Quarantined

The mouth of Mobile Bay is busy these days with shrimp & charter boats employed as ‘vessels of opportunity’ searching for oil slicks. Every morning a small flotilla rounds the point and returns in the afternoon. But many, many more are anchored out in the bay, awaiting their turn for a good bath at the decontamination unit in the industrial canal south of Mobile.

 Last year the arrival of a big tanker or tug boat was reason enough to get out the binoculars for a closer look. But this summer we can’t see the Dauphin Island Bridge across the bay for all the boats. The fact that the quarantine area is inside the bay is terribly distressing for residents of the Eastern Shore working to protect their estuaries and watersheds. 

http://wkrg.com/890489  (click here to see the operation in Theodore)

At the beginning of this nightmare Governor Riley proposed closing off the bay with booms, from Fort Morgan to Dauphin Island (about 5 miles), to keep the oil slicks out… but today it floats by in the wakes of the oily tankers.
 

Last week they pressure-washed the jetty at the Mobile Bay Ferry landing to clean off the unsightly oil.

The industrial canal is in Theodore and BP has recently imported a crew from Alaska to open a new ‘decontamination unit’ or boat-washing facility.

 The small decontamination unit now located at Fort Morgan is operated by a crew from Massachusetts. and the crews working with Clean Harbors at Fort Morgan are from Maine, Louisiana, and Texas. One of the workers here told me his crew leader instructed him to get an Alabama driver’s license, but he said he refused to change the license plate on his car, he only plans to be here for 6 more months.

It’s my understanding Vice President Biden and Governor Riley will visit Theodore today to meet with local fishermen and small business owners, to answer their questions and offer information about the clean-up operation.

I hope someone asks Governor Riley why he abandoned his plan to protect Mobile Bay and why the ‘hire locals first’ requirement is not enforced in Alabama…

Welcome to the Fort Morgan Historic Site & Tar Removal Station

If the residents of Mobile Bay still had delusions their state government was working to protect them from the insidious oil after local mayors fiddled and fought while the first big oil slick slid past the ‘vessels of opportunity’ yesterday, they’d better think again.      

Site of the Historic BP boat cleaning station

 

Early this morning contractors for BP rolled in with construction materials to construct a ‘decontamination unit’ for cleaning boats on the Historic Fort Morgan property, around the Mobile point and inside the bay. Not only will oil-drenched boats be churning into the ‘protected’ bay waters, but somebody will be washing these boats with something that will, presumably, end up in the bay.      

The contractors assured us they were layering fabric with absorbent material that would collect the toxic brew, but they had no answers to our questions about emptying or replacing the material daily, or any solution to our frequent summer squalls.      

And this afternoon more contractors roared in for a pre-bid meeting about dredging, constructing a seawall, and building boat slips for the soon-to-be finished ‘boat washing station’ .      

When this nightmare began we were promised any boat cleaning stations would be located outside the bay at a platform where skimmers could corral and remove the muck.  Who decided to abandon the bay and allow this decontamination unit to be located on the backside of the peninsula on the historic site owned by the state of Alabama?      

The people of Alabama have worked and paid to lovingly renovate and maintain this historic site since the army gave it to us in 1946. It is the highest grossing state park in Alabama. Has anyone asked us if we want to abandon the plans to save the bay and give Fort Morgan to BP?      

I would encourage anyone who has ever enjoyed Fort Morgan to visit soon before BP destroys our history. They have already blocked the Spanish-American batteries and within a week it will be difficult to visit the Civil War fort.      

file photo from 'State can't find rape kit in Thomas Arthur case' http://lethal-injection-florida.blogspot.com/2008_07_01_archive.html

 

The buck stops at Governor Riley’s office, so he evidently approved BP’s attack on Fort Morgan.  I guess he thinks we’ll all sleep just fine knowing he won the war today on bingo…