From Mobile Baykeeper
Mobile Bay is our home - a place where we all enjoy swimming, fishing, and playing. It is also a complex and highly sensitive ecosystem that is considered one of the most biodiverse in North America. We depend on a healthy Mobile Bay for many things: recreation, delicious seafood, tourism, coastal development, industry, and so much more.
Therefore, Mobile Baykeeper is staying heavily involved in plans to deepen and widen the Mobile Ship Channel. By thoroughly studying and developing a comprehensive plan for the port expansion, we can grow responsibly and minimize negative impacts to the very natural resources that support many economic sectors and our quality of life along the coast.
Mobile Baykeeper recently submitted comments in advance of the Draft Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement (DSEIS) due to be published later this summer evaluating the proposed deepening and widening of the Mobile Ship Channel. A summary of our latest comments are below. We ask the Army Corps of Engineers do the following:
Better Define and Understand “No Action” – We are troubled that the Corps has thus far stated there will be “no environmental impacts” associated with this project. We now understand this finding is in part based on predicting ship traffic will be greater without the ship channel deepening and widening project than once it is built - that is a tenuous assumption. We request the Corps review impacts under a variety of scenarios to accurately understand what impacts will occur under these all potential growth scenarios. For example, if ships are able to be more heavily loaded (because the channel is deeper) how will this impact the wake height experienced along the western shorelines of Mobile Bay.
Use More than One Year as a Baseline – The Corps is using weather patterns from 2010 as the only year to develop a model for the entire project. The year of 2010 did not have severe or extreme drought and is likely not an accurate characterization of the full range of conditions that would result from the modifications to the ship channel. We strongly believe they should use more than one single year to create a more accurate model.