Flotte’s Notes on
An Unofficial Encyclopaedia
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·
The
·
Dog River, Deer River,
and
·
The
·
The deepest areas of the bay are located within the shipping
channel, sometimes in excess of 75 feet deep, but the average depth of the bay
is only 10 feet, which
is among the most shallow for a bay this size.
·
It
is approximately 32 miles north to south, 23 miles wide at its widest point,
and about 10 miles wide at the City of
·
A
combination of wind and tide delivers salty Gulf waters into the Bay from the
south that mix with varying amounts of freshwater from the Mobile-Tensaw River
Delta. Due to the shallow nature of the bay, dynamic climatic conditions, and
man-made hydrologic modifications salinity conditions in the Bay are remarkably
variable.
·
The
Bay is influenced by daily diurnal tide changes that average a little less than
a foot and a half, with maximum changes exceeding two and a half feet.
·
The
Mobile Bay Ferry moves
passengers and autos between
·
The
sandbar at southeast side of the mouth of
·
Prior
to the channel, Mobile Bay was too shallow for heavy ships so small steam-power
vessels called lighters took
millions of bales of cotton from Navy Cove to Mobile.
·
Once
onboard, the pilot would navigate the ship over the Mobile Bar to a position
four miles northwest of Mobile Point known as the Lower Fleet Anchorage. The anchorage had to be used because the
mouth of the
·
It
was not until 1826 that the U.S. Congress authorized money for the development
of a navigable channel in
·
In
the year 1831,
·
In
1870, congress authorized the first of many improvements to the port. The
obstructions were removed, three lighthouses were built, and by 1876 the ship
channel was dredged to a depth of thirteen feet. This was still too shallow for
modern ocean-going steam freighters, so the anchorage was still used.
·
In
1896, the channel was dredged to a depth of twenty-three feet. Finally the need
to lighter the ships at the anchorage had ended.
·
The
current navigation channel maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
provides safe navigational depth of 45 feet from the Gulf of Mexico to the
mouth of the
·
In
the southern edge of
·
Military
engineers built the channel through south
·
The
canal is maintained for barge traffic by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. The
agency is also tasked with permitting any marinas on the waterway's shoreline.
·
Since
2004 the Intracoastal
Waterway has been a center of residential and commercial development.
·
In
the late 1970s, the Corps spent $500,000 to $700,000 of tax payer money in the
placement of an experimental floating dike across Pinto Pass, a tidally influenced river which runs from Battleship
Park to Mobile River, and in 1800-1900s was navigable and a channel used for
Mobile. – Myrt Jones
·
Within the Delta, the Causeway prevents the exchange of water
between a number of once open bays and the
·
Many
of the Causeway’s buildings were wiped out by Katrina’s storm surge.
·
·
·
In
1979, an island was created from the silty sand
dredged to create a ship channel between
·
Although
the dredge spoil island was opposed by environmentalists, Dr. M. Wilson Gaillard, a
·
By
1981, when the initial construction of the island was completed, birds were
already visiting the island. Although locals affectionately refer to the island
as
·
The
island initially had a 35–acre planted marsh located along the northwest dike.
Today, most of the marsh has washed away. The
·
Upon completion of the
·
In
1983, biologists discovered four brown
pelicans nesting on
·
·
The
·
The
Corps manages disposal to protect nesting birds. Five pipeline corridors on the
island's southern end are used to deposit dredged material during nesting
season. Outside that, any area on the island can be accessed. Dredged material
is poured into the diked area and settles sloping
toward the weir box in the north corner. While the material settles, the weir
box allows clean water to drain into the bay.
·
Source2:
·
The
proposal was to come off the Mobile Ship Channel with another deep channel into
the
·
Families
settled on
·
In
1826, Congress appropriated $10,000 to improve
·
Officials
can't say for sure when the pass closed. Resident J.U. Hamblin says it was a
dredging company that lowered the water level from 9 feet to around 3 feet. ``A
·
For
years, the Alabama State Docks, through Bob Hope (director) and Bill Black,
"leased" north and south Blakeley spoil areas from "rich
owners." This was done routinely every year or two, costing untold amounts
of tax payer monies in these agreements to have places for dredge material from
·
Alcoa, in the 1950s, piped waste bauxite
under the
·
The
Coast Guard's quarantine station was on
·
·
The
·
The
islands form the Mississippi Sound, a brackish estuary described by federal
officials as the most "fertile" part of the
·
Scientists
say the islands are shrinking due to the impact of ship channel dredging
·
Most
have freshwater lakes that serve as a stopover for migratory birds and as a
nesting ground for shorebirds.
