05/04/2012 - Three Mile Creek Watershed After Heavy Rain

Header Image is the obligatory photo of some ducks. The shoreline is loaded with trash as usual.

Thought I'd do a little bird photography in Three Mile Creek today. Here is a photo of a Green Heron. Disregard the backgroun. 

Another Green Heron. Mobile seems to be attempting to change their image from "Azalea City" to "Trash City." Oink Oink!

A sandpiper like bird on Oil Boom that is still floating around in Three Mile Creek up by the Dr. Martin L. King Jr Avenue bridge.

See if you can find the bird in this photo. What kind is it?

A Great Blue Heron is fishing from a trash berg.

Another Great Blue Heron, this one in One Mile Creek where another oil boom floats around in the water.

A Great Egret feeds on insects along the bank of Three Mile Creek.

There is a Little Blue Heron rookery somewhere in the Three Mile Creek watershed. Beneath it, of course, is trash. Some of the nests have baby birds in them now.

An alligator resting on a floating island.

The banks of Three Mile Creek are blooming with Coreopsis flowers and new litter.

Welcome to Mobile where the EPA and ADEM and the City of Mobile are working hard to keep waterways clean because the Clean Water Act demands it. 

How many people do the EPA, ADEM and the City of Mobile have cleaning up this waterway garbage? Z E R O.

It is time I ask the Governor to mobilize the Alabama National Guard so this disaster area gets cleaned up because the City of Mobile won't do a darn thing about these trash islands other than add more trash to them. 

Shame on Mobile's leaders for having no one tending to Mobile's waterways.

As usual down by the Railroad Yard Trestle near Mobile River, there was the smell of petroleum in the air and a sheen on the water. There was not enough petroleum on the water surface to warrant a call to the National Response Center.

What is there to say about this photo except, "Thank you Mayor Sam Jones for your tough enforcement of litter laws."

This trash and debris was being held in place by the wind and was about 200 smoots from Mobile River. Soon as the wind changes direction there will be more islands of trash heading down Mobile River into Mobile Bay to be deposited along the Gulf Coast Beaches.

No change in Maple Street Canal or One Mile Creek. If anything, the water quality looks better (no questionable sheens) and there actually might be less trash along the shoreline thanks to fast flowing water moving the trash to Three Mile Creek.

Maple Street Canal could be a tourist attraction for birders but instead it is a trash dump. 

The heavy rain did not move any of this trash so it is here to stay in Mobile Baykeeper's back yard so to speak (a little over a mile from their office). Putting a litter trap upstream or downstream will not help remove any of this crap. It takes manual labor.