Kayak launch sites in Mobile?

The shoreline of the Mobile Convention would make a decent kayak launch spot for Mobile River access. Instead this small and rare City of Mobile shoreline sits idle and remains lined with recyceable trash all year long. What a pathetic waste of a valuable City of Mobile waterfront asset.

This is the trashy Mobile Bay shoreline seen from the wooden walkway at the City of Mobile's Arlington Park. Arlington Park is an embarrassing black eye on the City of Mobile's promised committment to deal with its community storm water trash pollution. Ignore, ignore and ignore the waterfront trash pollution year after year is a clear indicator of lousy City of Mobile leadership and a community that absolutely does NOT give a shit about their community's polluted waterfront properties despite Lawsuits and Fines by environmental groups.

No wonder why the bayside boat and kayak launch at McNally Park is rarely used. No one seems to maintain this City of Mobile Park launch site.

As usual, the fishing pigs who use the City of Mobile's Helen Wood Park keep it littered with trash. What kayaker trusts parking and launching a kayak at a poorly maintained trashy park?

I did find one kayak launch site in Mobile that was free of trash. Sadly the Robinson Bayou launch site is rarely used because parking for the relatively new launch site is poorly marked.

The community of Mobile should be happy that I am not in charge of the City's waterfront parks. If I was in charge all the parks would be shut down until the community implemented a plan to keep the parks free of litter. People will never appreciate the things they have until they loose them. I can guarantee you if all the waterfront parks in Mobile became no trespassing zones there would be public outcry, especially from the boaters who no longer have places to launch the expensive boats.

City leaders should be clear what they expect from their community with regards to trash in parks. As long as City of Mobile leaders allows its community to freely litter City parks without any consequence to those violating the law, the fishing pigs and retards in Mobile who break the litter law will continue to do so unabated. The continued trashing of City parks comes at significant cost to its taxpayers and tourism. 

What Mobile needs is some volunteer litter police in all its parks to document the litter law violators. If the volunteer's video of some asshole littering in a park results in a conviction and $500 fine, the City should reward the volunteer $100 for each conviction. I can guarantee you if the Mobile community was aware that people of all ages and colors were secretly trying to get video of people littering, littering in public parks would become a rare thing in Mobile.

I wonder how many "litter cams" the City of Mobile has deployed in littering hot spots...

Helen Wood Park Kayak Launch

It appears the Dog River Scenic Blueway committee proceeded with their plans to designate Helen Wood Park as an official Kayak/Canoe launch site. The new launch sign is up. Nice inviting sign to the unsuspecting kayaker.

Years ago someone dumped gravel along the shoreline on the park's north side making it a stable shoreline to launch a kayak from.

Today there is no sign of the gravel. The area is now overgrown with shoreline weeds because no one maintains the kayak launch site. To make matters worse, someone put out a line of concrete objects in the water now covered with sharp barnacles. People launching a kayak have a dangerous sharp obstacle to get over. Depending on the tide the concrete is sometimes submerged. Not a safe place to launch.

Of course, kayakers can try launching along Helen Wood Park's wooden bulkhead where often 1-2 foot waves from Mobile Bay pound with dangerous force. Not a safe place to launch.

The shoreline at Helen Wood Park is a dangerous area to launch a kayak from. I told the Dog River Scenic Blueway four years ago after doing extensive launch site research that Helen Wood Park was "not suitable" as a kayak launch. Especially when there are much safer places to launch from within about a mile of Helen Wood Park.

The Dog River Scenic Blueway group apparently got some grant money and they squandered it any way they could. Too bad the DRSB group can't find some grant money to maintain some of the kayak launch sites they developed and advertise.