobile Baykeeper is at keeping their nearby downtown creeks clean. Local environmental groups, and local, state, and federal officials should be ashamed of themselves. When are you people going to get this trash removed instead of holding fund raisers and open houses, taking boat tours, proposing studies, making videos, and talking about constructing new parks even though local, state, and federal governments are broke?


(15) Above left: About a half dozen garbage bags can be seen in the water. (16) Above right: The tragedy of this wasteful situation is the creek beds are littered with rubbish too (pardon the pun) and the poor turtles have to live in it.


(17)(18) Above left and right: City of Mobile beautiful shoreline. This is Owens School Park according to Google Earth. Parcel ID: R022906151000001.


(19)(20) Above left and right: Some trash bergs have a lot of green vegetation, others don't. If this pollution comes from the public, the public should have to pay to get it cleaned up and kept clean. Most of the trash I see coming from vehicles is coming from trash hauling trucks, so, if trash hauling trucks are a major cause of the litter, they should have to pay to get the trash removed from local waterways.


(21) Above left: In Ben's article Casi Callaway of Mobile Baykeeper was noted as saying about Three Mile Creek, “Think of how great it would be if people could use the creek. It’s right downtown." Casi must not get out of her downtown office enough to know people are already using the downtown creeks for fishing and kayaking, even though ADEM doesn't give the creek a Fish & Wildlife designation. ADEM calls Three Mile Creek an agricultural creek. To be fair, not every area of these creeks are covered with trash as you can see in this photo, but the shorelines are. (22) Above right: Header image is a merge of two photos taken in Maple Street Canal showing how Mobile is taking care of its property, even after multiple complaints about the litter on their property.

03/12/2012 - Upper Dog River

(1) Above left: I didn't have to paddle very far north of Dog River Park to see the result of this morning's brief rain. It wasn't gully washer type rain so trash was light. (2) Above right: A Dog River resident faces having to move litter away from their dock after every rain storm. Instead of it being retirement on Dog River, it is nightmare on Dog River.


(3) Above left: The incoming tide pushed this trash into a little cove. (4) Above right: Not only does someone have trash on their shoreline, but they have to look at this trash berg stuck in the middle of the river.


(5) Above left: A fallen tree does well at trapping some of Mobile's drainage ditch litter ... until the tide pushes it back up river. (6) Above right: This is the beauty you get for paying higher taxes for waterfront property in Mobile. Instead of putting up fences to keep in dogs, you have to put up fences to keep out the litter.


(7) Above left: Another corner on Dog River where the tide has pushed litter. (8) Above right: A wood duck and his wife. That is a television in the water behind them. Believe I'll start a poll. How long will the TV sit rotting in the water before the authority in charge of the waterway decides to remove it? If you say, Never, you might be the winner.


(9) Above left: It is rather sad that when I finally do get a closeup photo of a wood duck, the scene is ruined by litter. Thanks Jonesy! (10) Above right: If I was taking photos in the middle of the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, I could spend an entire year up there and probably not be able to get a photo of a turtle surrounded by trash. Thanks to Mobile's broken storm water system, it is difficult to photograph wild life in upper Dog River without there being trash in the photo. Yeah, I keep whining, but let me remind you, some of the litter has hazardous chemicals in it.


(11) Above left: A couple of red-eye'd coot seeing green. (12) Above right: Another wood duck photo with the obligatory background. Keep Mobile Beautiful my a$$...it is more like the City Council wants Mobile to be known as the trashiest city in the country. Ahh, I remember back in the day where there was no litter and Mobile was known as "Azalea City" and everyone wanted to live here.


(13) Above: Header Image is a panorama merge of 3 photos. The scene depicts the failure of modern land based automated trash collection systems. It also shows the result of not having any water based trash removal system whatsoever. What would your yard look like if no one ever came by to pick up the trash? Like this? Who is in charge of this waterway? City of Mobile? Corps of Engineers? Fish & Wildlife? Coast Guard? Marine Police? Navy? Why aren't they removing the hazardous materials out of the water on a regular basis? Someone should be fired!


(14) Above: A short video showing litter seen in Dog River after today's rain.

