Here at Mobile Baykeeper, we talk about our responsibility to future generations. How it is our duty to protect the bounty of the Mobile Bay Watershed for our children and grandchildren, so that it may sustain them in the same way it has sustained us in our lifetimes. This is what drives much of our work.

What we don’t talk about as much is our responsibility to the past — to the history, ideal, and natural perfection of what came before. When the first Spaniards showed up on the Gulf Coast in the early 16th century, this stretch of land must have been something to behold. It was an exotic clime (the French eventually called it a “trembling land”) that no doubt elicited a WTF moment, and settling here, in the case of the French a century later, was no picnic. Just ask the Cassette Girls of Fort Louis, who arrived in 1704 fresh off the boat from Paris. They arrived at Twenty-Seven Mile Bluff, the French equivalent of Jamestown, and found themselves living in a Hank Williams Jr. song (“Country Boy Can Survive”), likely skinning bucks and running trot-lines.

As local naturalist and author Ben Raines points out, Alabama remained untouched by the glaciers of the last Ice Age, a fact that accounts for our wealth of biodiversity and the darkly romantic aesthetic of our delta, one of the country’s last great wildernesses. Our patron saint of the sciences, E.O. Wilson, famously dubbed it “America’s Amazon.”

“Warmest climes but nurse the cruelest fangs,” Herman Melville once wrote. Today’s cruel fangs are not the smallpox and yellow fever that ravaged the colonists and natives of old, but — aside from hurricanes and floods — come in the form of pollution, notably the Plant Barry coal-ash pond that corrupts our groundwater and puts our region at such great risk.

Of course, there are other pollution culprits: excess nitrogen from runoff, PFAs, PCBs, etc. And they’ve all left their mark. 

“All these people that are moving here, they ain’t got any idea what a paradise we used to have,” Jimbo Meador, our local version of Huckleberry Finn, told Mobile Baykeeper last year. “They have no conception of what Mobile Bay used to be like. And you know, it is a dying breed that remembers what it used to be like. And so, it’s hard to fathom for some people, but I used to spearfish in Mobile Bay. I mean it was that clear. I used to put on a mask and snorkel and fins and I used to chop barnacles off of the pilings and spear sheepshead and even flounder and stuff.”

You can never return to the past; it’s a fool’s errand to try. But it takes a herculean effort not to squander all the good stuff, and to keep the rock we’re pushing up the hill from rolling back down on us. And while much has been lost, a lot of good remains. We still have quite a treasure among us. Perhaps if we can stop the pollution our waters can begin to heal.

— Caine O’Rear, Communications Director, on behalf of the Baykeeper Team

As I write this late Wednesday afternoon, a disturbance is percolating along the coast of Guatemala, over the northwestern Caribbean Sea. While it doesn’t appear to be a threat to Coastal Alabama, the storm does serve as a reminder that we are entering the playoff portion of hurricane season, that time when things start to get interesting. Days to come will likely see school closings, frantic, last-minute runs to Publix, and endless hours gazing at the Weather Channel, watching Jim Cantore stand sideways in the wind on some southerly beach, bellowing into his mic and looking as giddy as a child on Christmas morning.  

Those who dwell in the hurricane-prone states often say they would take hurricanes over tornadoes if given the option. A hurricane you can see coming, they say. Well, nobody saw Sally coming. It appeared out of nowhere, seemingly on little cat feet, and left a lion’s wrath in its wake, causing more than $300 million worth of damage in Alabama alone.  

Sally, which introduced itself in September of 2020, arrived after months of lockdown. As it approached land, it veered eastward and made landfall in Gulf Shores as a strong Category 2, thankfully missing the coal-ash pond at Plant Barry, which houses more than 21 million tons of ash within an earthen dam along the banks of the Mobile River. At the Barry site, the Mobile River has a flood stage of 12 feet and will spill over the dam if it reaches beyond 20 to 25 feet. A direct hit by a hurricane, one imagines, would not be good.  

Mobile Baykeeper’s recent Notice Of Intent To Sue filed against Alabama Powerconcerns the ongoing pollution of groundwater caused by the ash pond — a violation of the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act’s Coal-Combustion Residuals rule. The pollution of the groundwater, whose testing shows levels of arsenic more than 800 percent above the legal threshold — is cause enough to move the ash into an upland, lined landfill, or have it recycled into concrete. But a major spill — whether caused by a hurricane, flood, or a collapse of the earthen dam (not unlike the historic Kingston, Tennessee ash spill in 2008) — could be an apocalyptic blow exceeding the BP oil disaster in its scope. 

