Tossing Mullet

The challenge to the Northrop-Grumman/EADS tanker deal has dominated Mobile chit-chat for the better part of a month, but it has barely dented the communal euphoria as the “city of perpetual potential” emerges from the dark ages of post-WW II.

Mobile was one of the cities working to replace the Liberty ships that were being destroyed by the German submarine fleet. The dark ages were indeed dark because of the acrid smell of the paper mills that became the mainstay of the community, along with the residual shipbuilding, after Brookley Air Force Base closed in the mid-1960s.

“Ahh, the sweet smell of money” was the response whenever anyone had the temerity to challenge the performance of the plants. Most of those plants are gone now as a result of their inability to meet the challenges of improving technology – and to some extent, regulatory demands

There are few accurate accounts of the state of the river and bay water quality at that time because this period pre-dated the passage of the Clean Water Act and all the subsequent legislation, federal and state, that resulted from a river in Cleveland, Ohio, catching on fire – and catching the attention of the entire nation! It is safe to assume that it was not a pretty sight (or smell).

Under low flow conditions, estimates indicate that as much as 10 percent of all the water in the Bay may have been wastewater! From the 1970s through the end of the last century, the volume of wastewater from industry discharges to the river and bay has been reduced to less than a quarter of what it once was – not bad, but not perfect either! In many ways the quality of the volume remaining has also been improved so we can safely assume that things are better than they were 50 years ago.

But people that have lived around Mobile Bay for a generation or so have long regaled me with stories of grassbeds ringing the shores of the bay, clear water and beloved “dolphins dancing near the Causeway,” while accounts from a 19th century British travel writer describe “oysters the size of my foot” being offloaded at the foot of Government Street. These emotional recantations may be a bit expansive but they are more than just food for thought.

It seems likely that while things may be better than they were 50 years ago, they are almost certainly not better than they were 100 years ago. Dr. Jeremy Jackson of Scripps Institution of Oceanography (my fair alma mater) has a remarkable and controversial Web site that addresses what he calls “shifting baselines” (www.shiftingbaselines.org). Dr. Jackson’s point is that our frames of reference are limited to our personal experience and seeing the environment as better than last year can be misleading – although I guess it’s better than “worse than last year.”

At any rate there are images of an economic boom dancing in the heads of our civic leaders – container trucks streaming in and out of the new Port Authority terminal, mingling with the cars headed to and from the cruise ship terminal, hundreds of cars bearing people to work at the new Northrop-Grumman/EADS facility at the renewed Brookley site, traffic headed from all points of the compass to the new ThyssenKrupp steel mills in north Mobile County. What a vision! The sweet smell of money returns – after all these years.

Oops! That’s a lot of vehicles and a lot of people – what are we going to do with all of them? No worry – triple the width of Hwy 43 and throw in some traffic lights – that ought to do it and we’ll pull in some federal transportation dollars – more jobs! Wait – more people and trucks – how are we going to deal with that? No worry – double the width of the I-10 Bayway and how about a new bridge rising high over the city? That should take care of it and we can get to Bass Pro Shop even faster. (Damn, it’s backed up with trucks trying to get up the grade, let’s take the tunnel!) Great idea, tourists may be able to see over the guard rails and decide to stop – wait – more cars, where are they going to park? Have the frolicking fairies in your mind stopped dancing to think about all of this now?

And the fact is that the Bay water clarity has not improved over the last 35 years, grassbed return is sporadic, and our only charismatic megafauna are manatees that seem to have migrated north as we have warmed up and the number of outboard engines has reached an intolerable level in Florida! The efforts both involuntary and voluntary by the manufacturing sector, paper and chemical, as well as domestic waste treatment have not brought us back to a happier “baseline.”

The seafood harvest is holding its own in most areas, but against which baseline – 10 years ago or 100? We have created an absolute plethora of process in the form of regulation and unending planning, but we most often equate the existence of process with progress and don’t actually achieve success.

I’m not suggesting that we can restore the Bay to a state of 100 years ago. That would certainly mean that we would have to return to the population of 40,000 and a habitat footprint that was probably less than 5 percent of what we have now. But driving a car is the most polluting thing that we do, and work in Tampa Bay has clearly implicated automobile emissions as a major source of nitrogen enrichment in the bay. This is probably the greatest threat to coastal Alabama, other than the dirt that continues to wash off our habitat conversion efforts.

We will not and cannot achieve real success if we continue to try to pave our way out of congestion with subsidized asphalt and exacerbate the problem by continuing to spread out over the natural landscape, destroying its capacity to support our very existence (okay, that’s a bit much) – at least a quality of life that has been much appreciated by generations along coastal Alabama!

The future may be bright but the potential darkness facing us may not be due to sunglasses and I hope that we don’t enter this golden age of prosperity blinded by the misconception that unbridled growth will provide the money to solve all problems.

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George Crozier is Lagniappe columnist. Contact him at GCrozier@bellwether-group.com.

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