Ugly Status Quo of MS4 Pollution

Many areas along Dog River are normally trashy year after year. The above photo was taken last year.

Same spot, the above photo was taken a couple of weeks ago showing the trash all removed. 

Having recently confirmed the City of Mobile recently starting operating a litter boat (tho I have never seen it) and seeing this normally trashy shoreline had been cleaned, I assumed the City of Mobile was finally taking action to remove the long neglected trash pollution from Dog River.

Was about to give big Kudos to the City of Mobile but after asking around, it became clear that it was a couple of Dog River residents and the Dog River Clearwater Revival group that was responsible for this particular cleanup. Thank you Kent, Travis, Kathy, Claire and anyone else for helping to clean up this one trashy area on Dog River. This group and volunteers helped clean the shoreline of an elderly home owner who is unable to get out to remove the City's MS4 trash after every big rain.

Same spot, the above photo showing that unfortunately, more City MS4 trash has already started filling in the Dog River shoreline in the recently cleaned up area.

From what I have been able to learn, the City litter boat will not remove storm water trash from shorelines because supposedly people complained. Really? Shorelines is where 95 percent of storm water trash ends up.

So despite a four year old lawsuit against the City of Mobile demanding the city both get a handle on their community's litter problem and remove any future storm water trash from Dog River, it appears the status quo of the City ignoring all the shoreline litter in Dog River remains the same.

The leaders in the City of Mobile are just too incompetent to come up with a simple plan to remove the shoreline trash from Dog River watershed. It appears ADEM needs to sue the City of Mobile AGAIN for continuing to ignore the Existing City's storm water trash pollution in Dog River.

This is the type of pollution that all the best minds in the City of Mobile, despite fines and lawsuits, cannot figure out how to remove to restore Dog River wetlands to their healthy natural state. I had no problem paddling right up to the trash.

Hell, the City of Mobile cannot even find a way to keep the shoreline of their Dog River Park clean.