Illegal Dam Removal in Roebuck Springs Under Investigation

Glynn Wilson

The scene of destruction at Roebuck Springs on Village Creek, where at least 1,000 endangered fish were killed by the illegal removal of a dam.

by Glynn Wilson

ROEBUCK SPRINGS, Ala., Sept. 23 — Ignorance kills.

Regina Nummy, the director of Roebuck-Hawkins Park, apparently took it upon herself to authorize a crane operator (not a backhoe as previously reported) to dig its way into a protected pond on Village Creek last Friday and destroy a dam, without contacting federal or state officials for a permit or permission of any kind. The incident appears to be a clear violation of the federal Endangered Species Act, resulting in the death of at least 1,000 endangered watercress darters.

On the crime scene behind the tennis courts in East Birmingham Tuesday, along with a U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service investigator and two Alabama Department of Conservation officers, attorney Mark Martin of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper environmental group indicated that whoever authorized the destruction of the dam should be prosecuted.

Getting rid of the dam was a “significant and dangerous draw-down” of the water level that clearly killed the fish, he said. “It looks like a criminal act to me. I think it should be prosecuted.”

A family of beavers built a dam last summer on top of a man-made rip-rap berm as part of the storm runoff drainage system designed for the development, creating a small waterfall which led to a drainage pipe. From there Village Creek cuts through Roebuck Golf Course on its way southwest. Both the natural and artificial barriers were clearly removed with heavy equipment judging by tracks in the stinking mud left behind.

Without knowing what they were doing, the workers who destroyed the dam killed at least a thousand endangered watercress darters and thousands of snails important to science and the ecosystem.

But the decision resulted in a vibrant creek and pond of about 50 yards wide and 100 yards long, leading to an old grist mill and water tower by the old boys reform school, being reduced to a trickle and a puddle by Monday, with dead fish and snails stranded in the mud and grass.

A federal wildlife biologist and two state biologists were surveying the scene on Tuesday, taking measurements and gathering samples of dead species. The feds focused on the endangered darters, while the state officials collected snails.

Rob Tawes, supervisor of the Fish and Wildlife Service’s Daphne Field Office, and the federal investigator on the scene, told me Tuesday the agency is seriously looking into the fish kill.

“We’re in fact-finding mode. It’s something that we’re extremely concerned about,” Tawes said. The agent on the scene declined to be identified or interviewed, but said the Atlanta field office would be putting out a statement soon.

Glynn Wilson

Thomas Tarpley and Michael Buntin with the Alabama Department of Conservation examine dead snails in the mud left behind from the illegal dam removal.

Michael Buntin, an investigator with the state Conservation Department, said the site is an important place where endangered wildlife can survive in the heart of an urban area. The creek and pond are surrounded by a golf course on one side, a road leading to a juvenile detention facility on another, and tennis courts, a community center, and a parking lot.

“It shows that nature can survive even in the middle of a city, until something like this goes wrong,” he said. “It looks like the draw-down of the water by the removal of the dam caused a serious impact to me. It’s certainly a surprise that this would be allowed to happen considering the importance of the site.”

The darters themselves, bright blue and spotted with red and orange when alive, and known to exist only in four locations around Birmingham, had fled into the grasses upon the shock of rushing water flowing out of the pond, dooming them to die when the grasses dried up. Scientists say they may have lived if they had gone with the flow downstream, but that is not their nature. When threatened, they hide in the grass.

“Watercress darters thrive in spring pools,” Bernie Kuhajda, manager of the fish collection at the University of Alabama, told a reporter for The Birmingham News. “This was the ideal habitat for them.”

Dr. Patrick O’Neill, Fishes of Alabama

A rare watercress darter, etheostoma nuchale, unique to Birmingham.

Ms. Nummy admitted to the News reporter that she authorized the dam’s removal without consulting federal authorities, claiming the pond has flooded the park’s tennis courts in the past.

Yet I play golf there regularly and periodically check in on the family of yellow-crowned night herons that nest nearby and have never seen the water rise over the tennis courts. And there is no evidence that “thousands of dollars” in damages have been repaired as a result of this alleged flooding, as she told the News.

Ms. Nummy, who was not in her office Tuesday and was reportedly in a meeting downtown for most of the day, told the News it “never crossed [her] mind” to consult the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service or anyone else.

“I did not realize it was an issue until [a USFWS official] called a little while ago,” she reportedly said.

Don Lupo, of the Mayor’s Office of Citizens Assistance, told the News the city has been committed to protecting the darter, including posting signs along the spring below the pool notifying everyone of a ban on pesticides near the water. But on Monday, he was not aware that the dam removal had killed any darters.

