Mobile Bay Environment 

Mobile Bay Environmental History

• “In the early 1960s, a time of great industrial prosperity, our city’s one true skyscraper went up alongside the Mobile River. Pouring the foundation for the 34-story First National Bank Building proved tricky: Mobile lacks the granite bedrock of Manhattan, so expensive pilings had to be stuck down deep in soft Delta mud. But times were fat. Industrialists had extracted great wealth from the Mobile-Tensaw Delta. Now Mobile’s elite could gather in the Bienville Club, the glittering bank building’s top-floor tenant, and dine on well-marbled steaks. For the first time, they could peer down at the devil’s bargain they had made. A corridor of heavy industry had been carved out of the Delta wilderness. Chemical manufacturers polluted the Mobile River unabashedly, dumping toxic metals and pesticides into riverbank landfills and hoping the pollution would disappear in the muck or float away with flood currents. It didn’t. Downriver, Mobile’s shipyards were busy as ever, pouring oil, grease, paint and other wastes into the water off Pinto Island. Vessels moored nearby at the Alabama State Docks found the Mobile River an ideal sewage ditch. The lower Delta had to absorb millions of gallons of bilge water well into the 1970s. Meanwhile, the State Docks was sketching out plans for its new McDuffie Island Coal Terminal, an open-air giant that would deliver Alabama coal to the world. Finished in 1975, the terminal covered most of the island and fouled the waters of neighboring Garrows Bend, which now have some of the most highly acidic pH levels in Mobile Bay. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working at the behest of the State Docks and city leaders to make Mobile a deep-water port, scoured out the channel bottom and pumped spoil onto all available marshlands along the river.  The consequences were dramatic. Coal runoff and shipyard wastes had created sporadic dead zones in the river between Pinto Pass and Garrows Bend. The Corps’ dredge spoil made silent mounds out of once-vibrant wetlands. And chemical wastes spread through the swamp. In 1970, 51,000 acres of the Delta were closed to commercial fishing because of mercury contamination.” – Daniel Cusick, PR 1/12/99
• Throughout the 1970s, there was little overt opposition to the area’s heavy reliance on chemical and paper industries.  
• In the early 1970s, Myrt Jones, a registered nurse and housewife, joined Save Our Bay to fight Mobil Oil Company drilling in Mobile Bay. She subsequently joined the Mobile Bay Audubon Society and became its president. 
  • “Alabama led the way in changing the industry’s approach to drilling practices 30 years ago when the Mobile Bay natural gas field was opening up. Inspired by the opposing spirit of then Audubon Society chair, Myrt Jones, the state had balked at granting permits to Mobil Oil to drill in the mouth of the Bay – although they had eagerly sold the rights to drill several years before for some serious cash. The opposition at the time had been fueled by the dramatic oil spill off the coast of California near Santa Barbara. The moratoria off the west coasts of California and Florida can all be traced back to that incident in 1969. Mobil had predictably become tired of the state’s stalling and had simply said – “Give us the permits to drill or our money back”. A legal settlement was brokered by the scientists at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab, which would provide a highly technical environmental monitoring program of a “zero discharge” agreement for drilling activities in state waters. The companies were granted permits to drill only after they signed an agreement to capture absolutely everything, including rainwater, from the drilling rigs and transport it by barge to treatment facilities at the head of the Bay.” – George Crozier, Lagniappe, 8/12/08
• 1983 The first major environmental mobilization occurred after Chemical Waste Management announced plans to store three million gallons of toxic waste in north Mobile for incineration on ships in the Gulf of Mexico. Notwithstanding a costly public relations campaign to win support for the incineration plan, over 4,000 residents turned out at federal EPA public hearings to protest, eventually forcing the company to withdraw (Bailey and Faupel 1989).  
• 1992 Plans to fuel a cement kiln in Theodore with hazardous waste were halted after years of local opposition 
• In Alabama, as in much of the Deep South, lax environmental regulation and generous tax waivers have attracted industries fleeing stricter laws and tax policies elsewhere (Cobb 1982).  
• The president of the Medical Society of Mobile County, Regina Benjamin, M.D., wrote a letter in 1997 to the president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce stating “We feel that it is not in the best interest of the citizens of Mobile County that the Chamber of Commerce continue to pursue the growth and development of heavy industry and specifically chemical and petrochemical companies. The further degradation of the environmental health and ecosystem of the county would not be served by the continued promotion of such industries. We would, therefore, urge the Chamber of Commerce to focus its economic development on non- polluting business and industries.”

Mobile County Toxic Releases

• Mobile County ranked eighth in the nation for total toxic releases to the air in the EPA’s Toxics Release Inventory (TRI) for the year 2000.
• Environmental Defense maintains a TRI inventory (currently updated to 2002) at www.scorecard.org. Planet Hazard maps toxic emission sites

Carcinogens

• According to the Alabama Department of Public Health, residents of zip codes adjacent to chemical plants in north Mobile County experienced cancer mortality rates four times higher than state averages. The state lacked a tumor registry until 1998. – Moberg 2002 
  • Alabama’s cancer rate is 380.2 per 100,000 people. In Mobile County, the rate is 427.7 per 100,000 people.

Airborne Emissions

• According to the 2001 Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) Mobile County ranked first in the nation in the release of air pollutants linked to birth defects (developmental toxicants).  
• In 1999, the federal EPA announced that high ozone levels threatened Mobile with “non-attainment” status under Clean Air Act provisions, which would lead to federal restrictions on new industrial development. With this impending threat, the mayor of Mobile and the Chamber of Commerce reluctantly endorsed Mobile Bay Watch’s call for a comprehensive air-quality study, which was initiated in 2001.  
  • In the 1990s, there were multiple days each year when the EPA issued health advisories warning people not to spend too much time outside, lest they risk excessive exposure to lung-damaging ozone. But since that time, federal regulations have been ratcheting down nitrogen oxide emissions from the major national sources, primarily power plants and cars.  For reasons not entirely clear to scientists, Mobile hasn’t experienced a recent recurrence of frequent high-ozone episodes.
  • Several years ago, Mobile appeared to be on track to be singled out by the EPA for consistent violations of the federal ozone standard. But Mobile was never held up as a violator in large measure because implementation of EPA’s revised ozone standard was delayed for years by challenges from industry groups. In recent years, Mobile’s ground-level ozone concentrations have not been as consistently high as in the past. Many scientists attribute that to changes in weather patterns. Along the Gulf Coast, ozone concentrations are often highest in late spring and early fall, when abundant sunlight, large stagnant air masses and dry conditions combine to produce excellent conditions for ozone development. In 2004 and 2005, ozone concentrations recorded by most of the Mobile Bay area’s monitors remained safely below federal standards. In 2006, perhaps fueled by the same weather patterns that encouraged a warm, dry spring that year, ozone concentrations at monitors in Fairhope, Chickasaw and near Theodore violated the national standard five times. – PR 5/1/07
• The Acordis Cellulosic Fibers rayon mill at Axis, which for more than a decade was the biggest producer of toxic air emissions in Alabama, closed in 2001.
• Alabama Power Co.’s Barry Steam Plant is by far the largest single polluter in southwest Alabama. Barry has five massive coal-fired power units. 
  • It produces more than 50 percent of Mobile County’s ozone-causing emissions, most of its “greenhouse” gas emissions, and nearly all of its acid rain-causing emissions. Those major pollutants aren’t included on the toxics inventory.
  • The Barry Plant is the largest single source of mercury emissions in the county.
  • Barry Steam Plant remains the largest source of nitrogen oxides in southwest Alabama. But the latest emission numbers supplied by Alabama Power indicate that the plant has cut its nitrogen oxide emissions in half since the mid-1990s. Alabama Power officials anticipate that by 2009 they will achieve a reduction of 60 to 70 percent from 1990 levels. 
  • In 2000, the first of two natural gas, combined cycle plants began operations at Barry. Combined cycle plants generate electricity by fueling a turbine with natural gas, while millions of gallons of water are used in its cooling process. This steam is captured to turn a second turbine, which generates additional power – thus a combined cycle. Combined cycle plants have very few emissions. Mobile Bay Watch favors Southern Company’s move to natural gas plants, rather than the coal-burning plants. But the combined cycle plants do raise concerns about water usage. The average natural gas plant uses 10 million gallons of water a day.
  • Alabama is home to three of the 50 dirtiest plants in terms carbon dioxide emissions according to the Environmental Integrity Project. Only Texas, Pennsylvania and Indiana had more facilities on the list than Alabama. Southern Company plants ranked first, second and third for carbon dioxide pollution. Alabama Power’s Miller Steam Plant in Jefferson County was No. 2 on that list, while Barry Steam Plant in Mobile County ranked 40th. The Barry plant ranked 19th in the nation for mercury emissions
• ThyssenKrupp has applied to ADEM for air permits. – PR 3/16/07, 4/4/07
  • State regulators said in April that they have seen no obstacles thus far to approving air permits for the ThyssenKrupp mill. However, recent filings with the state show that it will become the largest new source of air pollutants in Mobile County in decades. With new pollution control technologies, the bulk of its direct emissions would result from burning fuels such as natural gas, according to company representatives and ADEM officials. But the scale of the plant’s operations would be such that the total emissions would be quite large compared to those of other local manufacturers.
  • ThyssenKrupp would be Mobile County’s second-largest source of nitrogen oxide, the major pollutant involved in the formation of harmful ground-level ozone. The quantity of nitrogen oxide produced by ThyssenKrupp is equivalent to the emissions of a couple of hundred thousand additional cars driving on Mobile roads each year.
  • New-generation steel mills, such as the IPSCO plant in Mobile County, are dramatically cleaner than the early 20th century steel mills. While IPSCO is one of Mobile County’s top emitters of major air pollutants, it releases far fewer pollutants than Alabama Power Co.’s Barry Steam Plant. Sulfur dioxides, which are primarily responsible for acid rain, and nitrogen oxide pollutants, which play a role in ozone pollution, would increase as a result of a new steel mill. Other major pollutants, such as carbon monoxide, sulfur dioxide and volatile organic compounds are also not expected to present a problem. But the biggest boost in such pollutants might well come from the additional electrical generation required to run such a plant.
  • Steel mills have historically been one of the nation’s primary sources of particulate pollution, commonly known as soot. But ThyssenKrupp, like other modern steel mills, would use elaborate “bag house” filters to capture almost all of the plant’s fine particles. The plant’s total particulate emissions of a little less than 600 tons annually would have a negligible effect on air quality
  • Mercury was once considered a problem at recycling mills like the one proposed by ThyssenKrupp. But new federal regulations are being implemented that are designed to prevent mercury from getting into the scrap metal that ThyssenKrupp would be using.
  • The plant will also need water discharge permits, both for any runoff from its property and any discharges from manufacturing. Mobile BayKeepers has said it will be looking at the volume of cooling water that the plant draws from the Tombigbee River. The company will also be required to get permits for any wetlands affected directly by the plant, and for any docking facilities on the river. The site was long ago cleared and prepared to suit industrial clients, and except for its long bank along the Tombigbee River, it is mostly high and dry.
• ExxonMobil’s Mobile Bay 76 natural gas platform 1½ miles east of Dauphin Island released hydrogen sulfide that swept across the island’s east end and sickened dozens of people in September 2007. – PR9/30/07
• McDuffie Coal Terminal:
  • Over the past decade, the Press-Register has reported on persistent complaints about coal dust from residents of the Church Street and Oakleigh neighborhoods, a little over a mile from the McDuffie facility.
  • See Rob Holbert, Lagniappe, 12/4/07
  • The Alabama Port Authority might be required to pay a $30,000 fine to ADEM for multiple violations of the federal Clean Water Act concerning coal dust at the other state docks facilities. Docks officials had delayed replacing the system because they were planning on shutting down the facility, but in 2005, the volume of coal handled by the docks exploded and management decided to create a makeshift coal-handling facility at the old bulk storage terminal.  The coal was placed on open-sided docks not designed to contain loose elements, which allowed more coal sediments to enter the water.