The leaders cry, "Don't expect any funding next year, we're broke." Mobile is so broke they are cutting city employee work hours and may shut down parks. Oh, speaking of parks... Mobile found 1 Million to buy Dead Lake Marina and found another 1.5 Million to renovate the Marina. With Alabama oil money, another 2.1 Million was found to build a boat ramp in Baldwin County. So much for fiscal responsibility when money is tight. Houses will be burning to the ground because of planned fire station brownouts, but at least Mobile will have an expensive boat ramp so people can access it's polluted waterways. If you want to bring people back to Mobile, get the LITTER cleaned up!

Congressman Joe Bonner is quoted as saying, "There is a reason people live by the water, and that’s the love of nature and the environment." Hey Mr. Bonehead, have you ever been to Mobile's urban waterways? That is the reason people are leaving Mobile.

03/09/2012 - Upper Dog River

(1) Above left: The trash from up stream that had gathered in this canal has spread out over the past month. (2) Above right: Wind blows surface trash as far is it will go, usually a corner or under limbs.


(3) Above left: I was up in this area the other day taking photos and thought this black object was a cushion. It is actually a TV. The nearby property owner has been seeking help to get the trash removed, along with this television which is hazardous to the environment. The people they have been contacting, like Mobile 311, haven't been of any help. Why isn't there an agency taking care of local waterways? (4) Above right: This trash, transported from upstream to this canal, represents a broken system.

It is like buying a home, hooking up to a sewer system and paying a monthly fee for the sewer service. And when you come home from work, you look in your bathroom, and the floor is filled with trash. You call the sewer service to complain and ask someone to come clean up the mess that came up from their sewer pipe and they say, "just because we maintain the pipes doesn't mean we're responsible for what goes through them. Your mess is not our problem." That is wrong.


(5) Above left: Happy Birthday polluted water. (6) Above right: As the tides rise and fall in conjunction with blowing winds, storm water trash eventually gets moved from the surface of the water to someone's private property. I can guarantee you if you came home and often found your bathroom floor littered with trash that came up out of the toilet, MAWSS would be getting sued by a lot of outraged citizens.

So why aren't area residents who are continually subjected to the trash pollution from Mobile's storm water system suing to get some relief from all the trash? Maybe they don't know they can sue.

As a citizen, you have a right to file a lawsuit against Mobile and ADEM due to aesthetic, conservational, recreational, or physical injuries as a result of the Clean Water Act violations. Clearly, when you have hazardous material floating in the water and no one will do anything about it, there are some Clean Water Act violations! Here, read up on your right to sue at this link: Click Here. How do you spell trash relief? L-A-W-S-U-I-T

According to Senator Jeff Sessions who just replied to my complaints about trash in the water in another creek, ADEM has primary responsibility to address the pollution in the water issues. He encourages me to work with ADEM, the City of Mobile, and other local offices to see that the trash issues are addressed appropriately. Well Senator, I've been contacting ADEM, the City of Mobile, and other local offices and guess what, the trash is still floating in the water and the trash proliferates in the privately owned wetlands.

President Barack Obama recently replied to my complaints. Barack says, "My Administration is taking action to protect and restore our land, water, and air." Well Mr. President, why is there still hazardous material trash still floating in our local waters after multiple complaints to multiple agencies?

It is time to replace the current administration from top to bottom.

03/07/2012 - Moore Creek

(1) Above left: The City of Mobile dredging people managed to re-float their dredging pipe and floats which had sunk during the last heavy rain storm. The pipe can now be seen blocking boat traffic in Moore Creek again. (2) Above right: Not much change in this dead dog since Feb 3rd as it continues to negatively embellish the scenery of the nearby Moore Creek residents in more ways than one.

Think Aroma of Decay... Hey, that sounds like a slogan for a new cologne or perfume that I could give to my favorite elected officials at Christmas time who continue to bow down to the corporations instead of the people they represent. Yeah, Aroma of Decay, bottled in Moore Creek, Mobile, Alabama would make a fine gift for state leaders who can't seem to help get the pollution removed out of Alabama waterways. Sending them a bottle of Aroma of Decay would be my way of saying thank you for caring for our environment so much that we currently have ZERO public employees removing river trash that continues to come from Mobile's maintained storm water system. Thank you for having ZERO curb side recycling available to most Mobile residents. This scent is for you. Hehehe. I know...this post is a real stinker eh? All in jest.