Of course, the late-summer season comes with other agonies. The constant days of rain create challenges for our waterways, as we see heightened levels of bacteria in our Bay due to increased runoff and sewage overflows. Our SWIM program, which reports bacteria levels at 14 sites in Mobile Bay on a weekly basis, will keep you informed on where it’s safe to swim and and play. 

Below you can find out what else we’ve got going on this month, including our annual food truck festival Bay Bites, which is happening August 27 in Cooper Riverside Park. You can buy tickets here.  

And please consider supporting Baykeeper’s efforts to protect our watershed from coal ash and excess bacteria with a financial donation. Each donation is an investment in our watershed’s future. 

As always, thanks for your support.  

— Caine O’Rear, Communications Director, on behalf of the Baykeeper Team

From the Mobile Baykeeper August Newsletter.

From the patio of the Bluegill Restaurant, you cannot see the candy-striped smokestacks of Plant Barry rising twenty miles away in north Mobile County, at the site of Alabama Power’s 600-acre coal-ash pond. The back-end of the restaurant, which sits on the eastern portion of The Causeway in Spanish Fort, looks out over Pass Picada channel — a veritable honey-hole for redfish, speckled trout, and largemouth bass— before flowing into Chacaloochee Bay. Families stand along the rickety dock after dining and kids angle for privileged glimpses of alligators loitering idly for scraps. Elvis likely stood here during one of several Bluegill experiences in the ’50s, perhaps after the time he performed at a Vigor High School assembly, only to have the show cut short due to the saltiness of his below-the-belt gyrations.  

Standing along the Pass in the magic hour, among the cattails and cordgrass, hyacinth and lotus blooms, it’s easy to forget the threat that looms northward in the Delta. Before the 2008 coal-ash spill in Kingston, Tenn. — a spill that resulted in nearly $3 billion in damages and cleanup costs — the issue of coal ash was not part of the public imagination. Over the past seven years, due to the work of Mobile Baykeeper and others, coal ash is now very much on the minds of coastal Alabamians.

If you’re not privy to the news, you can learn why Mobile Baykeeper and the Southern Environmental Law Center filed a Notice Of Intent To Sue Alabama Power for its plans to leave more than 21 million tons of coal ash buried along the Mobile River, a historic body of water that was designated by American Rivers as the “third most endangered river” in the U.S. in 2022. Litigation has always been a means of last resort for Mobile Baykeeper, and these recent events are no exception. 

In this time of global upheaval and cataclysm (both actual and imagined), when all seems so transient and short-lived, we have the chance to ensure a vital corner of our world, and one of national significance no less, is preserved and protected just as it should be. As always, we can’t do it without your support.

— Caine O’Rear, Communications Director, on behalf of the Baykeeper Team

As we hurtle into the second week of this savage heatwave, the need to jump in the water and cool off becomes even stronger. Fortunately, our weekly SWIM program lets you know where it’s safe to splash around and get some relief. 

Here in Coastal Alabama, we are lucky to live on the water during the summer sizzle — the psychological benefit of that is huge. Anyone who’s spent some dog days in a landlocked region knows exactly what I’m talking about.

What separates Coastal Alabama from the rest of the Yellowhammer State is the water and the culture that it engenders. Early in its history, Mobile operated as a sort of colony, almost oblivious to the laws and customs of its more northern statesmen. It had its own code. It’s a history peppered with pirates, sailors, and libertines, a culture once closer in kin to Havana than New York. You just have a different mindset when you’re a port town on the water. There’s something about the mystery of the sea and the possibility of escape and change. For that, we are lucky.

Our waters offer myriad summer excursions. Family trips to the beach. Fishing tournaments. Mullet tosses. Kayaking on the Delta. Tubing. I could go on. 

I was lucky enough to spend several childhood summers in Point Clear, where I learned to ski and cast a bait-net. I heard the bells cling in the pre-dawn dark announcing numerous jubilees. I caught speckled trout from a Stauter near Middle Bay Light. And I rode my Power Wheels off the wharf into Mobile Bay kamikaze-style with my fellow hooligans (It was the ’80s, after all).