Water Quality and Erosion

• The Citizen’s Guide to Reducing Polluted Runoff in Coastal Alabama (PDF)

Highway 98 Runoff

• Details of the U.S. 98 project
• Press-Register Special Report: Muddy 98
• MAWSS sued the highway department in 2004, arguing the route now under construction “carried the greatest potential … to cause damage to Big Creek Lake.” The settlement required the Mobile County Commission to pass new subdivision regulations and the highway department to change the roadway plans in order to limit the impact on water quality.
• Mobile Baywatch and the Alabama Rivers Alliance filed another lawsuit, claiming that the state did not properly study the road’s environmental impacts. That suit was settled earlier when the highway department promised more public input and better environmental assessments on future road projects.
• In September 2007, the Press-Register began documenting large amounts of mud washing from the miles-long construction area and into area streams, forests, wetlands and Big Creek Lake and the Escatawpa River. Sediment was found to have completely filled in some small stream channels.
  • Press-Register reporters documented the absence of even the most basic runoff controls — such as silt fences, hay bales and other environmental protections — around some of the road project’s bare dirt expanses. Highway officials acknowledged there were no protections along some creeks, but said that numerous steps had been taken to reduce dirt runoff and that they were unaware that there was a runoff problem in the Escatawpa. – PR 9/16/07
  • On multiple occasions, the Press-Register’s reporters have documented the company’s employees using heavy equipment in creeks that feed the city’s drinking water source, and steep exposed banks with few environmental protections. When Press-Register reporters approached a work site on Scarbo Creek, the heavy machinery ceased working and was moved to an upland area next to a W.S. Newell truck. The crews did not go back to work until reporters left the site. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers inspectors again found heavy equipment operating in a stream and cited ALDOT. – PR 11/8/07
  • The Alabama Department of Environmental Management inspected the road work 16 times, even the day after the first article appeared in the newspaper, and never mentioned any significant problems at the site, according to ALDOT. Since the newspaper’s articles, ADEM has issued a formal “Notice of Violation” to ALDOT and is still considering imposing fines against the transportation agency.
  • Initially, ALDOT officials said the agency itself would have to pay any fines levied by ADEM — rather than the road building contractor W.S. Newell — meaning that Alabama taxpayers would ultimately pay the fine. Later, ALDOT said that the state’s contract with W.S. Newell was set up in such a way that Newell might have to pay the fine.
  • While ALDOT officials initially denied to the newspaper that there were any problems at the site, McInnes ultimately issued an apology to the people of Mobile for damaging the drinking water source. Days after that apology, the newspaper again documented a heavy load of mud escaping from the site and flowing unchecked into the Escatawpa River.
  • Mobile-based Thompson Engineering was hired by McInnes to manage the project after the Press-Register’s reports. ALDOT’s project manager replacement, an employee of Thompson, was fired for continued violations after less than two weeks on the job.
  • Mississippi officials alerted the Alabama Department of Environmental Management to problems at the U.S. 98 work site in August and cited concerns from Alabama citizens who said ADEM ignored complaints about runoff from the west Mobile County project.  The warning came in e-mails written three weeks before the Press-Register published articles – PR 12/11/07
• In November 2007, The Mobile Area Water and Sewer System and Mobile Baykeeper filed lawsuits against the Alabama Department of Transportation (ALDOT) seeking to immediately stop all construction activities at the U.S. 98 rerouting project in west Mobile, alleging that the agency violated the Clean Water Act. That action would extend to damage done by the highway department to tributaries to the Escatawpa River.  – PR 11/14/07
  • The suit states that “sediment deposits are more than two-feet thick” in some wetland areas, a fact disputed by ALDOT officials until the newspaper supplied them with photos of Press-Register reporters standing in sediment that was 25 inches deep.
  • W.S. Newell and Sons Inc., the transportation department’s road-building contractor, is named in the suit and accused of negligence. MAWSS demands compensatory and punitive damages from the contractor for the contamination of the drinking water supply.
  • Individual ALDOT employees are also named in the suit, including Ronnie Poiroux, who is the head of the agency’s Mobile office. He was in charge of the project until control was taken away from him. The suit alleges that “Poiroux acted fraudulently” and “in bad faith.” He was described as “asleep at the switch” by ALDOT director Joe McInnes during an interview with the Press-Register.
• ALDOT Spokesman said this section of the road was about 75 percent complete and that ALDOT had “spent about $18 million to date on this project.” About $2.2 million of that was spent since September in an attempt to install required environmental controls and repair environmental damage.
• State highway officials made decisions to save money by setting aside some standard environmental rules and practices during the roadway construction. – PR 12/17/07
  • Poor engineering of the roadway itself, designed by the Alabama Department of Transportation and Volkert Engineering, also contributed to runoff problems, according to interviews with transportation officials. Design flaws have caused the tall, steep manmade hills supporting the new roadbed to fail in a number of places. At times, the contractor insisted they needed far more environmental controls than Volkert engineers originally called for.
  • Records state that the agency, in order to finish the project more quickly, allowed its contractor, W.S. Newell Inc., an exemption from certain rules designed to prevent runoff. In particular, transportation officials allowed the contractor to clear about eight times as much land at one time as is typically allowed, exposing a much greater area to erosion. Contractors were also allowed to build sediment containment ponds after the land-clearing began, rather than before clearing, as had been called for in the Stormwater Management Plan submitted by W.S. Newell. And many of the drainage ditches were lined with an inexpensive plastic fabric instead of the 26 million pounds of rock called for in the original plan in order to “eliminate some of the (cost) overrun.” Placing 26 million pounds of rock along the roadway was one of the first actions taken by transportation officials after the Press-Register published stories and photos.
• ALDOT announced a 1,440-foot bridge will be constructed 15 to 25 feet above the wetlands at an additional cost of $9.3 million – PR 5/2/08
• Transportation officials said the agency was still working with MAWSS to come up with an alternative plan to prevent hazardous chemicals from contaminating the city’s drinking water.  – PR 5/2/08
• The Alabama Department of Transportation has requested an “after the fact” permit for the destruction of an additional 11.5 acres of wetlands. The extra wetland loss has caused the Federal Highway Administration to re-evaluate a “Finding of No Significant Impact” granted when the project was approved in 2005. Federal officials said the review means, “all the options are on the table, including the no-build alternative.” The review also stops the project from moving forward for the time being, according to federal officials.  ALDOT officials said they were “still actively engaged in construction, working in some areas where we need to provide final stabilization for some slopes.” Paving is slated to begin Aug. 18 on the rerouted stretch of highway. – PR 8/11/08

Sewage

• Between September 2003 and February 2004, Prichard Water Works dumped approximately 50 million gallons of untreated sewage into 8 Mile Creek. The State of Alabama filed suit against PWW for permit violations in 2004. Mobile Baykeeper also filed a lawsuit against PWW calling for the replacement of the Prichard Water Board, upgrades to the existing system, and the institution of a long-term maintenance program. Prichard Water filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Mobile Baykeeper, but that motion was denied. PWW then filed a lawsuit against the operators of the sewage plant, blaming McCrory, Williams for the spill.
• The Mobile Area Water and Sewer System agreed in 2002 to spend $60 million over five years upgrading its treatment plants and pipes as a result of a lawsuit accusing the system of repeatedly violating federal law through massive sewage spills. Sewer system officials say they’ll pay for the upgrades with a 25 percent increase in waste water fees, phased in over two years.
• Mobile Baywatch filed the initial intent to sue in late 1999, claiming that the sewer service violated the Clean Water Act more than 1,000 times over five years. The Baywatch action was later joined with suits filed separately by the U.S. EPA and ADEM. The sewer service will be required to buy and preserve $150,000 worth of land in the Dog River watershed, and an additional $300,000 worth of land elsewhere in Mobile County. Mobile Baywatch will also receive a $50,000 grant to establish a database for water quality monitoring.
• Mobile Baykeeper is suing the Bayou La Batre Utility Board over repeated discharge violations. Bayou La Batre is planning to build a new, $24 million wastewater treatment plant with federal money within the next two years. For the past three years, the city utility has been under a court order to improve facilities and prevent spills — the result of a lawsuit settled with ADEM in 2004.

ADEM Regulation

• In 2008, ADEM approved new rules to bring Alabama in line with water carcinogen standards around the Southeast. Alabama had been operating under the least stringent regulations allowed by the EPA. Arsenic was not affected by the rule change. Business groups, including Alabama Power, filed complaints saying the state already had stringent requirements dealing with arsenic. – PR 4/18/08

Mercury Contamination

• Mercury can be converted to methylmercury in water by reacting with bacteria or other chemicals.
  • When it’s taken up by life through the food chain, the concentration increases in larger predators, like swordfish or king mackerel.
  • Mercury is a neurotoxin and can cause neurological damage and developmental disorders in children and fetuses, and can impair adult brain function.
  • Mercury can cause reproductive failure in wildlife such as bald eagles.
• Mobile is one of the two worst spots in the nation for mercury deposition, according to recent scientific studies. – PR 7/27/2007
• In the 1970s, the Mobile area had several chlor-alkali chemical plants, which used mercury as an ingredient to produce a wide variety of chemicals including chlorine
  • These included Olin Corp.’s McIntosh Plant, Stauffer Chemical’s Cold Creek plant, and Occidental Chemical Corp.’s Mobile plant. These have all been closed, but the resultant mercury contamination persists.
• Airborne mercury emissions are now recognized as the primary source of mercury contamination in water.
  • Waste incinerators — particularly medical waste incinerators — were high on the list of airborne mercury emitters. The University of South Alabama, for example, closed Mobile County’s last medical waste incinerator a few years ago.
• EPA considers airborne emission from power plants as the most important source of mercury contamination nationally.
  • Southern Company produces more mercury than any other utility in the United States, according to research by the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.
  • Alabama’s coal-fired power plants produce some 4,920 pounds of mercury a year.
  • Alabama’s coal plants — primarily operated by Alabama Power Co. — produce more mercury than all the coal-fired plants in Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi combined.
  • The largely coal-fired Barry Steam Plant is the area’s largest single source of all pollutants, and, according to company officials, emits 500 to 600 pounds of airborne mercury each year. The Barry Plant was the fourth largest emitter of mercury in the state, and five Alabama Power facilities made the top 10. – PR 12/23/01, 1/26/06
• Many of south Alabama’s streams have been posted with advisories, urging people not to eat largemouth bass because of mercury contamination. – PR 12/23/01, 7/18/2007, 7/19/2007
  • In 2001 Press-Register research indicated that mercury contamination in Gulf fish, particularly big predators such as cobia, amberjack, tuna and grouper, was so high that they shouldn’t have been sold to the public, under standards set by the FDA.
  • In 2001, Hair tests sponsored by the Register indicated that some Gulf fish consumers had mercury levels in their bodies up to 11 times greater than the “safe” level established by the EPA. Results from hair tests conducted at the 2006 Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo show one out of every three of  contestants had mercury levels above the EPA safe level (1 part per million), their average level was 0.93 parts per million, and the highest was above 4 parts per million.
  • The highest mercury level ever recorded in a largemouth bass was found in 2003 in a swamp adjacent to the Olin Superfund site.
  • In 2005, in the wake of the discovery of significant mercury contamination in the community of McIntosh, state officials moved to bring Alabama’s mercury standards for fish into compliance with the EPA-approved standards in use in all of the surrounding states. Those EPA standards call for consumption warnings on a waterbody beginning when fish contain mercury at a level of 0.4 parts per million in their flesh. Prior to the change, Alabama did not issue warnings until fish contained a level of 1 part per million.
  • In 2007, Fish from Mobile Bay and Mobile-Tensaw Delta were found to be relatively low in mercury and other contaminants in fish testing conducted by ADEM. Most of the fish that were found to be high in mercury this year were largemouth bass.
  • Fish from the western edge of the Delta were placed under new advisories designed to limit consumption. Testing suggests that fish on the western side of the Delta — which is home to the Olin Corp. and Ciba Corp. chemical plants and their associated federal Superfund cleanup sites — are higher in mercury than fish from the middle section and eastern side of the Delta. Testing found fish in the Mobile River to have elevated levels of mercury, and EPA data indicates that mercury levels in the mud on the bottom of the river are about 20 times higher than mercury levels elsewhere in the Delta.
    • Some largemouth bass in the Mobile River are so high in mercury that a single serving could put a grown man over the EPA’s safe level for the toxic metal in the human body, and individual fish to contain mercury at levels as high as 2.6 parts per million. Under federal guidelines, fish with mercury at more than 1 part per million may not be sold to the public. Despite that information, the Alabama Department of Public Health says people should consume no more than two meals of bass per month from the Mobile River. In the past, the same test results would have led state health officials to issue for that section of the river a “do not consume” warning for largemouth bass.