Back to reality, unfortunately, when dead bodies end up in water, especially in acidic swamps, the skin on the deceased animal can last for a very long time. Bodies of people who lived thousands of years ago have been found over the years in acidic bogs so well preserved that it BOGgles the mind. (Sorry for that pun.) Ancient Bog Bodies This doggie may be around for a long time.


(3) Above left: This trash berg lingers, but it does function as a food station for critters like this 6 spotted fishing spider seen in these two photos and water fowl that dine on embedded vegetation. (4) Above right: Plant life continues to reach for the sun while anchoring its root in the nearest floating styrofoam. I smile knowing life will go on after humans are extinct. Well, maybe. What if there were no bees to propagate plant life?

When the birds and the bees start dying in quantity, mankind might be in trouble, right? What say? Our bee population is down 50%? Not to worry, Alex Wild cuts through all the misinformation the Internet is known for. We're still okay.

In a nutshell, if we don't start living in harmony with the earth and the other life on it, we're going to suffer the consequences. We've already allowed corporations to ruin our food supply in America at their profit and we are already suffering the consequences of their experiments on the American people. You can watch Robin's short TED speech on YouTube to hear enough about your food supply to make you red in the face and cause you to change your eating habits.

If you want to put an end to plastic bottle pollution, the solution isn't to pick up each and every bottle that gets discarded and waste money moving them to a distant landfill. The solution isn't to find grant money to fund a one time cleanup of area waterways and beaches only to waste more money moving the plastic to a distant landfill. The solution is curb side recycling everywhere and putting a bounty on each one of those disposable containers, glass, plastic, and styrofoam, so that it encourages you to take it to a recycling machine in your nearest grocery store. Yeah, that will require legislation from leaders not owned by the corporations that paid their way into office.

Huh? You mean they got recycle machines like that already in place in stores? Yeah, we are so far behind the rest of the world in Mobile that it makes me want to move away like many other people I know are doing or have done. That's why the population of Mobile is going down instead of up. No one wants to be in a trashy city run by leaders who can't manage money and who have no backbone. Maybe I can give a few bottles of Aroma of Decay to my local elected officials, too. Sorry, my stinking discontentment for Mobile, the Port of Decay, rises with the increasing density of trash in the water.


(5) Above: Header image is a photo of a green headed red-orange eye'd wood duck hiding behind the orange and green shoreline trash. I wonder if those trash colors are pleasing to its eye. Maybe someone can get congress to fund a million dollar project to study which colors are pleasing to aquatic birds. That way we can encourage plastic bottle makers to use the right plastic bottle colors to make the birds happy. Then someone else can fund a project to study what those new plastic dye colors may do to the fish. Oh, then we need a billion dollar study to see if the new plastic bottles will ever biodegrade - that'll take a LONG time... Then we need to fund a project to have researchers to study the results of the other researchers. When it comes time to publicly fund a project to simply remove the trash so that there is no need for all the pollution research projects, "Oh, we're out of funds." When private funds are found to help get the trash removed from the waters, well, if you don't bus in America's current slaves (Mexicans), who are willing to work as under paid slaves, then there won't be anyone to remove the trash from the water. Why? The majority of Americans are so fat that manual labor is too much for their heart. How'd they get so fat? Well, some say it's from the chemicals used to make plastic... It's a vicious cycle. The universities doing health studies win. The corporations increasing their profits win. The people who bottle your local ground water for 6 cents per gallon and charge you $1.59 for 24 ounces win. Only humans are idiot enough to pay 3 times the cost of gasoline for mostly unregulated water that a chocolate company (Nestle, a company recently fined for labor violations connected to using foreign workers as slave labor thru layers of subcontractor schemes) siphons from your ground water, who then puts the water into a PLASTIC bottle made from petroleum, and sells back to you at an unheard of markup rate, without the quality of the water being regulated like your tap water is. You lose.