Water is the source of all things Mobile, and we protect it in various ways at Mobile Baykeeper. We investigate citizen concerns about pollution. We track sewage spills and let you know when and where they occur. We educate our youth about the watershed in our schools and libraries. Protecting our waterways is a constant battle that requires daily vigilance, and it can’t happen without your support. 

So stay cool and see you on the water. 

— From the Mobile Baykeeper June Newsletter

It was just after six o’clock in Prague when one of my roommates, Barton, a tall, laconic Texan who had been a basketball star in his youth, entered our flat in Vinohrady and said with characteristic stoicism, “Someone blew up the Twin Towers.” He might as well have been talking about the Laundromat changing its weekend hours, judging by his tone.

It was a Tuesday (as you know), and Barton was returning from his afternoon duties teaching business English to a crew of budding capitalists somewhere downtown. I had been home for a few hours after wrapping up my own classes in Malá Strana, at a private language school next to the American Embassy and just a stone’s throw from Prague Castle. My other roommate, Clay, a Texan and a childhood friend of Barton’s, had spent the day at the flat, smoking European cigarettes, debating man’s place in the universe, and devising plans to publish an expatriate newspaper called The Village Idiot (which, sadly, never came to pass).

Barton, having just learned of the attacks via text, was scant on information. There was no television in the flat and no Internet service. Anxious, we fired off a volley of frantic texts and arranged to meet our friend Tom at a pub in Žižkov, where he said a TV could be found.

The pub (I forget its name) was one of those nondescript watering holes in Žižkov that bore all the hallmarks of midwinter Soviet charm: decades-old red tablecloth, bad lighting, old bartender with a grizzled beard. Žižkov, where I lived months later, has always been a working-class stronghold and even carried the sobriquet “Red Žižkov” prior to the Velvet Revolution.  It was easy to see why.

Tom was sitting alone at a long table not far from the television when we arrived. We all hugged, took a seat, and for the next few hours, over pint after pint of Gambrinus, watched the scenes of carnage unfold on the screen as a Prague newscaster delivered the rundown in Czech, a language that fell on deaf ears and only added to our sense of disorientation.

The next morning, as I made my way to class, I saw a crowd gathered in front of the American Embassy. Flowers and various condolences were strewn over the ancient cobblestones. Many of my Czech friends extended sympathies that week, but it wasn’t long before you caught a whiff of “America had it coming” by the odd expatriate at the bar, a sentiment that was hard to hear at the time.

Published in the Prague Daily Monitor.

The pitcher’s mound at Yankee Stadium can feel like the loneliest place in the world. It’s a feeling Jake Peavy knows in his bones. A Mobile native and one of the most decorated professional athletes to ever come out of the Azalea City, Peavy wasn’t immune to the slings and arrows that come with being a big-league hurler, despite his many accolades. It’s midsummer, and we’re talking with the former pitcher in the mixing room at Dauphin Street Sound, the state-of-the-art studio in downtown Mobile that he and a team of local talent opened back in 2016.

Peavy is waxing about his days in the big leagues and what got him hooked on music in the first place. After winning titles with the Giants and Red Sox, the two-time World Series Champion retired from the game in 2016 after a 15-year professional career, but in his jeans and T-shirt, he still appears to be in fighting shape.  

“So here’s a picture of me going to Yankee Stadium and getting my butt kicked by the Yankees,” he continues with some animation. Peavy is a passionate storyteller; in fact, it’s clear after spending more than 10 minutes with him that he’s passionate about most anything he does. And while baseball may be a team sport, pitching is a solo act, and music became a way for him to unwind after three hours of hyper-focused intensity that, in the moment, felt like a matter of life and death. “It’s lonely on the mound, and it’s lonely with the press afterwards. It sucks leaving the stadium, getting on the bus, and then getting off the bus. And the last thing you’re going to do when you get to your hotel room is flip on the television and watch the sports channels and highlights.”

When Peavy first got called up in 2002, most of his teammates were 10, 15, 20 years older than him. He couldn’t go out to bars with the team, so he ended up spending a lot of time in his room by himself. It was in this scenario that the St. Paul’s alumnus found a creative outlet through music. Padres third-base coach Tim Flannery liked to pick country tunes in the hotel stairwell after games, and it was Flannery who gave Peavy his first six-string. “I could sit in there, play that guitar and not think about how I got my ass kicked,” he laughs.

Read the full story at Mobile Bay Magazine here.

Dauphin Island, Alabama. August 21, 2021.