DDT

• The effects of DDT in bird populations are well known, demonstrated by the near-extinction of brown pelicans on the Gulf Coast. The toxic chemical is known to affect the reproductive systems of birds. 
  • DDT was regarded as a miracle pesticide when it was first introduced in the 1940s because it persisted in fields for a long time, a single application killing bugs far longer than other pesticides. That same persistence made DDT especially deadly when the poison ended up in natural ecosystems
• Mobile Bay appears to have some of the most severe DDT contamination recorded in any Gulf Coast estuary.
  • DDT was both produced in the Ciba factory on the edge of the Delta and used extensively for decades by Alabama farmers. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service data suggests the DDT found in Mobile Bay can be traced directly to the Ciba site
  • Average DDT levels in fish from the Tombigbee River around the Ciba Corp. superfund site were the second highest recorded in freshwater fish in America.
  • The NOAA Mussel Watch program has monitored DDT concentrations in Gulf oysters since 1986. Between 1986 and 1998, oysters from Mobile Bay contained more DDT on average than oysters caught anywhere else in the Gulf of Mexico.
    • The highest levels, up to 70 times higher than the average Gulf Coast level, were found at Hollingers Island. Oysters from Dog River, were slightly lower in DDT, but still much higher than the Gulf at large. Oysters at Cedar Point reef — where most of Mobile’s commercial harvest occurs — were much lower in DDT than oysters found at Hollingers Island or Dog River, and low enough that they do not present a health concern for people.
• In 2002, most of the eggs the ospreys laid in the Delta never hatched. And even when chicks did hatch successfully, many apparently died before they were old enough to leave the nest.
  • Scientists aren’t exactly sure why the Delta’s ospreys are failing, but they are worried that DDT and mercury contamination in the Delta may be to blame. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service biologists studied 10 nests within a few miles of Gravine Island in the lower Delta last year. Only three osprey chicks survived long enough to make a first flight. – PR 4/20/03

Navco Road

• An abandoned electroplating facility on Navco Road, once home to the company American Bumper, and later home to a company named AMPS, contains dozens of barrels full of hazardous chemicals, including chromium, cadmium and cyanide, which were electroplated onto car bumpers. – PR 1/24/08
  • Over the next several months, those chemicals will be contained and disposed of and the entire site cleaned up, according to EPA officials, who described the site as “a priority.”
  • It is unclear who is responsible for the building and the contaminants inside, state, federal and city authorities said. Taxes due for the property have been delinquent for years, according to city officials.
  • The large tin building is north of Interstate 10 on the west side of Navco Road. A small creek runs along the edge of the property, which is within a quarter mile of Dog River.
  • People who live in the neighborhood around the old American Bumper facility first reported the site to Mobile officials in June, via the city’s new “311″ system, which is designed so residents can report problems to city inspectors. But, according to Donna Brown — who filed that report describing the decrepit building, heaps of junk, abandoned cars and possible hazardous wastes — all the city did was remove the junked cars. Brown, the president of the River Park Community Action Group, said she also tried calling ADEM. ADEM officials said the agency inspected the site in the 1990s and turned their data over to the EPA, at which point federal officials became responsible for the site. It is unclear whether ADEM officials conducted any investigations of the site in 2007 in response to the concerns of the residents. Brown said she was pleased with the rapid response once the city contacted EPA.

Mobile County Superfund Sites

• Congress passed the Superfund law in 1980, a multi-billion dollar program to clean the nation’s largest hazardous waste dumps.
• The Mobile Delta’s chemical plants of Olin, Stauffer and Ciba-Geigy made the government’s National Priorities List, meaning the sites posed immediate and serious danger to human health.
  • Swamps at Olin and Ciba have yet to be cleaned up, despite more than 20 years on the Superfund list. Because both sites are flooded for months at a time each year, scientists say there is nothing to stop the contaminants from spreading into the Delta.
  • Mobile County has two federal “Superfund” sites contaminated by mercury from chlor-alkali plants: Cold Creek Swamp and Olin Basin
• Cold Creek Swamp, the former Stauffer Chemical Company site, in Bucks. The site was added to the National Priority List in 1984.
  • The plant began operations in the 1950s and is currently owned by Akzo Nobel, Inc. Other Stauffer land was bought by Zeneca and Rhone-Poulenc.
  • Stauffer Chemical Co.’s Cold Creek Plant manufactured pesticides. The facility had three on-site landfills for disposal of process wastes, including pesticides, solvents, and HEAVY METALS. Wastewaters from the Stauffer processes were held in clay-lined lagoons and discharge to the Cold Creek Swamp until approximately 1975.
  • Alabama Power sued Rhone-Poulenc, Akzo, and Zeneca for contaminating the power company’s property in Cold Creek Swamp with mercury.
  • In 1994, the EPA said it had stopped negotiating with Akzo and Zeneca, and it would clean up Cold Creek Swamp and bill for the companies for the work, estimated at $17.7 million.
• Olin basin, site of the Olin Corp. plant, is on the edge of the Delta near the Mobile County-Washington County line. – PR 1/26/06, 1/21/07
  • The Olin basin is contaminated with mercury, a byproduct of a chlorine manufacturing process no longer used by Olin
  • The Tombigbee River floods the Olin swamps for several months each year under 10 to 15 feet of water. Water in the Olin swamp contains mercury at levels up to 1,000 times higher than levels seen upstream, according to the EPA data. Mercury levels in the river water increase immediately downstream of the Olin swamp and elevated levels are present in the river bed all the way to Mobile.
  • Fish & Wildlife officials have long maintained that mercury contamination on the site was so high that it posed a danger to wildlife dozens of miles away.
  • The Register obtained a 1965 Olin study conducted by Jim Norris, a former Olin scientist, that concluded it was “economically impractical” to recover 9.5 pounds of mercury dumped as waste each day, because doing so would have cost the company $185 more per day than the mercury was worth. Instead, the mercury-laced wastes were buried underground, donated to people in the community, and stored in enormous heaps that still stand near a church and the local high school. Wastes are usually stored on the plant property, or, in some cases, were simply dumped along with other waste in nearby rivers. At the Olin site, Register reporters have encountered wastes on top of dirt roads, in public parks, and in people’s yards.
  • For decades, Olin has fought against cleaning the swamp, maintaining in letters to the EPA the company’s “long-standing position that adverse effects are not occurring.” Olin maintained that position despite mercury levels that are hundreds of times above levels known to harm wildlife and thousands of times above natural levels in the environment.
  • In 2003, the Press-Register reported that the agency was considering allowing much of the mercury to remain in the swamp, possibly at levels up to 131 parts per million in swamp mud. That would be several hundred times higher than cleanup goals for Superfund sites in other states. The EPA approach was criticized by every scientist the newspaper contacted, including those working for other federal agencies, universities and private laboratories.
  • In 2005, ADEM data revealed high concentrations of mercury in large piles of brine waste on the Olin Corp. property, in some cases more than 15 times greater than the highest concentration previously reported. The company was required to put a chain-link fence around the exposed waste. Both on and off the site, sit fully exposed to weather and rainfall.
  • At Olin plants in adjacent states, the Register has discovered, regulators have far more stringent requirements for the disposal of such wastes.
    • Similar sites in others states, such as Georgia and Tennessee, are required to cap or bury brine waste in lined landfills, with specially designed collection systems to monitor and treat contaminated water that accumulates in the landfills.
    • Olin officials have stressed that the McIntosh plant is operated within the regulations established by ADEM. ADEM officials said the concentrations are within safe standards set by the state. Some federal and Alabama regulators have suggested that the wastes at McIntosh may have escaped an official “hazardous” label in part because they were produced before some modern regulations went into effect in the mid-1980s.
    • Regulators and mercury specialists in other states said the numbers should raise serious concerns about public safety and about the way that Olin’s waste is being handled. Regulators in other states said that the wastes clearly pose a hazard and should be treated or placed in landfills — or both.
    • “Oh my God, I am just amazed,” said Stacy Ladner, an environmental specialist with the Maine Department of Environmental Management. At a chlorine plant in Maine, Ladner said that any mercury-contaminated waste with a concentration greater than 2.2 parts per million must be treated or carefully disposed of. She said she couldn’t imagine leaving wastes with concentrations of 172 parts per million of mercury exposed to rain and runoff. Ladner also noted that the Maine chlorine plant has had a water discharge limit of one-tenth of a pound of mercury per year. Alabama regulators have allowed the Olin plant to discharge about a tenth of a pound each day from its process-water effluent, and has placed no limits on its stormwater discharges of mercury.  – PR 6/17/2005
  • In 2006, Olin engineers designed and constructed a 10-foot-high berm around its Superfund site. It represents the first activity designed to contain the mercury contamination.
    • EPA officials said that the berm was not adequate, and U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service officials question the benefits of the berm and are concerned that it will be used to delay the implementation of more proven cleanup methods, as happened in the Ciba swamp..
    • While that berm will disappear underwater during the high water months when the river inundates the floodplain swamps, company officials told the Press-Register that they believe the wall will encourage sediment carried by the Tombigbee River to accumulate on top of the polluted swamp mud.
    • One option was to require the company to dredge some parts of the swamp to remove especially contaminated mud, and install some sort of “cap” or impermeable barrier over the contaminated mud.
    • Olin officials had argued for years that sediment deposition was already occurring in the swamp even before they built the berm. Company officials tried to persuade EPA that the contamination would someday be covered over by the river. But data collected by both the company and federal officials suggested that no sediment had accumulated in the contaminated parts of the swamp over the course of more than a decade, with mercury levels in the mud remaining consistent year after year.
  • David Ludder, the former chief lawyer for the ADEM, has filed a petition with the EPA on behalf of two environmental groups (Citizens for a Clean Southwest Alabama and the Conservation Alabama Foundation) that suggests ADEM so bungled its handling of waste from McIntosh’s Olin Corp. factory — allowing 23,000 tons of mercury-laden material to be placed in the Timberlands Sanitary Landfill in Escambia County — that it should lose all authority to supervise hazardous waste disposal. – PR 12/19/07
    • He argues that the agency’s recent actions mean hazardous waste could end up being dumped in any of the 31 municipal landfills scattered around the state. ADEM officials insisted in interviews that the agency enforces federal hazardous waste laws appropriately and that EPA officials in the regional office in Atlanta concurred with the decision to send the Olin wastes to a municipal landfill in February of 2007.
    • The petition alleges that ADEM violated federal law when the agency decided the dump-truck loads of Olin wastes did not qualify as “hazardous” under federal law. ADEM officials have previously indicated they decided the hazardous label would not apply because the material had been sitting in heaps at Olin for years before modern hazardous waste laws were created. It would have cost Olin a great deal more money to dispose of the material, had ADEM declared it hazardous.
    • According to the petition as well as former EPA and ADEM officials and numerous scientists consulted by the Press-Register, the wastes qualify as a hazardous material known as “KO71″ under federal law. Federal law states that materials generated prior to the advent of modern environmental laws in the mid-1970s — such as the Olin wastes, which date to the 1950s and’60s — are exempt from regulation so long as they sit undisturbed on private property. But, old wastes are governed by the current rules as soon as they are disturbed — or in EPA parlance, “managed,” which includes activities such as placing waste in dump trucks and taking it to a landfill.
    • The Timberlands Sanitary Landfill in Escambia County is not legally allowed to accept hazardous waste, nor is the facility equipped to contain hazardous waste, which must be sent to specially designed facilities. ADEM drew fire for failing to inform Escambia county officials or local residents of the ongoing mercury releases, which were revealed last year, but detected from 1998 to 2003. At least 13 private residences in the area use the same aquifer for drinking water.
  • The Olin facility is also severely contaminated with DDT, which scientists say moved onto the Olin property from the Ciba land
• Ciba Corp. began producing DDT at its Macintosh facility in 1952, discharging wastes directly into the Tombigbee River. Ciba stored the pesticide DDT in open, unlined dirt pits on company property. Ciba has been a federal Superfund site since 1983.
  • Ciba volunteered to conduct a limited DDT cleanup in the mid-1990s. Fish & Wildlife opposed the limited Ciba cleanup and predicted that it would fail.
  • In 2003, the Press-Register used EPA documents to illustrate that the levels of DDT were, in some cases, more than 100 times higher than they were before the cleanup began. Only in the past few months have EPA officials indicated that they would seek new solutions and require the company to do further work to clean the swamp.– PR 5/11/03
• Redwing Carriers, Inc. started operating a chemical-transporting business in 1961 on U.S. 43 in Saraland.
  • The company sold the property in 1971 and relocated to Creola in 1972.
  • Redwing used the Saraland site as a parking and washing terminal for its trucks, which reportedly carried numerous substances, including asphalt, diesel fuel, pesticides, tall OIL, and SULFURIC ACID.
  • After the property was sold, it was covered with fill material and graded. An apartment complex housing approximately 160 people was then built on the site. After residents of the apartment complex noticed tar-like material oozing to the surface at numerous locations, ADEM inspected the complex and then notified EPA. In 1985, EPA detected high concentrations of 1,2,4-TRICHLOROBENZENE and NAPHTHALENE in the soil.
  • In 1985, EPA issued an Administrative Order on Consent calling for Redwing to remove the tar-like material. In response, Redwing removed some of the contaminated soil to a hazardous waste facility. The company periodically inspects the site and removes any TAR rising to the surface.
  • The City of Saraland Water Department  obtains its water from three 100-foot-deep wells less than 2 miles from the site.