03/05/2012 - Three Mile Creek and One Mile Creek

I kayaked Three Mile Creek and One Mile Creek to see if any of the environmental groups or any of the government agencies have done anything after complaints to all of them about the pollution in One Mile Creek and adjacent wetlands. No change noticed. No one has cleaned up the pollution yet. Instead of listening to the crackling sound of reeds warming in the sun, today all I heard was the popping sound of plastic bottles warming in the sun. Here are some photos showing the sad scenery up in this area.


(1) Above left: A couple of Coot were eating near a trashberg. (2) Above right: A turtle somehow got a plastic bottle wedged beneath it as it was climbing out of the water to get some sun.


(3) Above left: A broken Cathode Ray Tube (hazardous material) from an old TV. This just proves some of the "floatables" are hazardous to public health. (4) Above right: Despite all the money, all the poisonous chemicals dumped into the water, and all the manpower, here are pink Apple Snail eggs on a RR bridge piling just west of the I-165 crossing.


(5) Above left: A floating trashberg east of I-165. (6) Above right: Someone finally removed most of the tires from the SW corner vacant lot at Conception Street. Thank you Tom! (But, one tire is still visible in this photo - they missed one.) Sadly, someone else decided to illegally dump their trash next to the water. There seems to be no deterrent to curtail the throwing of trash out the car window or the dumping a pickup load of trash on a vacant lot.


(7) Above left: Another floating trashberg, this one with a dead animal attached to it. (8) Above right: Speaking of dead animals, this beaver won't be padding around anymore. I would not recommend kayaking Mobile's urban waterways because in addition to the gross scenery of dead animals, it may be hazardous to your health.


(9) Above left: A live Apple Snail hitching a ride on a trashberg is visible on the bottom of the photo near the middle. There were several snails on this trashberg. The snails have their own floating island, complete with live vegetation to feed on. Where it goes, only the tide knows. (10) Above right: A black-crowned night heron next to a gas container.


(11) Above left: All trash, like this shoe, will be assimilated into the environment. (12) Above right: For unknown reasons, I see a lot of dead turtles in One Mile Creek. Could it be something that has been assimilated in the water that killed this turtle? Hmmm.


(13) Above left: A new football recently added to a pile of old trash. That means this is an ACTIVE trash dump. Hello, ADEM? Anybody home? The City of Mobile storm water system continues to actively pollute our environment. (14) Above right: This isn't a scene from a third world county, it is a view of waterfront property owned by the City of Mobile. The City of Mobile won't keep its own property free of litter, so it is easy to see why the obscure Mobile Urban Development Urban Forestry Safety Unit is failing miserably to enforce litter laws. Don't believe me? Drive around the streets in Mobile and you can't help but see the abundant litter.


(15) Above left: With Mobile's urban creeks being used as trash dumps there is no telling whether the stuff floating on the surface is organic or chemical. (16) Above right: A blind alligator. I wonder what made it blind - could it be chemicals from the hazardous trash that got released onto the water's surface?


(17) Above left: A Gator and a Croc enjoy time together. Hahahah! Too funny! Really, I do not stage these photos. (18) Above right: I will occasionally rotate cans to see what is in them. Here is left over wasp spray and brake fluid which will eventually be assimilated into the water - YOUR water. The City of Mobile doesn't feel it necessary to remove hazardous litter from its waterways. There is a serious flaw in the Public Works trash collection system because leaving hazardous trash in public waterways is WRONG. All water is interconnected. Someone should be fired and all the Mobile elected officials need to be replaced!


(19) Above left: It is a sad thing NOT to be able to get any decent photos of swamp life in Mobile's urban creeks because of all the storm water runoff generated trash cluttering the surrounding area. (20) Above right: An alligator with an injured tail or maybe it is a cancer caused from all the chemicals in the water.


(21) Above: Header image is a photo of a trashberg destined for Mobile Bay and eventually the Gulf Coast beaches. All you beach residents can say, "Thank You Mayor Sam Jones for your top priority on strict litter enforcement," and "Thank You Mobile Group Engineering for your expensive expertise and careful management of Mobile's storm water system pollution problems." Mobile Groups' web site is as broken as the storm water system.