Reprinted with permission - BayKeeper Magazine, Spring, 2006 - A Publication of Mobile BayKeeper - By Casi Callaway, Mobile Baykeeper & Ariana Moore. For more information contact Casi Calloway, Executive Director of Mobile BayKeeper - Email Callaway@mobilebaykeeper.org or phone (251) 433-4229

In 1786 the Spanish governor of Louisiana made a land grant of Bayou la Batre, on the Alabama Gulf Coast, to Joseph Bosarge “for the purpose of fishing and planting corn and… to conceal his misery and the poverty of his family from the world”. Bosarge’s decedents remain prominent in the local telephone book along with a rich mix of Asian, African-American, European Colonial, Hispanics, and Native American residents. Many area residents live at or below the federal poverty line. And Bosarge’s hiding place is still a beautiful, secluded fishing community to this day. Protected from over-development by its distance from Mobile it is also, unfortunately, out of the sights and minds of environmental regulators.

Mobile Baykeeper’s work helping coastal communities in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has uncovered deeply rooted water pollution problems that predate the storm and that will remain long after the recovery unless something is done to correct problems now. One example is the town of Bayou la Batre and the local utility’s handling of the town’s sewer system. As devastating as Hurricane Katrina was in that community, the biggest threat to the health of local residents and their fishing grounds may be the negligence of the Bayou la Batre Utilities Board.

I first visited Bayou la Batre after friends told me that the sewage treatment facility there was entirely wiped out. But the true extent of the problem only became clear after speaking with community members and researching the abysmal track record of the town’s Utility Board.

The Utility Board’s record is especially troubling because of the deep connection of community members to the water for their livelihood. Most families in Bayou la Batre have worked for generations in the bayou’s seafood harvesting and processing industries. Prior to Hurricane Katrina, about 85 percent of the town’s gross income came from the seafood industry. Area residents also rely on the waters of Bayou la Batre and Portersville Bay for subsistence and recreation. Despite the reliance on these waters, they have remained on the Alabama state list of impaired waterways for close to a decade. The state’s 2006 Impaired Waters Report specifically cites Bayou la Batre Utilities’ sewage outfall among the main culprits for contamination.

I expected to see major sewer system problems related to hurricane damage, but what I found was a long history of neglect and shortsightedness. The City of Bayou la Batre built its first wastewater treatment plant in 1974 with a capacity of one million gallons per day. The Utilities Board needed income to support the sewer project and included the town’s seafood processing plants in the sewer system. But those plants alone discharged in excess of one million gallons of wastewater per day. No surprise then that the plant was quickly overwhelmed, sending untreated wastewater discharge into the bayou. It is unclear when the utility removed the seafood processors from the wastewater treatment system, but as soon as they did, the processors again began discharging their untreated wastewater directly into the bayou. State environmental officials and U.S. EPA determined that the bayou failed to meet existing water quality standards and told the seafood industry to find a better method of disposing its wastewater.
In 1987, the three largest seafood processors in the area joined together as the Bayou Joint Venture, Inc. (BJV) to construct an outfall pipe system to collect wastewater from the plants and discharge it (untreated) in Portersville Bay – the waterbody that connects the bayou with the Gulf of Mexico. While BJV accepted responsibility for the operation and maintenance of the line, the public Utilities Board holds the actual wastewater permit, sets rates, collects fees, and manages the system.

When ADEM, the state environmental agency, began regular sampling of Alabama’s waters in the early 1990s, they found unacceptable concentrations of contaminants near the BJV’s sewage outfall. Ongoing sampling repeatedly showed excessive levels of fecal coliform. Fishermen noticed receding levels of plant and animal life near the outfall’s discharge point. Shrimpers and oystermen blame the outfall for the death of shrimp nurseries and oyster beds in Portersville Bay. Though the Utilities Board and seafood processors denied responsibility for the high levels of fecal coliform, ADEM disagreed. After extensive sampling ADEM ordered that the seafood producers’ wastewater be pretreated before discharge and imposed a series of deadlines for compliance.

In 2002, the Utilities Board completed a new facility to treat the seafood processor’s wastewater. This facility was touted to the public as an essential (though costly) project. But it, too, failed to do the job. In April 2003, ADEM issued another consent order against Bayou la Batre Utilities for continuously violating discharge standards and monitoring requirements for both its municipal and industrial permits. In May 2005, the Bayou la Batre Utilities Board entered into a legally enforceable agreement with U.S. EPA to take steps to clean up these discharges. But, according to ADEM officials, the Utilities Board has not yet met those requirements. Lest we blame Hurricane Katrina for the Utilities Board’s woes, sampling shows high readings of chlorine, fecal coliform, and enterococci from April 2004 through January 2006. (Katrina made landfall August 29, 2005.) A source at ADEM confirmed that the facility was in violation before Katrina and continued to violate its permits after the storm.

Discharge monitoring reports for one of Bayou la Batre Utilities’ permits illustrate the magnitude of the problem. In May 2004, the utility reported fecal coliform levels 25 times higher than the established daily maximum. The utility maintained a dismal track record of sewage spills throughout 2004 and 2005, exceeding water pollution standards 16 out of 22 months.

The basic facts of this case are enough to cause Mobile Baykeeper serious concern, but the stories we hear from bayou residents and sources inside ADEM since the storm worry us even more. Post-hurricane, many homes and businesses have hooked back up to the sewer system despite severe damage to the treatment facility and pumping stations. The smell of sewage keeps people indoors at times and bacteria in the water has sent swimmers and commercial fishermen to the doctor with eye problems and cases of flesh-eating bacterial infections. Oddly, an ADEM inspection report from March 16, 2006 rates the sewage treatment facility as ‘satisfactory’ – a designation that ADEM is suspicious. Rumors are also circulating about construction of a new sewage treatment facility with an outfall pipe in a small bayou that empties into a part of Portersville Bay still used for shellfish harvesting.

Mobile Baykeeper is gathering the information necessary to take action against the Utilities Board of Bayou la Batre. People in this part of the watershed depend on clean, healthy water for their livelihoods. The idea that the Utilities Board would again build an inadequate sewage treatment facility, especially with all that we have learned since Hurricane Katrina, is astounding.