Other Sites

• The Non-Partisan Voters Organization sued Mobile Gas in U.S. District Court, but dropped the claim in August after discovering that the Mobile Housing Board owns part of the contaminated land at the corner of Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and Beauregard Street. In July 2007, the group filed a new lawsuit against both defendants. E.B. Peebles III, an attorney for Mobile Gas, referred questions to the company.
  • The industrial site on downtown’s north side, one of the nation’s first coal gasification operations, dates to 1836. In the early 19th century, before natural gas or electricity were commonly available, the former Mobile Gas Light and Coke Co. lighted houses and businesses with gases extracted from solid chunks of coal. That process produced a large quantity of residues, most of which contained mercury, benzoapyrene and other carcinogenic hydrocarbons, according to the lawsuit.
  • Environmental testing, conducted with a one-time federal “brownfields” grant designed to promote the rehabilitation of old industrial sites, revealed contaminants were hundreds to thousands of times higher than concentrations considered acceptable by the Environmental Protection Agency. At the time, however, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management refused to draw conclusions as to whether the contamination posed a risk to people or wildlife.
  • Mobile Gas officials said in 2004 that they believed laying down a 2-foot layer of dirt over the existing soil would address any contamination issues. But the civil complaint filed last week maintains that was inadequate and alleges that the pollutants have seeped into One Mile Creek, Three Mile Creek and the Mobile River.
  • At one point, the company had discussions with Mobile city leaders about turning the property into a public park. The company offered to lease the property to the city for $1 a year. But city officials have said they would not be able to afford to take over responsibility for cleaning up the pollution if the state determined it to be a hazard. Huntley said the organization has expanded its mission from voting issues to health concerns.

Mobile Industrial Development Board

• The Mobile Industrial Development Board can grant 10-year renewable property tax holidays for industries that locate in the county.  
• The 13 commission members are hand-picked by the mayor of the City of Mobile, despite the fact that the board’s jurisdiction over taxes extends 25 miles beyond city limits. Since the IDB’s creation in 1962, its membership has consisted exclusively of utility company presidents, bankers, prominent businessmen, and officers of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce. No women or minorities have ever served on the board, and no one has ever been appointed as a representative of a labor union, environmental organization, or citizen’s group (Patterson 1999).
• Notwithstanding its control over local development policy, the board is almost totally insulated from public scrutiny (Cusick PR 3/8/98). While state law requires that its meetings occur in public, the board does not entertain questions or comments from the public during those meetings
• Critics charge that the Industrial Development Board (IDB) courts energy-intensive and polluting industries, such as chemical plants, paper mills, and incinerators, because the heads of the electricity and gas utilities hold positions on the board
  • Economics professor Richard Ault of Auburn University told The Harbinger that based on cost-benefit analysis of IDB financed projects, heads of utilities, while they could serve on such groups to recruit industries, should not be allowed to vote on issuing bonds and granting of tax exemptions because of potential conflicts of interest. Since most industries are heavy users of energy and because bonuses of CEO’s are often tied to performance of their companies, their votes to grant tax exemptions to recruit industries that are heavy users of energy directly or indirectly benefit these heads of utilities.
• In much of the South, development commissions such as the IDB have generated a process of “conservative modernization…. a politically and socially repressive.path to industrial development” (Cobb 1982: 266). In this process, public participation is restricted, elites derive disproportionate economic benefits, and environmental costs are externalized to the broader community. Residents outside the city limits are often outraged when they learn that a board appointed by an official for whom they cannot vote (the city’s mayor) determines industrial sitings and property tax levies in their area. Usually, this realization occurs only when an IDB-sponsored industry is constructed near their community.
• On the other hand, the IDB is responsible for much of Mobile’s economic growth.
  • Many residents of Mobile derive their livelihoods from polluting industries and would oppose any movement that might curtail their operation. Nearly 11,000 workers are employed locally in chemical and paper production, making these industries by far the largest sources of private-sector wages in the county
  • In a region plagued by poor public schools and low levels of college completion, heavy industry has offered the only high paying jobs available without a college degree. For many African Americans in particular, the paper mills bordering black neighborhoods in north Mobile provided some of the only avenues into a middle-class standard of living. This fact has enabled defenders of industrial development to portray environmental activists as elitists in their own right, as they are rarely dependent on the industries they criticize.
• The Industrial Development Board announced its first concession to Mobile’s environmentalists in 1999: it would now emphasize “clean” industries in its recruitment strategies and link tax abatements to environmental protection.
• In 1992, Suspended School Superintendent Douglas Magann made plans to collect money promised the schools by industry financed with Industrial Development Board (IDB) bonds. But he says he was forced to end his efforts by “the banking syndicate, the Mayor’s office, [and] the Chamber of Commerce.” Money owed the school system from this source probably totals several million dollars.
• Sources: Mark Moberg 2001, 2002

Mobile Bay LNG Terminals

• Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) is natural gas that has been supercooled to minus 260 degrees Fahrenheit, reducing its volume so it can be transported in a tanker.
  • A terrorist attack against a tanker ship carrying liquefied natural gas could ignite a fire that would burn people within a one-mile radius, according to a study by the Government Accountability Office. Department of Energy officials had continued to argue that the hazards of fire had been overstated, in spite of several studies that suggested otherwise. DOE officials insisted an industry study by Lloyd’s Register of Shipping proved that LNG fires would be extremely small. The study, later obtained by the Press-Register, actually predicted a worst-case fire about a mile wide and indicated there was a possibility of cascading explosions that could consume and destroy a 1,000-foot-long LNG tanker ship.  The latest GAO study coincides with projected increases of 400 percent in liquefied natural gas imports over the next 10 years, as energy companies await federal approval on 32 applications to build new terminals in 10 states and five offshore areas. – PR 3/15/2007
• In 2004 ExxonMobil withdrew plans to build an LNG facility at the former U.S. Navy home port on Hollinger’s Island.
  • ExxonMobil’s $600 million LNG terminal, estimated to create 50 permanent jobs, would have been located near a residential area and school.
  • Gov. Riley. Riley refused to approve the terminal until an independent safety study had been conducted. The Alabama State Port Authority rejected a request by Riley to require a safety study before selling the option to ExxonMobil.
  • The facility was supported by the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce.
    • Port Authority Chairman Tim Parker of Tuscaloosa and Mobile County Commission President Mike Dean voted against selling the 200 acres. Yes votes came from Clarence Ball and Donnie Adams, each of Mobile; Dwight Jennings of Huntsville; and Anthony Fant of Birmingham, who participated via conference call. Mobile member Celia Wallace abstained from the vote. David Cooper of Mobile and Bill Taylor of Tuscaloosa were not at the meeting.
    • ExxonMobil drew a connection between the fate of the LNG terminal and an Alabama jury verdict against it for a record-setting $11.9 billion in a separate royalty dispute. A Montgomery County jury agreed with state claims that ExxonMobil committed fraud in violating lease agreements for natural gas wells in state-owned waters along the Alabama coast in 2003. The state accused ExxonMobil of cheating Alabama out of millions of dollars in royalty payments by intentionally deducting too much in expenses for operating the wells.
• Cheniere Energy, based in Houston, announced plans to construct an LNG terminal on Pinto Island, near downtown Mobile.
• In 2006 ConnocoPhilips withdrew plans to build an off-shore LNG facility 11 miles south of Dauphin Island.
  • The facility was planned to be an “open-loop” facility that required about 150 million gallons of seawater per day.
    • Critics of the “open loop” vaporization system say it could harm marine life, particularly fish eggs and larvae, as it uses massive amounts of warm waters to reheat the gas. Environmentalists have fewer objections to a closed loop system at LNG terminals. A closed-loop system uses about 1.5 percent of the natural gas it brings in, which could cost the company up to $40 million per year. That amount is about 0.3 percent of the $13.5 billion ConocoPhillips made in 2005. ConocoPhillips said it would have to review whether it wants to propose a closed loop system.
    • The facility was opposed by Gov. Bob Riley. 
    • The federal government has approved three open-loop terminals in the Gulf of Mexico. They were approved before federal fisheries agencies objected. One terminal is functioning off of the coast of Louisiana and is the only open-loop terminal in the United States. The other two have not been built.
• Houston-based TORP Technology’s proposed Bienville Offshore Energy Terminal has made headway by going farther offshore (63 miles south of Fort Morgan) and reducing chlorine discharge from their system, but plans to use an open-loop system. TORP Terminal LP proposed building an offshore terminal in May 2005. – PR 7/13/2007, 10/5/07, 8/17/08
  • TORP has proposed using 46 billion gallons of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico each year. The eggs and larvae of swordfish, red snapper, grouper, jacks, crabs and shrimp would be killed, with a toll that could be measured in the billions per year, according to federal documents.
  • The Final Environmental Impact Statement is available at http://www.regulations.gov  under docket number USCG-2006-24644
  • The Draft EIS stated that the facility could cause “minor to potentially moderate adverse impacts to fisheries” in the Gulf. In formal comments on the Draft EIS, the National Marine Fisheries Service wrote that the seawater method causes a portion of TORP’s “operational costs to be borne by the public” because, in essence, the company has not offered sufficient compensation for damage caused to public fisheries. It also argued that the facility could cause “significant adverse impacts” in the Gulf and result in an “inappropriate” use of public resources to benefit a private corporation. The Alabama Department of Marine Resources also opposes the project. Coast Guard officials said the FEIS addresses impacts from the cold-water plume and predicts a much smaller toll on eggs and larvae.
  • Gov. Bob Riley has until Oct. 10 to decide whether to allow the project. Barnett Lawley, head of the state Department of Conservation, said the governor had not yet threatened a veto, as he did with ConocoPhillips. The U.S. Coast Guard will hold a public meeting regarding the terminal proposal Aug. 26 in Mobile. Public comments on the FEIS will be accepted until early October.
  • EPA’s analysis suggests it would cost TORP an additional $13 million to $16 million each year to operate the terminal in a way that avoided all impact on marine life. Similar terminals proposed along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts were designed so that they do not use seawater for warming the LNG, thus avoiding the impact on marine creatures. Only companies proposing terminals for the Gulf have sought to use seawater for warming, rather than using natural gas.

