Wow. Whoda thunk it!? Village, Valley creeks polluted, Corps report says

Village and Valley creeks are polluted with fecal bacteria, pesticides and other contaminants, members of the Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

The report, made public Thursday, is a starting point as Corps and city officials develop proposals to restore the creeks and possibly create greenways or linear parks.

Beverley Hayes Stout, a Corps biologist, and Joseph W. Paine, a Corps civil engineer, outlined the results of a watershed study of the two creeks which cut across Jefferson County and flow west into the Black Warrior River watershed.

Birmingham lies in Jones Valley between Red Mountain to the south and a tail end of Sand Mountain called Possum Ridge (how apropos to this blog!) to the north, and these two creeks have born the brunt of the City's development since 1871, in past times being nothing more than open sewers. Today there is a bit more concern about them, but since they are in the lowest spot of the Valley, they still receive huge amounts of surface pollutants due to stormwater runoff.

The linear park idea has been partially implemented, but due to the high cost it has never been fully realized. Nor has the granddaddy of all of them even come close to being done, which was a far-sighted effort by City leaders around the turn of the 20th century to remediate what even then was recognized as a problem for the city. They hired famed landscape architect Fredrick Law Olmstead to develop a master plan for the entire length of the waterway, but as with a lot of grand plans around here, it remains a reminder of what could have been.
posted by Terry at 9:08:00 AM