Photo by Glynn Wilson

The Red Star coal mine looms as an ugly brown blotch on the mountainside amongst the autumn color and the great blue herons on the Black Warrior River

by Glynn Wilson

COPELAND FERRY, Ala., Nov. 3 - The great blue herons were already fishing when we put the shiny aluminum Black Warrior Riverkeeper patrol boat in the water.

Riverkeeper Nelson Brooke captained the boat, while yours truly and legal eagle Mark Martin took in the scene.

Our mission? To search out one of the most enigmatic contradictions of modern life: Nature’s beauty for the camera and industrial pollution responsible for fouling it up - for the record.

Since we were patrolling in one of the most diverse watersheds in North America, it didn’t take long to find the beauty. The breezy cold front down from Canada turned the sky a cobalt blue, the perfect backdrop for the peaking autumn color turning the leaves on Alabama’s hardwood trees a vivid yellow, gold and orange.

Since we were heading up river into North Alabama coal country in Walker County, it also didn’t take long to find the pollution.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Nelson Brooke captains the Black Warrior Riverkeeper patrol boat

As we approached the new Red Star coal mine on a ridge behind the old Washington Camp on Stevens Lake, a cloud of dirt, rock and coal dust shot out of the woods and drifted over the river. Due to the noise from the Evinrude motor, we didn’t hear the blast.

But when we were hailed on the boat dock of Ray Manasco within earshot of the mine, he told us we just missed the warning siren and dynamite blast by only a few minutes.

Manasco, 64, retired to a place he considered paradise on the Black Warrior River three years ago. But his place in the sun has turned into something of a nightmare since the Drummond Coal company started mining the mountainside behind his house last summer. Due to the incessant vibrations from the mining operation that goes on 20 hours a day and the falling rock from the periodic blasts, he says, “You can’t hardly sleep at night.”

You never know when you might get hit by a chunk of clay flying through the air. I kid you not.

One big rock recently landed on his son’s pickup truck and crushed the hood. It’s still in the shop.

He showed us the cracks in the concrete on the patio and in his workshop out back of his doublewide, created by the vibrations from the blasts and the heavy equipment ripping into the southern Appalachian foothills in the name of greed and energy.

“This was a beautiful, peaceful, clean place when we moved here, until these guys moved in,” Mr. Manasco said.

We also just missed the surface mine commissioner by a few minutes, he said, who had been down to see him about his cracked concrete and other problems.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Ray Manasco laments the disruption of his retirement paradise by the Red Star coal mine

“He’s about as useful as a tit on a boar hog,” Mr. Manasco said.

Inspectors all serve at the pleasure of Garry Neil Drummond, apparently, who supposedly flies over the area in a million dollar helicopter every morning to survey his mining rights holdings and maybe to see that his underpaid employees are hard at work.

There are numerous lawsuits and permit violation reports pending against Drummond, in Alabama and other parts of the world, including Colombia, where union leaders have been killed for crossing him.

(See Drummond Coal Faces Dutch, Colombia Investigations), Oct. 11, 2006, and Suit Claims Drummond Coal Stole Rights to Oil, July 21, 2005, from The Locust Fork Journal).

Mr. Manasco has hired attorney Clay Ragsdale to represent him to see if the courts in Alabama will give him some relief for the physical and psychological disruption of his golden years in his chosen paradise.

But coal mining is not the only thing fouling things up here.

The Black Warrior watershed is the largest within the state’s borders, draining more than 6,000 square miles of land, and it is home to hundreds of species of plants, fish and other wildlife, including the endangered watercress darter and the flattened musk turtle. It is also a major source of what is supposed to be clean drinking water for a large number of Alabama residents. But it is also one of the most threatened waterways from pollution.

Raw sewage from inadequate treatment plants sometimes backs up on Mr. Manasco’s boathouse pilings, for example. And scientists have found high levels of mercury presumably from Alabama Power’s Miller Steam Plant, which discharges directly into the Locust Fork, and Gorgas Steam Plant on the Mulberry Fork.

Unlike the free flowing Locust Fork, the Black Warrior was dammed in 14 places in the late 1800s and periodically suffers from low oxygen levels. One of the worst fish kills ever recorded on an Alabama waterway was recently discovered on the Warrior.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Mark Martin and Nelson Brooke by the recently revamped Black Warrior Riverkeeper patrol boat

State experts say it was just a natural occurrence of low oxygen due to an overabundance of “nutrients” in the water, a nice sounding euphemism for everything from chemical fertilizers running off into the river from farms to raw human shit.

But Brooke recently told a crowd at the Birmingham Audubon Society that there is a chance it was the result of a large discharge of industrial pollution that has not been documented.

The river levels were already low due to near drought conditions this summer, Brooke pointed out, making the fish in the river vulnerable.

“There was a big rain the night before, so it could be that a toxic soup of industrial discharges and sewage overflows just took their toll,” he said.

Then there’s the growing stink from one of Alabama’s top two industries, chicken farming.

Poultry waste accounts for more and more bacteria in the river. Cullman County alone boasts raising 164 million chickens a year.

This is an industry Gov. Bob Riley knows something about. So when he was approached by the Riverkeeper group about doing something about the waste generated by it, Riley apparently stopped paying attention. While Riley has listened to the experts on some environment related issues, he tried to depose environmental expert Pat Byington from the board of the Alabama Department of Environmental Management and to pack it with industry loyalists. That case ended up in court.

The river also suffers from a growing load of silt, sediment and storm water runoff making their way into the water from the clear-cutting of forests and under-regulated suburban development.

But the river and the cause of saving its beauty are not lost. If more people would pressure the politicians in this “red” conservative state, especially now while the economy is supposedly “booming” - if you believe the political ads - there is enough money floating around somewhere to do more to protect the reality of Alabama’s natural beauty and the image proclaimed by George Wallace’s old public relations campaign.

“Alabama the Beautiful” is a good description of what this state once was and could be again - if people would wake up and get involved.

For more information, check out the Black Warrior Riverkeeper Website.

Photo by Glynn Wilson

Autumn color on display in Alabama’s hardwood trees along the Black Warrior River

Tags: Black Warrior Riverkeeper

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