Glynn Wilson

Fog in Autumn on The Locust Fork River

In another challenge to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management’s failure to protect the purity of the state’s waterways, the Southern Environmental Law Center today petitioned for a hearing on the permit issued last month for a 3,255-acre coal mine in Blount County.

The proposed mine would have more than 60 pollution discharge points into the main stem or feeder streams of the Locust Fork, a tributary of the Black Warrior River that is already on ADEM’s list of the worst polluted streams in the state, mainly due to sediment.

The petition was filed on behalf of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper and The Friends of the Locust Fork River.

The law center already represents the Black Warrior Riverkeeper in an ongoing legal challenge of ADEM’s actions in permitting the Shepherd Bend coal mine in Walker County. In both cases, the agency has ignored federal and state laws and its own regulations, according to a press release..

“Ultimately, the problem goes beyond these projects, and lands squarely on the shoulders of ADEM which is consistently failing to protect water quality throughout the state,” SELC Senior Attorney Gil Rogers said. “The Rosa and Shepherd Bend coal mines are exhibit A.”

The Rosa coal mine permit is deficient in numerous ways. The mine would discharge pollution into a segment of Locust Fork which is listed by ADEM as “impaired” under the Clean Water Act. Alabama law prohibits causing or contributing to the pollution of an impaired water body. The agency acknowledged the impaired status of the Locust Fork in their permit rationale, but issued the permit anyway.

“ADEM needs to quit rubber-stamping these pollution permits and get serious about its role as the environmental regulator of coal mine operations,” Black Warrior Riverkeeper Nelson Brooke said. “Our waterways are much too precious to be so utterly neglected and exploited.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Glynn Wilson

We chased the autumn color north into Blount County on Sunday, but it’s not peaking yet. Fine day to be outside, though. Click on the image for more photos in this slide show on Facebook…

The Locust Fork, that is…

Glynn Wilson

A view of dusk on the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River on Sunday, August 16, 2009, looking south from the bridge on Cedar Springs Road — right in the heart of what would have been a dammed drinking water reservoir — in the area they call Little Shenandoah.

“…all good things – trout as well as eternal salvation – come by grace and grace comes by art and art does not come easy,” Norman Maclean wrote in the conclusion to his memoir A River Runs Through It.

“All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that isn’t even visible. Eventually, all things merge into one, and a river runs through it. The river was cut by the world’s great flood and runs over rocks from the basement of time. On some of the rocks are timeless raindrops. Under the rocks are the words…”

First they wanted to dam the river, now they want to sell the land off to the highest bidder to be clear-cut and developed. If the people got what they wanted in a democracy, if democracy actually existed in Birmingham, Alabama, including a watchdog press, this last of the American South’s free-flowing beauties would remain pollution free.

Instead, they want to dump mercury from coal-fired power plants and all the rages and brimstone from hell out of the coal mines into the water — upstream from where our drinking water comes from.

Read the rest of this entry »

Secret Vistas: Dedicated to the Memory of Spider Martin

by Glynn Wilson

The first time I rode the rocky, rolling white water of the Locust Fork River with Spider Martin, I knew it would be more than your average adventure. In stark contrast with today’s drought in the Southeast, near record levels of rainfall in 2002 swelled the narrow banks to the top of the black rocks smoothed over by the relentless forces of time.

Glynn Wilson

Spider Martin on the rocks in 2002

Then, anyone who has ever known Spider Martin knows life around him was, well, never dull.

The record rainfall would continue into 2003 and allow for other explorations of the river. But now that he is gone, they all merge in my mind into one.

When I launched this Website in early 2005, in part inspired by conversations with Spider, I also knew it would be a similar adventure even though he would not be around to share it.

To try to understand you have to picture in your head the most wide-open form of freedom possible in the imagination of a writer and a photographer in America then, sitting at the computer or careening down a fast river. In a world dominated by the professional, corporate press, and in this post 9/11, PR, police state, I know, this is hard to imagine.

But just picture Spider Martin in 2002 in the back of a green 17-foot Kevlar canoe in the lazy water by the Swann Joy Covered Bridge north of Birmingham in Blount County. I’m in the front. In the middle, there are two coolers. One is full of food. The other is stuffed with ice and beer, and not just any beer. Something golden brown.

Read the rest of this entry »