Baldwin County Environment

• Genetically modified eucalyptus trees, altered in laboratories in New Zealand to withstand American caterpillars and tolerate colder temperatures, have been growing on a secret 1-acre plot in Baldwin County in an effort to produce ethanol for automotive fuel.  Officials with ArborGen, a South Carolina-based company, declined to reveal the exact location of the modified trees, citing “security reasons.”  - PR (date unavaiable)
  • Genetically engineered crops, such as the eucalyptus, are under fire from scientists and environmentalists, who fear that the plants can escape from farms and wreak havoc on native plant populations.  A federal judge prohibited the widespread use of genetically altered alfalfa until a safety study can be completed.
  • ArborGen officials said the resulting tree would provide a lucrative new crop for Alabama pine farmers. Eucalyptus trees would produce 8 gallons of ethanol for every gallon of gas or diesel used to farm and process them, according to ArborGen. The company is now seeking a permit to allow the trees to mature, flower and produce seeds. All of that was specifically forbidden under the original permit, which granted ArborGen permission to simply grow the trees and test them for cold tolerance.
  • ArborGen is a partnership between an investment company, paper companies International Paper and Mead Westvaco, and a New Zealand-based genetic laboratory, Genesis Research and Development.
  • Press-Register discovered that Baldwin County is home to a number of experimental, genetically modified crops, many of which appear to be growing on a Loxley farm owned by agricultural giant Monsanto Co. Such crops — which require federal permits and oversight — have been grown in 296 locations in Alabama since 2004..
  • In California, eucalyptus has long been recognized as a noxious invasive species, displacing native habitats, disrupting water supplies and playing a significant role in worsening wild fires. Eucalyptus contain large quantities of a highly flammable oil.
• Medical geographers at the University of Nebraska are studying the Eastern Shore’s high incidence multiple sclerosis, cancers of the brain, blood, bone and certain organs, and other neurological diseases. In addition, researchers from the University of Arizona will be coring trees in Fairhope to see if there are unusually high levels of chromium, zinc and mercury. -PR 3/30/08

Mobile Bay and Alabama Environmental Organizations and Agencies

Mobile Bay Environmental Organizations

• The most active environmental groups in Alabama are the Alabama Environmental Council, Sierra Club, League of Women Voters, Alabama Audubon Council, and Alabama Rivers Alliance.
• Mobile chapters of the Audubon Society and Sierra Club were established by 1970, but their activities initially centered on wilderness pursuits outside of the city.
• By the mid-1970s, the Mobile Bay Audubon Society selected a more activist president, Myrt Jones, who challenged the Corps of Engineers and chemical companies on their development plans in south Mobile County.
• Since the 1970s, the only environmental mobilizations to have occurred in Mobile arose in response to polluting facilities (such as waste incinerators) that promised few prospects for new jobs (White 1983; Patterson 1992; Moberg 1998a). In contrast, chemical and paper plants, which are the county’s largest industrial employers, had never been targeted by community groups prior to Mobile Bay Watch.

• The Mobile Bay Audubon Society was started in 1971. It was led for many years by activist president Myrt Jones

Mobile Baykeepers (formerly Mobile Bay Watch)

• Mobile Bay Watch, a grassroots organization that has opposed the expansion of chemical plants in south Mobile County, was formed in 1997.  – Moberg 2001
  • In 1996, the Phenolchemie Corporation announced plans to construct one of the nation’s largest phenol plants in the Theodore Industrial Park. Phenol is water soluble and highly toxic. Because the chemical would be transported from the plant on barges through Mobile Bay, it was seen as a potential threat to the bay ecosystem. As residential wells provide the primary source of local drinking water, residents feared the possibility of groundwater contamination should a spill occur at the plant.
  • For the first time Mobile County residents began efforts to block construction of a new chemical manufacturing facility. Although their fears of industrial and maritime accidents were by no means insubstantial, many Fowl River residents were concerned about property values. Many working-class residents of the area supported the phenol plant in the hope of gaining good-paying jobs, and public officials saw in the project some potential for added tax revenues. One view is that the white professionals “co-opted” the minorities to fight the construction of the plant (Moberg 2001)
  • By February 1997, strategies to stop the plant were being devised in the home of a cardiologist on Rabbit Creek. Ten residents, all white professionals who resided in the immediate area, were invited to the first planning sessions. Among them were three doctors, two lawyers, a biochemist, the director of a public relations firm, and a retired stockbroker who was president of the local Sierra Club chapter. Members settled on the name West Bay Watch (later changed to Mobile Bay Watch).
  • Rotating meeting sites at churches in the Theodore area, twice-monthly Mobile Bay Watch meetings soon attracted nearly 300 participants. While the ten professionals who organized the group continued to make most of the presentations at its meetings, it was clear that many of those in attendance were of working- or middle-class backgrounds. Commercial oyster and shrimp fishermen showed up in large numbers, as did several dozen residents of the African American community.
  • Industry portrayed Mobile Bay Watch as a NIMBY organization unconcerned about the need for better jobs in the community. Jim Orange, vice president of the Mobile Chamber of Commerce, dismissed the group as “a handful of doctors living in $500,000 homes who are worried about their property values.” on the same day that he was invited to speak before a Mobile Bay Watch meeting.
  • Several area schools and one church in Snow’s Corner accepted company contributions. Seven community notables accompanied Phenolchemie executives an all-expense-paid tour of production facilities in Europe. Upon their return, they secured interviews from the local news media in which they praised the company’s environmental record in Germany and Belgium.
  • ADEM eventually granted Phenolchemie’s permits and the plant was built.
  • The failure of Mobile Bay Watch to stop construction of the phenol plant did not, as Chamber of Commerce and industry leaders predict, spell the group’s demise. After its defeat on the plant siting, Mobile Bay Watch underwent a rapid transformation from grassroots coalition to a professional organization.
•  By the end of 1998, it had been incorporated as a nonprofit organization and instituted annual dues as a condition of membership. The group established an office, hired a full-time executive director, Casi Callaway, and staff, began publishing a quarterly newsletter, and established a Web site. Organizational meetings evolved from gatherings of community residents to infrequent (and unpublicized) meetings of executive committee members.
• In 1999, Mobile Bay Watch affiliated with the international organization, Waterkeeper Alliance. In 2002 the name was changed to Mobile Baykeeper.
• Mobile Baykeeper HAS:
  • Successfully sued MAWSS for a $60 million clean-up plan. MAWSS took the initiative to spend an additional $105 million to eliminate sanitary sewer overflows from reaching Mobile Bay.
  • Mobile County Air Quality Study- a voluntary and collaborative effort with City and County government, The Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, and The Forum of Industries.
  • Sued Prichard Sewer and are working to see major upgrades at their facilities
  • Completed a Water Quality Monitoring Database to provide citizens an accurate picture of water quality in their area
  • Commissioned a Mercury Study to test mercury levels in Mobile and Baldwin County residents.
  • Formed the ADEM Reform Coalition
  • Participated in the LNG debate on a national and local level. We were successful in our campaign to keep ExxonMobil and other gas companies from building LNG facilities onshore.
  • Convinced the City of Mobile to insist on stricter regulations on Automobile Shredders and pass a mercury switch removal ordinance.

Alabama Coastal Foundation

• The Alabama Coastal Foundation was founded in 1993 as a Mobile Bay environmental organization.

Friends of Baldwin

• Friends of Baldwin formed in 2007. According to one of the founders, Stan Mahoney, and because of its affiliation with organizations like Mahoney’s Wolf Bay Watershed Watch, has already claimed almost 5,000 members. – PR 12/2/2007
• The steering committee inlcudes: Fairhope City Councilman Cecil Christenberry, Baldwin County Planning and Zoning Commissioner Doug Holton, Alabama Coastal Foundation member Tom Schlinkert, Mobile Baykeepers Director Casi Callaway and former Baldwin County Commissioner Chuck Browdy. The steering committee meets regularly at Mama Lou’s in Robertsdale.
• The group supports proposed flood-zone zoning laws.
• Among its other associates, Friends of Baldwin counts Mobile Baykeepers, the Fairhope-Point Clear Association for Responsible Development, the Fly Creek Preservation Association, Magnolia Springs Civic Association, the Perdido Beach Property Owners and Residents Association, and the Civic and Legislative Committee of Lillian.

• Smart Coast’s stated purpose is to promote “balanced development through greater citizen participation in Gulf Coast planning.” Wendy Allen, a former Baldwin County commissioner and longtime environmentalist, is one of the executive directors of Smart Coast in Fairhope.
• The Weeks Bay Reserve Foundation was incorporated in 1990 as a non-profit organization to support the Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The Foundation, with over 550 members, supports the Reserve through donations of land and educational exhibits, public awareness and education programs, water quality monitoring efforts, and volunteer programs. The Foundation also pursues land acquisition activities in the Weeks Bay watershed.
• Mobile Bay Sierra Club
• Wolf Bay Watershed Watch. Executive director is Stan Mahoney.
• South Alabama Network for the Environment
• Project CATE
• Baldwin County Trailblazers
• Dog River Clearwater Revival is an association of property owners, recreational users, commercial interests, and other stakeholders concerned with environmental issues affecting Dog River. It was formed by USA professor Mimi Fearns.
• Save Milkhouse Creek (www.savemilkhousecreek.org) is an organization formed to oppose the condemnation of land around Milkhouse Creek by Alabama Power for transmission lines.
• Mobile County Wildlife and Conservation Association
• The Gulf Coast RC&D Council is a non-profit, grass-root organization that implements projects in Baldwin, Escambia, and Mobile counties under the US Natural Resources Conservation Service.