·
See
Press-Register, June 15-16, 2008
·
Middle Bay Lighthouse
o The wooden lighthouse was built in
1885 and sits in the Mobile Ship Channel. Shaped like a hexagon and placed on
steel screw pilings, it was patterned after several lighthouses on Chesapeake
Bay.
o A preliminary plan to move the
123-year-old Middle Bay Lighthouse to Battleship Memorial Park, restore it and
put it on permanent display could cost about $1 million. The Alabama Lighthouse
Association has proposed the move which has the backing of the Battleship
Commission, and will be brought before the Alabama Historical Commission.
·
Sand
o
o The first
tower, 55 feet tall, was built in 1838. Another was built in 1859 but destroyed
by the Confederates in 1862 during the Civil War when they discovered that Union troops were using the
tower to spy on them.
o The current
lighthouse of 132 feet was built in 1873
by architect Winslow Lewis. Throughout
the 1890s and 1900s granite blocks were placed at the base of the tower to
control erosion.
o Lighthouse
keepers lost their lives in the Hurricane of 1906 and in 1919.
o In 1921, the
lighthouse was automated, and the light was deactivated by the Coast Guard in 1933.
o The
second-order Fresnel lens was removed from the tower in 1971, and then placed
on exhibit at the
o In 2001, the
Alabama Historical Commission rejected an offer of the lighthouse, reasoning
that it would cost too much to save. The Town of Dauphin Island, in partnership with the Alabama
Lighthouse Association, stepped forward
and obtained ownership of the lighthouse from the federal government in 2003.
o Options for
the lighthouse include moving it to nearby Dauphin Island or attempting to
replenish tiny Sand Island and restore the lighthouse in situ.
o The lighthouse is not open to the
public. You can go on a Lighthouse/Shrimping/Dolphin
tour with Action Outdoors.
o Officials with the Alabama Lighthouse
Association say the first major repairs began in 2008, funded by by more than $1 million from the Federal Emergency
Management Agency. It would cost $1.3 million to fully secure the 132-foot-tall
tower, according to an engineering report, and millions of dollars more to make
it accessible to visitors. Eventually, the association, which will continue
fundraising for a full restoration, hopes to rebuild the surrounding island and
open the tower to the public. According to the report, a 1.3-acre island with
sand surrounded by a rock wall could be built around the lighthouse, allowing
visitors to dock and disembark. That plan would cost $36 million, including
restoration of the tower. Another long-term restoration option would be to add
more rocks around the lighthouse to protect the foundation, which in total
would cost $15.9 million, according to the report. – PR 12/25/07
·
Mobile Point Lighthouse
·
Alabama Lighthouse Association
·
Mobile
Bar Pilots navigate the bay’s sandbars for ships traversing
·
Throughout
its history - even when it was under French, British and Spanish control - the
mouth of
·
In
1818, shortly after the
·
By
1822, bar pilots had established a base at Navy Cove - "Pilot Town"
·
When
an attentive pilot with good eyesight spotted a sail on the horizon, he'd run
to his rowboat, and others chased after him, said Warren Norville,
a Mobile Bay bar pilot descendant, historian and author. They'd race through
the waves in their 18-foot yawls, aided by spritsails, to the arriving ship,
and the first one aboard got the fare.
·
In
the year 1831,
·
The
fee was princely. The early pilots enriched themselves as well as the budding
harbor in
·
When
the War Between the States broke out in 1861, there were sixteen bar pilots and
seven upper bay pilots working. Many of the pilot boats were used as blockade
runners during the war. In fact, two of the bar pilots were captured and
imprisoned for attempting to run the blockade.
o William T. Norville
and "Black Bill" O'Conner, both from
o When Norville
the blockade runner was captured, Farragut offered him a pension, a nice home
and cash to pilot the Union fleet during the Battle of Mobile Bay on Aug. 5,
1865. He refused, choosing prison instead, according to descendant Warren Norville.
o Bar pilot Jim Griffin assisted
Farragut's fleet, according to a 1959 commemorative book for the
sesquicentennial of
·
During
the Civil War, the Confederate Navy's Capt. Horace Hunley
sought to develop the world's first submarine in
·
By
the time the war ended in 1865, all of the prewar pilot boats had either been
captured or scuttled during the conflict. The sixteen bar pilots joined forces
and formed the Mobile Bar Pilots Association. They purchased two pilot boats.
