Volume 1, Issue 2
Fall 2005
Mercury in Alabama
1-2
The Legal Docket
3
1925 Olmsted Parks Plan
Re-envisioned in the Black
Warrior River Basin
4-5
Black Warrior Paddling
Adventures, Part I: Latecki’s
Favorite River
5
RIVERKEEPER Patrol Notes
6
About Black Warrior
RIVERKEEPER
7
Acknowledgments
8
Membership Form
(Please join or
recruit a Friend)
7
DID YOU KNOW?
~The Black Warrior
River is named after
Chief Tashkalusa, also
the namesake of
Tuscaloosa, Ala. In
Choctaw, tashka means
"warrior" and lusa
means "black."
~According to the
Alabama Office of
Water Resources,
Alabama has more
species of freshwater
turtles than the rest of
North America
combined! (52% of the
continent’s species)
B L A C K
W A R R I O R
R I V E R K E E P E R ’ S
N E W S L E T T E R
IN THIS ISSUE
Black Warrior
RIVERKEEPER®
In the United States, 40% of mercury emissions come from coal-fired power
plants. Sadly, the Miller Steam Plant, which lies on the banks of Village Creek and the Locust
Fork of the Black Warrior River, was America’s fourth dirtiest coal-fired plant in 2003 in
terms of pounds of mercury released annually. Adding
insult to injury, according to the Alabama Power
Company’s own reports, the majority of the energy
produced at Miller goes to Florida, not Alabama!
Emissions from its smokestacks condense, fall to the earth
and are eventually deposited into the Black Warrior River
and local tributaries. Along the route, microorganisms
convert mercury to the highly poisonous methylmercury.
The toxin bioaccumulates up the food chain, concentrating
initially in the tissues of fish and shellfish and building up
successively in the flesh of fish, birds and mammals who
prey on smaller species.
Mercury’s ecological consequences follow the
Black Warrior’s path towards Mobile Bay, spoiling the
catches of recreational fishermen and ultimately tainting the
Gulf of Mexico’s lucrative fisheries. When citizens eat fish
with elevated mercury content, the toxin collects in their
bloodstreams. A July 2005 report from the Centers for
Disease Control estima