Mobile Bay dredge project is ‘bizarre, destructive’

Is there a definite NEED and REQUIREMENT for the Corps of Engineers (COE) to draft and release an overall EIS regarding the AL State Port Authority’s (ASPA) latest proposal for a costly destructive Mobile Bay dredge and fill project in coastal Alabama? See the Lagniappe article, “At What Cost?” dated December 15, 2021.

If so then the COE’s EIS needs to lay out just what the ASPA plans to do in their latest ridiculous dredge and fill project and oversee and make them do it if the public approves the Plan. All of the Plans in the past have been extremely costly, devastating and pose serious environmental problems for the Bay and the diversity that depends on it. Especially when one isn’t needed.

Mobile Bay’s biodiversity is extremely important as it contains large numbers and variety of marine, bird and terrestrial species that presently live together within this major vital coastal ecosystem. The precious marine systems and life in Mobile Bay have been and are threatened frequently by the uncaring ASPA, COE and members of Alabama politics in numerous destructive endeavors.

For years, the Mobile Bay system has been used by large deep-draft vessels successfully, but no Bay destruction was required as the Gulf of Mexico offshore deep-draft Port handled and accommodated the numerous vessels and loads for years. For years shallow vessels served the Port as they were loaded with wares from the vessels then transported up the channel to the Port where they were unloaded. This offshore Port helped to protect and save the extremely invaluable shallow portions of Mobile Bay and continues to serve humanity in protecting the Bay’s sensitive fantastic natural worlds.

The Bay’s Needs and Protection have never been a priority of the ASPA, the variety of unnamed maritime services or the COE yet these uncaring people continue to repeat their bizarre, destructive proposals for another widening and deepening of our shallow Bay system. Ludicrous!

ASPA’s recent Proposed Plan would have allowed the extremely deep and wide Asian vessels piled high with containers of Asian tinker toys to pass one another in the ASPA proposed wider and deeper channel (that hasn’t been approved). What happened to this ONE?

Has anyone considered the devastating and extremely costly requirements this project would have required in the destruction and removal of the Bay’s major supportive underwater sandy and clay bulkheads that presently support the Eastern Shore and communities such as Fairhope, Daphne Montrose, etc. or threaten the valuable prime wetlands and low-lying habitat that presently provide for a wide variety of birds and animals that would lose habitat in the removal of these major supportive underwater bulkheads for an unneeded costly channel … just to sell more junk that ends up in the landfills?

“At What Cost?” The article in Lagniappe and written by Gabriel Tynes is fantastic, timely but there is a serious lack of information on just how deadly Mobile Bay’s water and land resources, marine life, wildlife and birds plus sediment loads may be nowadays? One has to read old EIS’s but my ASPA and USACE’s EIS’s are available in the USA Archives.

In the earlier years the toxic methyl mercury problem stopped the public from fishing and eating trout in Fish River of Baldwin County and Fowl River of Mobile County then eventually the other coastal rivers had the problem as well. What about NOW?

Alabama Power Company’s huge “leaky” holding pond and deadly underground aquifer immediately north of the Port in the Delta holds heavy loads of toxic wastes and releases which are major sources that now pass through the harbor 24 hours a day, adding loads to all these other problems. No one knows?

It may be time to require the ASPA to do an overall Environmental Impact Statement on all their ridiculous destructive and numerous proposals for a Port in Mobile Bay, especially since they never mention the great offshore one that handles the deep water loads out in the Gulf. Also, the Offshore Port needs mentioning.

Sincerely,

Myrt Jones
Mobile