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.

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.

Because ADEM won't deal with all the abandoned tires despite complaints, there are definitely many breeding grounds for mosquitoes in that area.

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).

There are raccoons in the Three Mile Creek, One Mile Creek, and Maple Street Canal areas. This one was dead.

Apple snails are abundant as you can tell by all the pink egg sacks.

There are turtles in the creeks. This one just recently died. Could the plastic bag have played a role in its death?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How ironic, a City Of Mobile garbage container in front of City of Mobile property.

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.

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?

About a half dozen garbage bags can be seen in the water.

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.

City of Mobile beautiful shoreline. This is Owens School Park according to Google Earth. Parcel ID: R022906151000001.

City of Mobile beautiful shoreline. This is Owens School Park according to Google Earth. Parcel ID: R022906151000001.

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.

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 and Wildlife designation. ADEM calls Three Mile Creek an agricultural and industrial 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.