Is anyone listening to Cassandra?
By Chip Drago
Mobile Bay Times
Like the weatherman forecasting rain for the garden party, Dr. George Crozier knows his voice is not the most popular one in Mobile these days.
Amid the applause over Mobile’s recent successes in the economic development arena, Crozier, among others, has cautioned that breakaway growth imperils the very quality of life that makes the Mobile/Baldwin area an attractive
place to work and live.
“I’m seriously worried about it,”
said Crozier, a marine biologist
who recently retired as executive
director of the Dauphin Island
Sea Lab. “We may see an
economic boom, but I’m afraid
we may flush the goose that laid
the golden egg right down the
toilet. There is great jeopardy
here in terms of our quality of
life and it worries me greatly.”
“I can be accused of being really
radical, but I don’t care anymore.
I’m retired. I think the two counties and probably all of the municipalities need to come together and really develop some approach toward growth and management strategies. I can see it in their eyes when I talk about growth management, it’s like the curse of Beelzebub. Uninhibited growth is Mobile’s wet dream. I don’t care anymore. I can say that. I’m retired. Go ahead and quote me. Seriously, we may kill the goose that laid the golden egg and really mess things up.”
For their part, community business leaders insist that balancing growth with environmental protection is at the forefront of the strategy for bringing new industry to the region.
The environment doesn’t get short shrift these days, even among economic development interests, said Win Hallett, president of the Mobile Area Chamber of Commerce. He pointed to the 10-year-old Envision Coastal Alabama program that has sought to bring together disparate elements in the region with four goals – education, environment, economic development and equity.
“The environment is so integral, so closely tied to our quality of life that we could hardly afford to put it in jeopardy,” said Hallett, a Mobile native. “Why would economic development interests care about the environment? You live here, obviously, so you care about it. And it’s not just lip service.”
Developing a work force, protecting the environment and building the necessary infrastructure to support growth are challenges ahead and the plans for addressing them are underway, said Hallett.
A hopeful but skeptical Crozier said it would be unconscionable to surrender the gains in improved water quality here over the past 40 years.
The Mobile Bay area has made steady progress toward corralling pollution and improving water quality since the passage of the Clean Water Act about 40 years ago, said Crozier.
“By the 1990’s you can show from ADEM (Alabama Department of Environmental Management) data gradually improving water quality in the trend data,” he said. “In Chickasaw Creek, in Bayou La Batre in Tensaw River, you see increasing dissolved oxygen levels.
“We had done a decent job of improving water quality; keeping at bay the problems we believe follow urban sprawl and human development. But we’re losing habitat. It starts with a (residential development) deal and we build septic tanks. It works until there are so many and we can no longer maintain them adequately and we see the water quality decline. So we build a sewer system and the sewer system sparks human habitation and we lose more habitat and we sprawl and water quality goes down again.”
The rate of environmental improvement has “already flattened,” said Crozier, and this before the real impact of recent developments arrives.
Crozier pointed to development in the Chesapeake Bay and Tampa Bay areas as examples that local officials and others might learn from.
“The curve of improving water quality has already flattened (here). We’ve been on the verge of nutrient problems because of nitrogen, phosphorous and certainly dirt from poor construction practices. It worries me if we continue this way. In Baldwin County, you have this enormous conversion of farmland into ticky tack suburbia. If Mobile should experience all of this wonderful growth and booming economy, the bottom line is: If we don’t change our ways of managing growth, the title of my (current) talk – “Forward to the Past” – will be prophetic. Instead of back to the future, we will head forward to the past, to where we were 50 years ago. The water quality will be degraded. And it won’t be the paper mills’ fault. On the roads, we’ll have way more cars and air pollution turns into water pollution. The damage is not just coming from lawns and agriculture. A lot of nitrogen comes from the atmosphere and the source is automobiles. The bay region, the Mobile Bay area has got to get away from trying to pave its way out of congestion. I hate the idea of this new bridge (on I-10 over Mobile River) and doubling the width of the bay way. You’re just asking for trouble. That’s operating under a 1950’s mentality.”