·
In
1896, the channel was dredged to a depth of twenty-three feet. Finally the need
to lighter the ships at the anchorage had ended. That year the bar pilots and
the upper bay pilots merged and formed the Mobile Bar and Bay Pilots
Association. Because of tradition, the pilots still used the system of changing
out pilots in the lower bay. It was deemed a better job to pilot the ships from
the bay to the port, so the nine senior pilots became town pilots and the
junior pilots served as bar pilots.
·
·
The
Seaport Act of 1927 placed the Mobile Bar and Bay Pilots Association under the
jurisdiction of the Alabama State Docks Commission. The commission decided to
put the pilots on a paid salary. The next year the No.2 pilot boat was
destroyed in a storm. Because the pilots were on a salary, they did not have
the money to replace the boat. This forced a change in the pilots work
schedule. Now only one pilot was used to make the full transit of the bay.
After much lobbying, the legislature removed the pilots from the jurisdiction
of the State Docks. On March 9, 1931 the twenty-two pilots met at the Master,
Mate, and Pilots Union Hall and formed the modern Mobile Bar Pilots
Association.
·
Because
ships were now only using one pilot to reach port, the Association had too many
pilots. The pilots decided not to replace retiring pilots and their number
gradually declined to fifteen. Because of improved communications, staying at
the sea buoy was unnecessary. In 1965 the pilots opened their new pilot station
on
·
In
the 182 years that American bar pilots have steered boats in Mobile Bay, only
two vessels have been lost with a bar pilot aboard.
·
In
the 1840s, they formed the Mobile Bar Pilots association, which today
represents 12 pilots who bring in about 100 ships a month
·
Bar
pilots today go seven miles out in the Gulf on 48-foot powerboats
·
In
the past, a bar pilot position was hereditary. Today it is stated that nepotism
among the bar pilots is a thing of the past. Of the last five men awarded
apprenticeship, only one has had a bar pilot in his family. Three of the
current 12 pilots are descendants of the captains who were at
·
The
three-member Alabama Pilotage Commission, appointed
by the governor, picks those admitted to the apprenticeship, the formal
training for becoming a bar pilot. The commission also sets the rates
controlled by the state.
·
The
Delta has been an important source of transportation and timber. In this
century, industries have found it a convenient place in which to discharge
wastewater, and worse.
·
Residential sprawl is threatening the eastern edge of
the Delta along the
·
Private owners, including paper companies, timber
companies and families, have traditionally been major landowners of the Delta,
which is estimated at 200,000 acres.
o
Kimberly-Clark Corp. was the main landholder in the Delta, until it put its land
up for sale in 1999, with
about 70,000 acres. Other significant owners include the Meaher
family (more than 10,000 acres), AmSouth/Regions Bank
and Alabama Power.
o In the 1980s Scott Paper Co. worked with
·
Public ownership of Delta land has increased, but at a
pace slower than conservationists had hoped for.
o Questions remain as to whether the
tracts purchased were the best possible choices for protecting the Delta.
o As of 1999, The Coastal Land Trust retained about 5,000 acres in the Delta. The Corps of Engineers had 22,000 acres,
all designated for wildlife management and public hunting. The Conservation Department owned about
16,000 acres for those same purposes.
o The federal agency overseeing
conservation of the Delta is the Corps of Engineers, which systematically
filled in
o
o In 1995, the private, nonprofit
Coastal Land Trust spent nearly $4.5 million on 1,500 acres of prime Tensaw
riverfront just north of Byrnes Lake, nearly 900 acres of which is now held by
the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Alabama Power Co. owns an adjacent 1,800
acres
·
Chemical companies and other industries with discharge
permits own tracts along the
·
The
most ambitious protection effort to date has been the county's petition to get
a portion of the
·
The
Delta is a national landmark, a
designation that carries no protection. At least three times in the 1960s and
'70s, the federal government explored making the Delta into a national wildlife
refuge or national park. There was never sufficient local enthusiasm for the
wildlife refuge. The idea for a
·
During
prohibition, the Delta reportedly was a hotbed of local moonshine-making. A
handful of families continued to live in raised houses within the Delta through
World War II, fishing and trapping for a living, and boating to Mobile for
supplies.
