A group of "unlikely allies" is opposing the dumping of dredge materials into Mobile Bay, according to a recent NPR report.
The Mobile Baykeeper has come out against what it calls harmful dumping into the Bay due to a project to deepen and widen the Port of Mobile. The Army Corps of Engineers has permitted dumping into the Bay as part of the project and ongoing maintenance. The Mobile Baykeeper has filed a notice of intent to sue the Corps under the Endangered Species Act.
"I understand why they should do that, but what they're doing with the material is our problem," Patrick Gormandy, a Mobile Bay shrimper, told NPR. "We want to leave this bay better than we found it, and it's going to be hard to do that."
The dumping is also opposed by Bayou la Batre Mayor Henry Barnes.
"We're not against economic development," Barnes told the outlet. "But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and the way they are doing it is wrong."
He continued, "We're fighting foreign imports. Domestic regulations out the wazoo. I mean, it's crazy. But yet they can come and just dump on us? You know, that's ridiculous. Makes no sense to me."
Corps officials defended the dredging as "good for the ecosystem."
"It's important from our perspective to keep the sediment in the system," Justin McDonald, chief of civil works programs and project management branch of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Mobile District, told NPR. "The sediment renourishes the system and you need to keep the sediment in the system. It's not good to haul it out," he says. "That's where the real disconnect in the public perception right now is."
State Sen. Chris Elliott (R-Josephine) told NPR, "This isn't good for the bay. This is universally almost opposed by the people that live here. And there are better ways to do it."
Elliott says the legislature may get involved because state waters are at stake. He's reviewing a Maryland law that prohibits this kind of dredge disposal in Chesapeake Bay, according to NPR.
"I just want to make sure that what we're doing for the big guys, for the port to keep that up and operating so that big container ships are coming in, which I'm fully in favor of and supportive of, that it doesn't squeeze out these locals, these guys that have been here forever that are trying to make their living catching seafood," Elliott told the outlet.
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