Coastal Conservation Association

Coastal Land Trust

• Coastal Land Trust board members include Sage Lyons, a lawyer and politician, Art Dyas, a professional forester, Fred Stimpson, a lumber company president, Win Hallett III, president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce, Arthur “Skipper” Tonsmeire, a construction company president, and Henry Bryars, a timberland owner. “They’re all conservatives from old Mobile and Baldwin County families.” The group only meets once or twice a year, and has no members other than the board.
• The Trust has played a key role in protecting Delta acreage. Its latest and most ambitious project is to buy (with the financial backing of the state’s Forever Wild program) almost 70,000 acres of Delta timberland.
• “In the early 1980s, representatives of the Nature Conservancy came down and made a pitch for the Delta’s preservation. They were misunderstood by the local sportsmen, the hunters and fishermen in the Delta. (The Nature Conservancy) asked us if we would organize a local group to step in and make some land acquisitions in their place. We were loaned $4 million by the Nature Conservancy, which got the money from the Richard King Mellon Foundation. That was the initial $4 million that allowed us to acquire the Alco Timber Co. and Boyd Adams land, almost 18,000 or 19,000 acres. The Nature Conservancy, under its then-president and board, made a commitment that if we would repay the $4 million and add another $5 million, they would match it. Then there was a change in administration in the Nature Conservancy, and the subsequent (administration) didn’t feel like they were legally obligated to make that commitment. We were instrumental in getting (U.S. Reps.) Jack Edwards and Sonny Callahan to ensure that the Tenn-Tom land would be managed by the state of Alabama, the Department of Conservation. And we sold some of our land (to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers) because we knew the Department of Conservation would maintain a good relationship with the sportsmen down here. We stepped in and bought 1,500 acres (on the Tensaw River, near Hurricane) when it was threatened by industrial acquisition. We turned over about half of that to the Corps. We’ve got about 5,000 acres left (in the Delta). We’ve got currently about $3.5 million left. We bought a large tract at Fish River, to tie into Weeks Bay, which took money we would have plowed into the Delta, but we thought that was a very pressing need.  ” – Lyons
• One activist attributes the demise of the North Group, which had once confronted the LeMoyne chemical companies over their environmental records, to the fact that several former members gradually “defected” to a proindustry position through their involvement with the Citizens Advisory Panel. – Moberg
• Lemoyne Citizen Advisory Panel
  • The Le Moyne Community Advisory Panel (CAP) was organized in Axis in 1992, making it one of the first of such panels to operate in the U.S. As with all panels organized under Responsible Care, participation is by invitation only. Current plant workers are ineligible for membership, but their relatives are not. Managers usually nominate residents thought to be receptive to industry viewpoints and bypass those believed to harbor strong environmentalist beliefs. As vacancies occur, they are filled from nominations solicited from existing members.
  • Since adopting Responsible Care, Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA)-member industries have tried to preempt local opposition by cultivating an improved image in nearby communities. CMA’s intent is to persuade residents that the chemical industry has made “sufficient voluntary actions to protect the environment and the health and safety of the public, to make further restrictions unnecessary” (Mullin 1997:38). One component of this strategy entails organizing community advisory panel, each composed of a dozen or so residents who act as liaisons between the plant and the broader community. These panels meet on a monthly basis for residents to ask questions of plant managers and for managers to answer local concerns. By 1997, according to Chemical Week, the CMA’s trade publication, 316 community advisory panels were operating nationwide (Mullin 1997). Most members of the CAP become animated only when learning of promised industry contributions to the community or plans for expansion that will result in new hirings.
  • Several LeMoyne CAP members who deviated from its agenda found themselves barred from further participation. Asked whether the CAP represented the concerns of community residents, most residents and workers who were interviewed claimed it primarily served the interests of the companies. One described it as “an early warning system for the plants, so they know what’s going on here in the community and they can nip it in the bud.” Another informant described CAP members as basically well intentioned people who have been “brainwashed” by the companies to present “their side” within the community.
  • Efforts by the chemical plants around Axis to influence community perceptions extend well beyond the confines of monthly CAP meetings. The companies periodically pay for communitywide recreational events that make conspicuous use of the idioms of kinship and neighborhood (e.g., “Courtauld’s Family Days” and the “LeMoyne Community Picnic”). Corporate-sponsored activities and publications overtly equate the interests of the community with those of the chemical companies. By sponsoring such events and judiciously dispensing contributions to schools, churches, and medical services, companies cultivate a degree of dependence even among Axis residents with no connection to the chemical industry. The companies enjoy the support of ministers from several churches whose charitable campaigns around Christmas depend heavily on company contributions. Company grants have also provided a paramedic service, an amenity that would otherwise be absent given the area’s limited tax base. Ironically, the lack of public revenues for such services is due partly to the tax holidays granted to the companies by the Industrial Development Board. Several residents also asserted that the paramedics would not be so desperately needed were it not for the epidemic of heart disease caused by carbon disulfide exposure.
  • The Inscriber is a quarterly magazine mailed free of charge to every residence in the Axis ZIP code and the homes of plant employees. Each issue provides extensive photo coverage of company-sponsored events, at which residents are seen happily eating barbeque and competing in foot races or hula hoop contests. The Inscriber prominently publicizes corporate contributions to community services and schools, the latter including CMA curriculum materials for probusiness environmental education programs. An article about Akzo-Nobel, for example, claimed at its Axis plant had reduced toxic release inventory (TRI) emissions by 91 percent over five years (Inscriber 1997:6) It did not mention, however, that most of these reduction occurred because the company moved its carbon tetrachloride production to another plant.
  • In 1996, Axis resident Buddy Short sued Courtaulds for the death of several horses that he had pastured on land near the plant. Toxicology experts testified that the animals had succumbed to carbon disulfide poisoning. A jury awarded Short $1 million in compensatory and punitive damages in 1997. Soon thereafter, company lawyers appealed the award and succeeded in overturning it. Mr. Short claims to have been ostracized by neighbors dependent on plant employment and to have received anonymous phone threats after his suit was filed. He was later narrowly defeated in his bid for a seat in the Alabama Hose of Representatives by an opponent heavily supported by chemical companies and the Mobile Chamber of Comerce. Short’s wife, Margaret, once served on the CAP. If there were any doubt about the partiality of the CAP in the matter, it was dispelled during the trial, when its chairman Sam Thompson appeared as a witness on behalf of Courtaulds.
  • Source: Moberg 2002
• Deltaawareness.com: Chuckfee Mysteries by Russell Ladd, III, is an awareness video displaying the dramatic changes in the Mobile Tensaw Delta from 1940 to 2006.  The video displays “The Way it Was, 1946 to 1953″, “Comparison for 1940 to 2006″, and “Explore the Possible Causes”.
• Partners for Environmental Progress, or PEP, formed in 2000 and is closely tied to Mobile County’s development, business or industrial communities. Its board of directors includes representatives from Alabama Power Co., three major chemical plants, two industrial supply firms, engineering and contracting firms and a lumber company. PEP says it’s committed to improving air and water quality, but protection can’t come at expense of growth. – PR 5/27/2000

Alabama Environmental Organizations  

• Alabama Environmental Council
• Coastal Conservation Association
• Nature Conservancy of Alabama
• Alabama Rivers Alliance is a Birmingham environmental group that organizes other environmental organizations to reform ADEM.
• Alabama Grassroots Clearinghouse
• Legacy , Environmental Education Site
• Bama Environmental News – BEN
• Environmental Education in Alabama
• Alabama Water Watch

Mobile Bay Governmental Agencies

Alabama Coastal Counties Environmental Handbook

• The Mobile Bay National Estuary Program (NEP), funded with local, state and federal funds, developed an environmental management plan for the Bay. Restoring wetlands along the Causeway and other parts of the Delta is a key issue the NEP plans to address.
  • The national National Estuary Program was established by the US Congress under Section 320, an amendment of the Clean Water Act of 1987. Twenty-nine NEPs exist nationally. NEPs hold no regulatory authority, but rely on cooperating agencies. An NEP serves as an umbrella organization to pull together key stakeholders who will guide the development and implementation of its consensus-based CCMP.
  • The Mobile Bay NEP was created in 1995.
  • In 2002, the Mobile Bay NEP published its Comprehensive Conservation and Management Plan (CCMP): Volume 1  Volume 2   Characterization of Habitat Loss (1998)
• In the early 1979 the Alabama Coastal Zone Management (CZM) Plan was begun.
  • In 1972 the Coastal Zone Management Act was passed by the US Congress. The Act was not strongly regulatory in its language and proposed the development of federal-state partnerships in which federal funds would be made available to states designing Coastal Zone Management (CZM) programs for their coastal area that were “consistent” with minimum federal standards. The CZM is administered at the federal level through the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).
  • The state of Alabama entered the CZM program in 1979 with the development and approval of the Alabama Coastal Area Management Program (ACAMP).
  • The ACAMP defined Alabama’s coastal area as the upland continuous ten-foot contour (ten feet above mean sea level) seaward to the limit of the state’s territorial waters (three miles offshore). Establishment of the ten-foot contour as the ACAMP management boundary represents one of the first balancing acts of the program, as early proposals ranged from as large as the two county area to as small as the area seaward of  the mean high tide line.
  • Today, the duties of administering the ACAMP are split between two state agencies. ADEM has permitting, regulatory and enforcement authority for the program and has created a Coastal Programs office to fulfill these functions. Administration, education & outreach, planning and overall management responsibilities rest with the State Lands Division of the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR).
  • In 2002, ADCNR entered into a memorandum of agreement with the Mobile Bay NEP to serve as the state sponsor and champion for the NEP.
  • The major reason CZMP was even considered by the “powers-to-be” was in order for a state to be considered for an offshore “oil port” there had to be a plan in place to get federal monies for the study and to get the Ameraport in the Gulf of Mexico. In the final CZM Plan the Alabama Coastal Area Board was set-up, meeting in Mobile or Baldwin counties. When Fob James became governor, one of the first things he did was dissolve the Coastal Area Board, designated the Department of Economic Development Agency (ADECA) as lead agency (to receive and disperse funds), and gave regulatory control to the Alabama Department of Conservation. – Myrt Jones 
• The Dauphin Island Sea Lab (DISL) was founded in 1971 by the Alabama Legislature. It is Alabama’s marine science education and research laboratory located on Dauphin Island.
  • The DISL primarily serves the colleges and universities of Alabama through its college summer courses and graduate programs of University Programs. Our educational mission also includes Discovery Hall Programs (DHP) which encompasses K-12 field programs. DHP also includes the Estuarium public aquarium, which focuses solely on the Mobile-Tensaw Estuary System.
  • The research programs of the DISL range from biogeochemistry to oceanography to paleoecology. Although most research focuses on the near-shore and estuarine processes of Mobile Bay, field sites of our internationally-renowned faculty include Antarctica, Panama, Belize and other countries.
  • The Coastal Policy Center offers local government, industry and agency decision makers a range of coastal zone management services. One of our area’s major players in coastal zone management is the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, which falls within the DISL’s numerous programs.

U.S. Army Corp of Engineers, Mobile, AL District

University of South Alabama – Center for Estuarine Studies

Gulf Coast RC&D Council

Mississippi-Alabama Sea Grant Consortium

Coastal Alabama Clean Water Partnership

US Fish & Wildlife Service Daphne Ecological Services (ES) Field Office

• Established in 1982. Staff of 21.
• Implements the Endangered Species Act in Alabama. Coordinates recovery for the Alabama and Perdido Key beach mice and gopher tortoise; coordinates field level work for Section 10 (ESA) permit actions in Alabama. ESA: Section 4 Determination of an Endangered and Threatened Species; Section 6 Grant Management; Section 7 Interagency Cooperation; Section 9 Prohibited Acts; and Section 10 Exceptions.
• Manage FWS resources and their habitats.
• Protect and restore wetlands on public and privately owned lands.
• Investigate, prevent and remediate effects of environmental pollution to maximize quality habitat for Service trust species. Evaluates impacts of contamination and develops offsetting measures or seeks compensation under Natural Resource Damage Assessment provisions and Superfund Program.
• Leads State Working Group for the Partners In Flight Program, Alabama.
• Reviews approximately 1,500 federally funded, licensed permitted projects annually for impacts on fish and wildlife resources.
• Represents the Fish and Wildlife Service on Habitat Focus Group for the Gulf of Mexico Program.

Alabama Government Environmental Agencies

Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM)