·
In
the 1940s, the state Conservation Department introduced the nutria into the Delta. The voracious
rodent was supposed to be another fur-bearing animal for trappers, but ended up
so prevalent and destructive of native vegetation that nutria rodeos flourished
for a time.
·
These
days the interior Delta is used mainly by sportsmen,
some of whom have built fish camps on top of the shell middens
left by the Indians long ago.
·
Liberty
Ships and other Navy craft were parked in the
o From 1945 to 1969, a reserve fleet of
military vessels known as the "Ghost Fleet" sailed the
·
Little
has been done to promote the Delta for eco-tourism
or even make it accessible for those who don't own a boat. It remains a place
for sportsmen, and practically no one else. "We don't have any major
eco-tourism in the Mobile Delta," said Semoon
Chang. "That's where the real interesting potential is."
o
·
Fairhope
physician Lynn Younge started an Outward Bound
Discovery program for troubled youths in
·
Upper Mobile Delta
Map (2009)
·
Mobile-Tensaw
Delta and W.L. Holland WMA Map (2009)
Mobile Delta Rivers
·
Citizen Guide to
Alabama Rivers: Escatawpa, Mobile, and Tombigbee
Oxbow Lakes
·
The
U.S. Coast Guard has sided with the public in maintaining access to
Bayou Sara
·
Until
the mid 1880’s, Bayou Sara was known as Saw Mill Creek, from its junction with
Gunnison Creek to
·
Apart
from the occasional fish camp, timber, and turpentine extraction, a small scale
ship building operation, and numerous grist mills and saw mills, there was very
little industry in the Bayou Sara area until well into the 20th century. Since
the mid-20th Century, industrialization has adversely affected Bayou
Sara’s water quality
·
Major
tributaries include Hells Swamp Branch,
·
ADEM Survey of the
Bayou Sara Watershed
·
Bayou
Canot was the site of the 1993 Amtrack
derailing.
·
The
State bought 2,000 acres along Bayou Canot for $1.4
million, partly with a federal grant
·
·
The
·
Salt
water enters the river through
·
The
average depth of
·
In
the 1950s, in at least half of the watershed the city transformed streams into
concrete drainage ditches to control flooding
·
Major tributaries and sub-basins of the watershed
include: Alligator Bayou, Rabbit Creek, Rattlesnake Bayou, Halls Mills Creek,
Moore Creek, Eslava Creek, Robinson Bayou, Pearch Creek, Montlimar Canal,
Bolton Branch, Milkhouse Creek
·
Save
Milkhouse Creek (www.savemilkhousecreek.org)
is an organization formed to oppose the condemnation of land around Milkhouse Creek by Alabama Power for transmission lines.
o
“While
much of the area the line will be built through is comprised of wetlands,
Alabama Power is not applying for a wetland destruction permit from the U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers. Company officials met with the corps in recent months,
according to Fogarty, but did not file a permit request. Company officials said
they would in stead use a "nationwide"
corps permit” – PR3/29/09
·
A
·
Mimi
Fearn, an associate professor of geography at the
·
The
"Bay Oaks Study" (by Greg
Spies) recognized that the area on the south side of the entrance to Dog River,
the site called Grand View Park, to
have been Mobile's first port. The French had a King's Magazine trading post on
the other side of the road, across from
·
Dog River Clearwater Revival
·
The
Corps of Engineers systematically filled in
D’Olive
Bay
·
D'Olive
Bay was cut off from
the Delta 70 years ago when highway engineers built the Causeway. Now D'Olive Bay is fed only by
Daphne's silt-choked D'Olive Creek, a stream so weak it can't scour
its own channel, much less a larger tidal bay.