“I get frustrated about talk of bad traffic in Mobile,” Crozier said. “Don’t tell me this is a roadblock between Jacksonville and the west coast. I’ve seen a lot worse traffic in other places.”
Crozier said Mobile Bay area motorists who complain about traffic congestion don’t really know traffic congestion. When it truly arrives, as it will if Mobile doesn’t change its ways in the face of the anticipated growth, the wailing will make present grumbling seem quaint, according to Crozier.
“We need to consider mass transit fully subsidized,” said Crozier, snorting at the reception his advice would get from the motoring public. “We need mass transit north to Thyssen Krupp. Use the (existing) rail lines to the site or do light rail, anything to keep cars off the road. People go crazy when you talk about public subsidies for mass transit, but who’s paying for the new (I-10) bridge, for doubling the width of the bay way. Like roads are not a subsidy.”
Visitors to the now-cleared site of the double Thyssen Krupp steel plants (one carbon, the other stainless) to the north expressed awe and a better appreciation for its scope and potential for change on many levels.
“The TK footprint, wow, it’s an incredible footprint,” said Crozier. “I floated the idea to TK and asked if they had considered green roofs, hurricane-proof green roofs. (the TK operation will have up to 7 million square feet under roof). At our last meeting, we talked seriously about harvesting rain water. That acreage (3,500) is going to collect a lot of water.
“Really it’s not just TK,” he said. “The chamber is jumping for joy with all of the growth and all of the projects. I wish there was some concern, some caution. If we had a five percent growth rate for 10 years … you’re looking at the urbanization of the entire county, asphalt roads, the whole nine yards. Too many people think that would solve all the problems of the world. I think not. We need to be more efficient in how we move people. When the price of gas hits $4 a gallon (which it has since the talk with Crozier) – I mulled about this for a minute – it could be a great day because maybe then you’ll see white, middle-class Mobilians riding the bus.”
Not him, of course, Crozier concedes, not without recognizing the irony, because his schedule is too unpredictable.
“So many people work nine to five in an office (that it wouldn’t be much of a sacrifice for them),” he said. “I’ve never lived like that so I’ve always defended my wasteful habits by arguing that I have a chaotic schedule. But for people working 9-to-5 at a regular job, there is no excuse for them not to use public transportation.”
“I wish I had the intelligence to prove what my instinct says and I could be able to put a dollar figure on what a degraded environment costs us,” he said. “If I could satisfy the bean counters, maybe I could get somewhere.”
Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Bay Keeper, said her gripe is less with the industries locating in the Mobile Bay area, but with the state of Alabama which she said values jobs more than the environment.
“We are slowly bringing protections down to the level of actual public health,” she said. “Plants like TK are getting in under the wire of (strengthened regulations), especially with a state like ours. Alabama’s environmental regs make Texas look like California.
“TK will not have to abide by the new particulate rules. The regs are not written yet, so TK will be able to emit particulates and dusts at the old levels. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management is part of the economic development apparatus.”
Callaway said Thyssen Krupp will be a good corporate citizen, of that she had little doubt. However, she added, they will only be as good as the law requires them to be.
“They’re meeting the letter of the law and the new plant will have some state of the art equipment,” she said. “They will meet the law but the law is not strong enough. They will not go above the law. One of the benefits in their package was that Alabama would oppose stricter regulations on energy efficiency and air pollution.”
TK is an easy example to criticize because of the nature of its operation, she said.
EADS and the tanker project get much higher scores from Mobile Bay Keeper.
“EADS is much cleaner, with a higher jobs to pollution ratio. Better paid, higher quality. It’s great. We love it. We love TK also, but they could do better. It’s all right to insist they do better, when we could insist. That we haven’t is disappointing.”
According to Callaway, Thyssen Krupp officials have been cooperative.
“I think we will be able to work with TK,” she said. “Hopefully every day they will be a leader, especially on water quality and growth, along that corridor. It brings the potential to build a sewer system in that community which would enable them to grow responsibly. We love the right growth because it brings a certain kind of people in, very aware folks. They are coming here because we have a quality of life that they want. So as local folks we owe it to them to make sure they help us to maintain it.”