• Under the 1982 Alabama Environmental Management Act, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) was established.
  • ADEM administers all major federal environmental laws including the Clean Air Act, Safe Drinking Water Act, and solid and hazardous waste laws. ADEM absorbed several commissions, programs, and agencies that had been responsible for Alabama’s environment.
• The Alabama Environmental Management Commission, whose seven members are appointed to six-year terms by the governor and approved by the Alabama Senate, is charged with overseeing ADEM.
  • The four newest members of the Alabama Environmental Management Commission have taken a more pro-active approach than in years past in a series of four-to-three votes. Their latest move was to fire ADEM director Jim Warr who had been with the agency since it was founded. Attorney Kenneth Hairston says Warr resisted their efforts to change. A storm of conflict resulted. A coalition of industry and agriculture groups sued two of the commissioners who voted to fire the longtime director.
• In interviews, meetings, and public hearings, activists charged that ADEM is more responsive to business than to public health.
  • ADEM’s maximum allowable industrial emission levels are above the limits set by most other states, and industry compliance is frequently unmonitored due to a lack of state enforcement personnel (Donelson 1989)
  • ADEM evaluates pollution permit applications based on emissions estimates that companies submit, a process that has never resulted in a permit denial
  • ADEM annually conducts opacity stack tests to assess compliance with state air regulations. Several weeks’ advance notice is given to each company prior to the tests, purportedly because regulators must set up equipment that might interfere with plant operations. Informants within the plants state that the agency’s advance notice enables manufacturers to scale back their most polluting processes prior to testing, only to resume them once inspectors have departed.
  • One community activist infiltrated and recorded a meeting between ADEM regulators and industry representatives. During the meeting, one of the officials told the gathering: “ADEM is a kinder and gentler regulatory agency than [federal] EPA. You want to let us fine you rather than let EPA get a hold of you. When there’s a problem, we generally try to keep EPA out of it.”
  • While denying that they consciously overlook instances of industry noncompliance, ADEM officials acknowledge that enforcement is limited by funding restrictions that prevent the hiring of adequate staff.
  • Activists criticize ADEM’s reliance on emissions limits on a plant-by-plant basis. Such criteria, they charge, ignore the synergistic effects of hundreds of pollutants released by dozens of plants.
  • When an ADEM official was asked whether public opinion was considered before issuing a permit, the official noted that although “members of the public can let us know their feelings before the permit is issued,” the basis for a permit decision is limited to technical criteria. Asked how the plant’s potential emissions were determined, the official responded that they were based on the information submitted by the company. When someone asked him whether ADEM had ever denied an operating permit on the basis of such information, he replied “No.”
  • In 1990, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) overrode federal EPA recommendations in establishing a limit for dioxins discharged in wastewater emitted by paper mills into the Mobile River. The agency’s initial recommendation of 1.2 parts per quadrillion corresponded to that proposed by the American Paper Institute, an industry lobbying group, but was nearly 100 times higher than levels recommended by the EPA (Oberkirch 1990:1). ADEM later strengthened these limits when it determined that many area residents consumed fish caught downstream from the plants. The agency’s requirement that fish from the Mobile River be annually tested for dioxins was rescinded in 1996, a rule change welcomed by the paper mills and criticized by area environmentalists (Hardy 1996:14).
  • “The problem with ADEM is they do not do regular monitoring. Alabama has a long history of being controlled by big business” – Adam Snyder, executive director of the Alabama Rivers Alliance
  • A coalition of 20 environmental and health groups published a report on how to reform the agency in February 2003. The 39-page report makes 22 recommendations ranging from changing the name to the Alabama Department of Environmental Protection; appointing a director with environmental experience because three of the agency’s prior directors didn’t have any; and developing a written penalty policy instead of arbitrarily tagging penalties.
  • In Alabama, $1.36 per capita from the state’s general fund went to environmental protection in 2000, compared with $18.51 per capita coming from Florida’s general fund. The Alabama agency’s budget was $43 million in 2003, compared with $1.9 billion going to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection the same year.
  • While the Alabama Department of Environmental Management had “effective compliance and enforcement programs” and exceeded national averages for many aspects of its work, the EPA found that ADEM needs to adopt a formal written system for issuing penalties and be more aggressive about going after companies that violate pollution permits repeatedly. According to the report, ADEM sometimes issues multiple Letters of Violation to a polluter who exceeds permitted discharges, but those letters do not set a date by which the company must come into compliance with its permit and do not spell out a penalty for continued violation. EPA wrote that ADEM’s Letters of Violation do not qualify as “formal” enforcement actions. Formal actions include such legal documents as consent orders, which place a legal burden on a company to comply with its permits. The EPA also found that ADEM failed to check to see if companies were in compliance with their hazardous waste permits as often as required, checking just half as many companies per year as EPA expects. The “most significant” issue, according to the report, is that ADEM does not have proper written documentation to explain whether or not polluters had been fined after violations were discovered, nor does the agency have a written policy that explains how fines are calculated. – PR 8/29/07
• Forever Wild is a collection of 56 tracts of land that together total nearly 124,000 acres with names like: The Walls of Jericho, Sipsey River Swamp, Eagle Roost View, Freedom Hills, Splinter Hill Bog. In 1992 the voters of Alabama approved the Forever Wild constitutional amendment.
  • Since Forever Wild’s inception, the Department of Conservation’s State Lands Division has secured more than $27.5 million in federal grants, with an additional $13 million in grants pending for fiscal year 2007. On top of that, Alabama citizens have donated more than $200,000 a year to Forever Wild through the Forever Wild car tag program.
  • Forever Wild has been instrumental in the creation of two Wehle environmental education centers in Baldwin and Bullock counties.  In south Alabama, the program has created the Bartram Canoe Trail; and hunters have benefited from Forever Wild’s help in securing tens of thousands of acres of new public hunting lands and wildlife management areas around the state. And several of Alabama’s state parks have been expanded thanks to the program.
  • “We tried for several years to get through our state legislative body a program that would keep, acquire, and save exceptional lands, and we finally got the Forever Wild Trust Fund. A portion of gas monies received by the state from the drilling industry in state waters went into this acquisition fund, and was overseen by the Forever Wild Board.” – Myrt Jones

Alabama State Lands Division

Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources

Alabama Natural Resources Conservation Service

Alabama Cooperative Extension System

Alabama Soil and Water Conservation Committee

Regional and Federal Agencies

Gulf of Mexico Program

Gulf States Marine Fisheries Commission

• Natural Resources Conservation Service
• U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• The Farm Bill provides the single largest source of funding for conservation in the United States. In the South, the Wetlands Reserve Program is among the most notable of Farm Bill conservation programs.

Mobile Bay Environmentalists

Mobile Bay Wildlife Refuges and Parks

Alabama Environment

• In 2003, the Environmental Protection Agency’s database listed 258 hazardous waste sites in Alabama, 13 of which were on the National Priorities List.
  • One of the nation’s five largest commercial hazardous waste sites is in Emelle, in Sumter County.
• Alabama ranked as the 48th least “green” state in the nation in a ranking by Forbes magazine in 2007.
• Alabama spends less than a dollar per person on environmental protection, among the lowest in the country. Federal regulators have threatened to take over programs because of inadequate funding.
• Major concerns of environmentalists in the state are the improvement of land-use planning and the protection of groundwater, disposal of hazardous wastes, and the state’s coal-fired power plants.
• Between 1997 and 2002, approximately 318,300 acres of rural land were developed in Alabama.
• Alabama’s solid waste stream is 4.500 tons a year (1.10 tons per capita). There are 108 municipal land fills and 8 curbside recycling programs in the state.
• In 2001, Alabama received $54,490,000 in federal grants from the EPA; EPA expenditures for procurement contracts in Alabama that year amounted to $1,978,000.
• The Alabama Environmental Management Commission rejected a call in June 2007 to bring Alabama’s water quality laws in line with neighboring states. – PR 8/13/07
  • In April, Mobile Baykeeper and a coalition of environmental groups sent a petition to the Alabama Environmental Management Council asking the agency to adopt the stricter pollution standards used in the surrounding states. Those standards would place new limits on 58 carcinogenic chemicals dumped into Alabama waters by industries. Groups representing some of the state’s industries likely to be most affected by new regulations, including Alabama Power, the Alabama Farmers Federation and the Pulp and Paper Council, have opposed the new standards.
  • Rather than changing the standards immediately, the Management Commission ultimately voted to create the advisory panel to investigate the impact of strengthening Alabama’s water pollution limits. Though the advisory panel was billed as an investigatory body that would hold meetings and make a recommendation to the Management Commission, the 15-member Cancer Risk Advisory Panel — composed of industry representatives, environmentalists, health experts and scientists — will have no further deliberations or further meetings and make no group recommendation. Instead, each of the people on the panel will answer as many of the 33 questions submitted by the Management Commission as they feel qualified to address. Then, Alabama Department of Environmental Management director Trey Glenn will “compile these findings and recommendations into a report” to be presented to the Management in October.
• The Public Service Commission approved a renewable energy rate decrease that could bring more customers into an obscure program supporting an Alabama Power Co. coal/biomass project in Gadsden. The project in Gadsden mixes coal with a small percentage of switchgrass, usually 5 to 7 percent. Some criticize Alabama Power’s marketing of the program, which has only attracted 215 buyers among a total customer base of 1.4 million. Biomass generated 308,000 kwh for Alabama Power in 2007, but the utility generated a total of 72 billion kwh in 2006.  – PR 12/25/07
• Alabama put over 140 million tons of carbon into the air in 2004, 13th highest in the nation, according to the Energy Information Administration. That equated to about 31 tons of carbon per capita, compared to the national average of 20 tons – PR 8/13/08

Coastal Alabama Ecology and Geology

• Ecological Characterization Atlas of Coastal Alabama (1984)
• Mobile Plain Garden Planting Cycle

Coastal Alabama Geology

• Geology of Mobile County (Geological Survey of Alabama, 1971)
• Baldwin County Soil Map
• Soil Survey Baldwin County (1964)
• Geology of Baldwin County (Geological Survey of Alabama, 1971)
• Gibson, Glen: An Analysis of Shoreline Change at Little Lagoon, Alabama (Thesis, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, 2006): Part 1  Part 2

Mobile Bay and Alabama Wetlands

• Wetlands are technically defined as those areas saturated by surface or ground water often and long enough to support vegetation typical of saturated soil conditions.
• They provide food and habitat for fish and shellfish, waterfowl game species, and for endangered and threatened species such as Alabama red-bellied turtles, wood storks, and bald eagles. They reduce the frequency and impact of flooding as well as reducing the water’s erosive potential. They partially treat storm water, removing contaminants, excess nutrients, and sediment.
• Coastal wetlands include salt marshes, shrub wetlands, brackish marshes, bottomland hardwood swamps and depressional wetlands.
• There are three categories of wetland indicators. Indicators must be present in all three categories for an area to be considered a wetland. These indicators are:
  • Vegetation: presence of hydrophytic, or “water loving,” vegetation. Indications of hydrophytic vegetation include buttressing of tree trunks and tree “knees.”
  • Hydrology: the duration that water impacts a wetland. Indicators of hydrology include standing water, dark-colored water marks on tree trunks and leaves on the ground that are gray or stained.
  • Hydric soils: soils that are saturated with water for a long period of time. Indications of hydric soils include soils that may be blue-gray, greenish or gray in color below the surface, soils that will “ribbon” when squeezed in your hand, soil that may be saturated with water and indications of oxidation (rust-colored areas) around plant root zones.
• Mobile and Baldwin County lie within the Mobile District of the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE).
  • The Corps has been tasked by Congress with protecting the integrity of navigable waters of the United States.
  • The Clean Water Act, passed by Congress in 1972, required plants to monitor and report every discharge. The USACE jointly administers the Clean Water Act with the EPA through the regulation of discharge of dredged and fill material.
  • The USACE issues individual or general permits for wetland-related impacts and it delineates wetlands according to the presence of hydric soils, hydrophytic vegetation and evidence of hydrological indicators.
  • At the county and municipal levels, there are some additional regulatory controls for wetland protection, but all of these regulations defer to the USACE for regulation and permitting.
  • Under the Water Resources Development Act of 1996, the Corps of Engineers can build wetlands even when no wetlands have been destroyed. About the only stipulation is that the federal government can supply no more than 65 percent of the funding for the project. A local sponsor, such as a state agency or a private group – or several organizations working together – could initiate the project and put up the other 35 percent. Much or all of that 35 percent, though, can be the value of the land itself. The Corps helped build wetlands at Weeks Bay Reserve under that provision.
  • An environmental assessment is typically done when it’s easy to demonstrate that impact to wetlands, streams or wildlife is not major. An environmental impact statement, which can take 12 to 18 months to complete, is usually required for large projects with major impacts, and involves more research and analysis by environmental experts.
• View public notices for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and the US Army Corps of Enginners, Mobile District. Report violations to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management or the US Army Corps of Engineers.
• The Coastal Area of Alabama includes water bottoms and adjacent shorelines up to the 10-foot contour. 
  • Within this area, wetlands are regulated by ADEM. ADEM’s regulations apply to wetland-related activities, such as dredge, fill, and mitigation, and it uses strategies relating to buffers and setbacks.
  • In most of Alabama, the Corps of Engineers is the sole authority in the regulation of wetlands. Only in the Coastal Zone, defined as the area from the ten-foot elevation contour seaward, does ADEM share responsibility with the Corps. The power of the Corps includes decisions about whether developers can mitigate wetland destruction with credits bought from a mitigation bank. Outside the Coastal Zone, every other environmental agency, including the EPA and ADEM, can only make recommendations to the Corps.
  • In coastal areas, ADEM officials have indicated that they planned to favor less stringent U.S. Army Corps of Engineers guidelines on wetland filling, instead of following state rules put in place in the 1990s. The corps’ guidance would make it much easier for homeowners to fill a set amount of coastal wetlands without obtaining a specialized permit. The state rules now enforced by ADEM are explicit in forbidding the filling of wetlands within the most sensitive coastal zones.
    • ADEM’s 1998 coastal plan rules are explicit, stating: “In no case will placement of fill dirt in wetlands for a lawn, housepad, driveway, parking or other residential structure be considered by the department.” The rule states that if a property has insufficient dry ground to build upon, “pile-supported structures may be considered.” Those rules specified that the footprint of a house built on pilings be no larger than 1,800 square feet. Parking areas were also required to be built atop pilings and allowed to be no larger than an additional 400 square feet.
    • Under the corps rules, property owners would be allowed to bring in truck loads of dirt and fill in an area up to 4,356 square feet, or about a quarter acre. The corps rules do not require buildings to be placed atop pilings above wetlands. Also, they do not require property owners to avoid wetlands, if possible, in the same way that the ADEM’s regulations do
• Under the Clean Water Act, silviculture is exempt from the wetland permitting process. By declaring they are engaged in silviculture, landowners “clear cut” the timber off a healthy wetland tract and then neglect the tract. The landowner then gets paid to restore the habitat by opening a mitigation bank. 
• Landowners in Alabama with qualifying properties are encouraged to consider applying for the Wetlands Reserve Program. This voluntary program offers landowners the opportunity to protect, restore and enhance wetlands on their property, a project spokesman said. WRP is administered by the Natural Resources Conservation Service. Funds are allocated annually to purchase easements and restore wetlands on qualifying lands.