·
There
used to be boatloads of bass, bluegill and shellcracker
out of D'Olive Bay in the 1950s and '60s. The Delta's
other smaller basins - Little Bateau, Little Bay John, Bay
Grass - teem with fish and fowl. But not D'Olive Bay.
·
In
the 1970s Diamondhead Corp. built
·
The
current average depth of D'Olive Bay is 1 to 2 feet
now, whereas before it averaged 5 feet or more. The fish, the shrimp and the
submersed grasses that sustained life in the small bay are gone. There are no
spawning grounds left for shellfish to inhabit, and no shellfish for the
fin-fish to eat. Both species were forced out as D'Olive
filled up with 2 to 3 feet of Lake Forest dirt.
·
A
study conducted by the Geological Survey of Alabama studied the mud loads
carried by D'Olive Creek and its two main
tributaries, Joe's Branch and Tiawasee Creek.
Annually, those three creeks transport about 1,977 tons of mud to the bay. But
even that impressive number pales compared to the loads carried by those creeks
in the early 1970s, when Lake Forest construction was at its peak. A study
conducted in 1981 estimated that about 44,000 tons of mud
were dumped into the bay from D'Olive Creek
each year between 1971 and 1974. Joe's Branch carries sediment from the
Westminster subdivision, the Spanish Fort Town Center development and some
eroding Alabama Power right of ways. D'Olive and Tiawasee carry sediment from the Lake Forest and TimberCreek subdivisions, as well as new construction sites
near Malbis and along the U.S. 90 corridor parallel
to interstate 10. Average depths in the bay dropped from five or more feet in
the late 1960s to about one foot today, according to recent studies. In many
places, it was once more than 10 feet deep. Now, at low tide, much of D'Olive Bay is nothing but an exposed mud flat. As the area
steadily shallowed, the once thriving Lake Forest
Yacht Club was rendered nearly useless. David Yeager, the recently retired head
of the Mobile Bay National Estuary Program, said that decades of lax
enforcement of the federal Clean Water Act by state officials combined with
rapid growth and nearly constant construction in the bay's watershed are to
blame for the tens of thousands of tons of dirt that have flowed out of D'Olive Creek. – PR 7/30/08
Yancey Creek
·
Extensive
damage was caused to Daphne's Yancey Branch by a city of
o The Fish & Wildlife plans instructed
the city to create a stream channel about 12 feet wide and 18 inches deep.
Instead, Daphne used federal hurricane recovery money to dig out a
48-foot-wide, 3-foot-deep channel.
o Officials from Fish & Wildlife
termed the resulting trough "a disaster", and stream experts
predicted it would result in exactly the kind of massive erosion the latest
work is attempting to repair. The original work involved clearing hundreds of
wetland trees, such as cypress, and did so much damage to existing wetlands
along the creek it is unclear if they will ever recover, according to
biologists. Almost overnight, the creek went from supporting beaver, largemouth
bass, bluegill, turtles and crawfish to appearing almost devoid of life.
o Yancey Creek in
Lagniappe 10/23/07 by Pete Gleezer
Other
·
·
Escatawpa
River
·
Citizen Guide to
Alabama Rivers: Escatawpa, Mobile, and Tombigbee
Mobile Bay and Alabama
Environment
·
Mobile-Tensaw
Delta Waterbodies with Reported Problems with the
Clean Water Act: Cold Creek Swamp, Eightmile Creek,
Gum Tree Branch, Threemile Creek.
·
Mobile
Bay Waterbodies with Reported Problems with the Clean
Water Act: Bon Secour Bay, Caney Creek, Dog River,
Fish River, Intracoastal Waterway, Rabbit Creek, Bon Secour
River, Magnolia River
·
o More than 2 million metric tons of
sediment end up in
·
Oyster reefs in the northern reaches of
o An
o Chris Nelson, a vice president of Bon Secour Fisheries Inc., testified before the federal
commission on ocean policy in 2002 on how upstream contaminants have led to the
downward spiral of the oyster industry in
·
Sewage Spills:
·
Craig
Sheldon and others had formed the Save
Our Bay (SOB) club in Fairhope to stop Radcliff Dredging of dead oyster
shells in
·
Revised
7/1/08
Text
Copyright 2008
Disclaimer: These Notes are not
original. They are complied
from various sources, primarily the Press-Register (PR),