“We have orders not to get into that creek and not to do that stuff,” he said.

Causing the death of fish listed as endangered species under federal law is punishable by fines of up to thousands of dollars for each one killed, which is one of the reasons the feds collected as many as possible. Criminal charges may also be brought against individuals involved in the fish kill.

It is not yet known who operated the equipment that destroyed the dam, whether it was city workers or contracted out to a private operator. But one investigator on the scene said that will be looked into as part of any national or local investigation.

Glynn Wilson

The same scene at Roebuck Springs on Village Creek earlier this year.

For more photos, check out this slide show. Look for the icon that makes it pop up in full screen mode for the best viewing. Use the mouse to roll over the text to read the full cutline.

Be warned that “severe weather” in Middle Alabamaland, or a little bit of wind and rain, could knock out power and/or Net service today. Makes one wonder what Alabama Power, Charter and AT and T would do in the case of a real disaster, natural or otherwise. They want Congress to grant them immunity for spying on us. I want my money back for all the time they (we) are down…

Major storm for the eastern half of the U.S.

Meanwhile on the techno front, two cables that carry Internet traffic deep under the Mediterranean Sea snapped Thursday, disrupting service across a swath of Asia and the Middle East. India took one of the biggest hits, and the damage from its slowdowns and outages rippled to some U.S. and European companies that rely on its lucrative outsourcing industry to handle customer service calls and other operations, according to the AP and other news organizations and bloggers.

Cable Break Causes Wide Internet Outage

I should write a rap for this. Alas, the techno-geek input is already too great. Want to talk about multi-tasking feats?

As I write this blog post on a Blue and White Mac G3 and a high-speed cable connection, I am also recording today’s radio show from a tape onto the PC on my desktop in The Bunker - now that I finally have Sony’s Sound Forge program in my possession at home. Today’s radio show will be online in a little while, once I convert it to an mp3 file and dump it into the LocustFork.Net server and make a link on the radio page and blog about it.

I am also watching Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., on C-SPAN talk about the situation in Iraq as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee. It just goes to show that you can cover Congress from just about anywhere.

I just finished updating the headlines on the news page after reading the AP A-wire and the Washington Post online.

To prevent the EMPs from rattling my bones, I am also lubricating with Yuengling and having a smoke, all while talking on the phone to a techno geek friend about spyware for Macs and earlier fielding a call from the Montgomery Advertiser, which plans to run a story on blogging in the Sunday newspaper.

Maybe they can explain it to the people of Alabama, who are just now figuring out how to send and receive e-mail and maybe join a listserv and search the Web with Google.

And some anonymous editor and blogger in New York tells me I will never be able to keep up? Right.

Bring it on, A-hole. My attorney has the e-mails and knows who you are…

As for the spammers and hackers, my boys in Knoxville may have lost the server a time or two recently, but they now seem to have a handle on the viscous attacks from those who do not honor the First Amendment and would try to silence this lone voice in the dot net dot wilderness.

Then, the true forces of evil in this land are on the run like stray dogs scalded with boiling bacon greese. And in my e-mail inbox, there is a note from Howard Dean saying the Democratic Party will no doubt take over both houses of Congress from the Republicans in 2006.

If he had provided any convincing data to prove that point, I would publish his letter here. But while we believe that would be best for the country, and perhaps lead to the impeachment of these oil barrons and war mongers in the White House, we will hold our bets for a little while longer.

Even under the scrutiny of a crack prosecutor like Pat Fitzgerald, Karl Rove is a force of political nature that you never want to count out and beaten - until you see him lying in the ditch with blood gushing out of his nostrils instead of air.

I should say thanks to the Rev. Jack Zylman - a true gentleman and scholar - for being our guest on the radio today. He may be the only person in Birmingham who remembers my investigative journalism on the environment in the late 1980s and early 1990s on the Gulf Coast.

They sing happy days will come again. One can only hope….

Just as I was about to shut down the computer for the night, I caught Tim Russert’s interview with historian David McCullough on MSNBC. He has a new book out, inspired to teach kids about history aftrer 9/11, called 1776: Washington’s War.

It’s not just about George Washington’s war against the British. It is how he played to the British before and after the war, and how he graciously agreed to give up the power he could have had as America’s king at that time, how he stepped aside and allowed others to take power and learn how to govern this new democratic republic.

It also details the role of others in the movement for a Declaration of Independence, including Thomas Paine.

If you are interested, The New Yorker review is now online - for free:

In the year 1776, character was destiny.