Mobile County Wetlands

• Perhaps the greatest danger to wetlands in Mobile County is the county’s lack of a land use plan. Mobile County is alone in having no program to protect wetlands.
• After construction of Hank Aaron baseball stadium destroyed wetlands, the city of Mobile restored 15 acres of wetlands along Three Mile Creek. And 25 acres of marsh were rebuilt at the edge of the Navy Homeport site south of Brookley Field after the Homeport’s construction destroyed wetlands there.
• Critics say freshwater wetlands created near Fowl River in south Mobile County in the late 1980s are sparsely vegetated pits and dirt mounds – little more than breeding grounds for mosquitoes. Where a mix of salt and fresh water helps weed out unwanted plant species, wetlands restoration can be a better bet. Take the 25-acre tidal marsh that Chevron Oil Co. built near its refinery in Pascagoula in 1985 – PR 1/12/99
• The Alabama State Docks owns or is responsible for about 500 acres of dredge-spoil lands on Blakeley Island and Pinto Island. Much of that area, according to older maps and photographs, was once marshy wetlands. Much of Blakeley Island has been built up by years and years of dredge material. Dikes that hold the dredge mud are now as much as 40 feet higher than the original marsh. Docks geologist and environmental engineer on staff say areas along Blakeley Island that might be suitable for wetlands restoration already have returned to “a high-grade natural state.” – PR 1/12/99

Baldwin County Wetlands

• It is estimated that approximately 470 square miles (380,000 acres) of wetlands exist in Baldwin County.
• The Baldwin County Wetland Conservation Plan (2005) (PDF). The Baldwin County Commission is now in the third phase of an EPA-sponsored wetland mapping and assessment project that began in 1995.
• View maps of Baldwin County’s wetlands
• Baldwin County lacks “home rule,” meaning that it is impossible to pass ordinance without an Act of the Alabama Legislature.
• Baldwin County does have the authority to regulate subdivisions via subdivision regulations.   §5.2.2 of the Baldwin County subdivision regulations states, “Lots may be platted where sufficient upland area exists to provide a building site for the principal structure and necessary ancillary facility. Fill is used where necessary to provide access to lots where approval for such fill has been received from the USACE and other appropriated governmental agencies.”
• The City of Orange Beach has declared a moratorium on filling wetlands where mitigation is proposed to occur outside its corporate limits.
• The Alabama Department of Environmental Management requires special permitting for construction on land intersected by or seaward of the coastal construction control line (CCCL). Projects requiring this permitting include all building construction as well as smaller items, such as the installation of gazebos and dune walk-overs. The CCCL is defined as running 40 feet landward of the peaks of the primary dune system. Permits for construction seaward of or on the CCCL require special siting and design standards. These standards are intended to prevent projects that “remove primary dune or beach sands and/or vegetation or otherwise alter the primary dune system.”
• In 1982, Congress enacted the Coastal Barrier Resources Act (CBRA) to integrate specific undeveloped coastal barriers into the John H. Chafee Coastal Barrier Resources System (CBRS) along the Atlantic, Gulf, and Great Lakes coasts. Areas designated as part of the CBRS are ineligible for direct or indirect Federal financial assistance to support development projects, such as flood insurance and subsidies for road construction, with the exception of emergency life-saving operations and fish and wildlife research. The CBRS contains approximately 3.1 million acres of land and associated aquatic habitat, of which 1.8 million acres are already conserved. The Act effectively transfers the costs of development in coastal barrier areas from taxpayers (who otherwise fund Federal flood insurance) to individuals who decide to build in these areas.

Wetland Mitigation

• Federal regulations require companies to compensate for wetlands they destroy, a process called mitigation.  Most wetlands restorations in the United States are done to mitigate, or compensate for, wetlands lost to development, as required by federal laws passed in 1969 and 1972.
• A mitigation bank is a damaged tract of wetlands that has been restored or enhanced, then permanently set aside. This improved land is then valued in terms of credits that may be marketed to companies that need to compensate for wetlands they destroy.
• The Corps is bound by the terms of the Mitigation Banking Instrument signed when a mitigation bank is established. Because no federal or state laws govern the operation of mitigation banks, the Banking Instrument, negotiated by the Mitigation Bank Review Team (MBRT) and the owner of the bank, is critical. Under federal guidelines, MBRTs set the service area for all mitigation banks. The MBRT is a committee co-chaired by the Corps of Engineers and ADECA, with representatives from ADEM, Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources, EPA, Natural Resources Conservation Service and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
• A developer of a commercial site, the South Mobile Business Park, proposed to fill wetlands in Rattlesnake Bayou in the Dog River Watershed. Controversy arose because the developer announced he intended to buy mitigation credits from the Weeks Bay Bank in Baldwin County. Mobile Mayor Mike Dow wrote a letter urging the Corps to reject permits that would compensate for wetland destruction through mitigation credits from outside local watersheds.
• The cost of building new man-made wetlands ranges from $40,000 to more than $100,000 an acre, depending on what’s involved. The Corps rebuilt the 25 acres at the Homeport for about $1.7 million, or $68,000 per acre.

Mitigation Banks in Southern Alabama:

• Alabama Port Mitigation Bank: consists of 872 acres in southern Mobile County and contains 715 total mitigation credits.  Alabama Port Mitigation Bank is permitted through the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Mobile District, to offer mitigation banking services within the following Alabama counties: Mobile, Baldwin, Washington, Clarke, Choctaw, Marengo, and Sumter. Documents at ADEM list the applicants for this mitigation bank as Robin H. Luce, Jex R. Luce, Jr. and Milton L. Brown.
• The Boykin/Lillian Mitigation Bank, is 1,314 acres in size. The Bank is on “Boykin family property.” The owners have pledged to create a $850,000 fund for management of their bank, a figure substantially greater than the $250,000 the owners of the Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank pledged for its management. The perpetual owner of the Boykin/Lillian Bank will be a private foundation. The Mitigation Banking Instrument describes the arrangement: “The Wetlands Foundation, Inc. has established a Mobile Chapter of the Wetlands Foundation, Inc. and has appointed the following people as members of the initial Board of Directors of the Mobile Chapter: William G. Lindsey, Jr., Trustee, The Richard A. Boykin, Jr. Family Trust and Arthur L. Berger, President, WET, Inc.” According to the Environmental Law Institute, the bank has been suspended.
• The Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank in Baldwin County is a private, for- profit company. Help from the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA), was crucial in the establishment of the Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank. – The Harbinger
  • Under its Mitigation Banking Instrument, the MBRT allowed the Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank to sell 800 credits and set the price of one credit at $13,000. If the Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank sells all its credits, the project would generate $10,400,000, less expenses. The Prospectus stated the tract consisted of “1,017 acres of overgrown and cut-over Pine Savannah.” “Timber harvest (most of the merchantable timber has been removed), ditching, soil disturbances, and absence of fire have contributed to the degradation of the original habitat.”
  • Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank is operated by Wetlands Restoration L.L.C., a corporation formed in 1997 by Hooper W. Matthews Jr. as Registered Agent and Hooper W. Matthews III, Dale Ash and Cindy M. Colville as members. Much of the land purchased for the Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank was formerly owned by a state senator, Albert Lipscomb of Magnolia Springs.
  • The Weeks Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve, managed by the Alabama Department of Economic and Community Affairs (ADECA), will be caretaker of the land in the Weeks Bay Mitigation Bank at the end of the sale of the credits. ADECA owns 615 acres, called the Swift tract, adjacent to the Bank land. L. G. Adams, manager of the Weeks Bay Reserve said the land is wetlands in need of restoration or enhancement. He said the property had “large overgrowth and limited biodiversity,” the consequence of past timber harvest and “changed hydrology.” According to Adams, “a positive side” of the agreement between ADECA and the Wetlands Restoration L.L.C. will be that the common management of their two tracts would provide “ecological uplift” for the ADECA land.

Alabama Topography

• Alabama is divided into four major physiographic regions: the Gulf Coastal Plain, Piedmont Plateau, Ridge and Valley section, and Appalachian (or Cumberland) Plateau.
• The Gulf Coastal Plain, comprising the southern half of Alabama, consists primarily of lowlands and low ridges.
  • Included within the coastal plain is the Black Belt—historically, the center of cotton production and plantation slavery in Alabama—an area of rich, chalky soil that stretches across the entire width of central Alabama.
• The Piedmont Plateau of east-central Alabama contains rolling hills and valleys.
  • Alabama’s highest elevation, Cheaha Mountain, 2,405 ft (733 m) above sea level, is located at the northern edge of this region.
• In the Ridge and Valley section northwest of the piedmont is a series of parallel ridges and valleys running in a northeast-southwest direction.
  • Mountain ranges in this area include the Red, Shades, Oak, Lookout, and other noteworthy southern extensions of the Appalachian chain; elevations of 1,200 ft (366 m) are found as far south as Birmingham.
• The Appalachian Plateau covers most of northwestern Alabama, with a portion of the Highland Rim in the extreme north near the Tennessee border.
  • The floodplain of the Tennessee River cuts a wide swath across both these northern regions.
• The largest lake wholly within Alabama is Guntersville Lake, covering about 108 sq mi (280 sq km) and formed during the development of the Tennessee River region by the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA).
• The TVA lakes—also including Wheeler, Pickwick, and Wilson—are all long and narrow, fanning outward along a line that runs from the northeast corner of the state westward to Florence.
• The longest rivers are the Alabama, extending from the mid-central region to the Mobile River for a distance of about 160 mi (260 km); the Tennessee, which flows across northern Alabama for about the same distance; and the Tombigbee, which flows south from north-central Alabama for some 150 mi (240 km). The Alabama and Tombigbee rivers, which come together to form the Mobile River, and the Tensaw River flow into Mobile Bay, an arm of the Gulf of Mexico.
• About 450 million years ago, Alabama was covered by a warm, shallow sea. Over millions of years, heavy rains washed gravel, sand, and clay from higher elevations onto the rock floor of the sea to help form the foundation of modern Alabama.
• The skeletons and shells of sea animals, composed of limy material from rocks that had been worn away by water, settled into great thicknesses of limestone and dolomite.
• Numerous caves and sinkholes formed as water slowly eroded the limestone subsurface of northern Alabama.
• Archaeologists believe that Russell Cave, in northeastern Alabama, was the earliest site of human habitation in the southeastern US.
• Other major caves in northern Alabama are Manitou and Sequoyah; near Childersburg is DeSoto Caverns, a huge onyx cave once considered a sacred place by Creek Indians.
• Wheeler Dam on the Tennessee River is now a national historic monument. Other major dams include Guntersville, Martin, Millers Ferry, Jordan, Mitchell, and Holt.
• Another natural wonder is “Natural Bridge”, the longest land bridge span east of the Mississippi River.
• By the time it opened to barge traffic in 1985 (construction started in 1972), the Tenn-Tom waterway would end up costing the federal government $2 billion to construct and $5 million a year to dredge. Instead of the 27 million tons the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had predicted it would carry in its first year, the Tenn-Tom moved about 5 million tons of cargo. Even now, 16 years later, it moves only about 10 million tons. Meanwhile, the waterway has not lifted the Black Belt out of its poverty; and, at 13th in the nation, the port of Mobile is hardly the country’s largest. Critics also fault the Tenn-Tom on environmental and budget-busting grounds.

Alabama Climate

• El Nino events produce heavier than normal rainfall in the southern areas of the state, and less than normal rainfall in the north.
• Samford University biologist Larry Davenport wrote  “Climate Change and its Potential Effects on Alabama’s Plant Life”
• State Climatologist John Christy, who teaches at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, has become nationally known for his skepticism toward global warming claims