FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Maggie Oliver from Alabama Port Authority about the Mobile Bay Dredging Project - Mdday Mobile - Thursday 7-25-24
You're listening to "Midday Mobile" with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. By the way, I was not rebissed earlier not to congratulate Chris from Elsonor. All the Elsonor Chris went in that family four pack of tickets to the Jimmy Buffett tribute show with Crowley for Band coming to the War Family Theater of its first tickets on sale now. Wolfbox office and Ticketmaster.com and not to worry another chance before we wrap up the show to win tickets again. So be on the lookout for that. Be ready with the phone lines. I know people say, "I want to do it on the text line." This is one of the things we do on the phones. Good old fashion. Pick up your telephone and make a phone call. Not right now, but we'll give you another shot to win more tickets coming up in just a little bit. All right. I mentioned at the beginning of the show joining me from the Alabama Port Authority, Vice President of Communications and Federal Affairs Maggie Oliver in studio. Good to see you. Hey, great to see you. Thanks for having me. It's good to have you along as well as we're getting this conversation that got started for a lot of us. I guess Tuesday. I guess Tuesday morning with the announcement of this intent to sue. Maybe the lawsuit's not but the intent to sue for Mobile Baykeeper against the Corps over the deepening and widening of the ship channel. Right. Yeah. We found out about the same time you did. So we were pretty surprised. Yeah. Okay. So we'll get there first because the conversation I had yesterday with William Strickland. He said, well, you know, we had been intimating. You're saying from y'all's perspective, they didn't tell you they were going to sue. When's the last time I guess y'all with the Port Authority or the Corps and Baykeeper had talked? How long ago? Probably less than a month ago. We were really disappointed to see this development because we have been facilitating these open and transparent conversations. Between not just the Port and Baykeeper, but also bringing the Corps to the table to answer questions and throughout all of those conversations that we had over the month of May, June, there was no indication that there was this level of concern and that this dramatic of an action would be taken against our project. Had y'all met loggerheads? I mean, so at that point was there something like, well, I just can't do this or I mean, were y'all still like saying, well, what do you need? What do you need? Or were you in the, I can't go any further than this? Well, it didn't really get to that. And, you know, we really thought we were just answering some questions from concerned citizens about how do we know that this is how is this being monitored? And we didn't really get into that, like I said, but this project, you know, it has been approved since 2019 and it has gone through every federal process and regulatory parameters to ensure that we are doing this the right way. And that is, you know, if the EPA can be okay with this, then we think Baykeeper should be too. And in fact, they were, they participated in the process that led to the approval of this project. You know, we are months back in like 2019 or whatever, so they were part of that. Yes, it's called the GRR. It's a, it's a process that the Corps does and they were involved in that local fishermen were involved in that community organizations, other environmental groups. It was a very public and open process for how the channel project was going to be managed. I guess we need to tell people to the, I mean, there's dredging has been going on on the ship channel as it had been for my whole lifetime to keep the ship channel open. Right. But this is to widen and deepen for the ships coming through the Panama Canal. Right. Okay. And so how much, I guess how much deeper is the channel and wider from where it was in 2019? So the channel right now is at 45 feet and we're taking it down to 50 feet. And that is going to enable, like you said, the largest ships that cross the Panama Canal to come into Mobile and will be the deepest container terminal in the Gulf, which means that bigger ships are going to come here first. They're going to unload more cargo here first and more cargo quite simply means more jobs in Alabama. Okay. So in my conversation with William Strickland yesterday from Baykeeper, he said, we're not against this widening and deepening of the channel. He said, our issue is where that dredge spoil goes that I'm paraphrasing here. So y'all's response to that. It's really difficult to say you're not against the project when you're threatening to file a lawsuit that would stop the project. And, you know, like I said, we're months, not years away from this being done. And Baykeeper was involved in the approval process years ago. So to come out of nowhere with these concerns and try to stop it in the ninth hour, it's really upsetting and frankly disappointing. He had said, William had said that it was a issue of that they could do this, that the Corps could mitigate this sediment instead of just ejecting it into the Bay, that they had done this elsewhere. He had given me some examples. I forget him off the top of my head where the Corps had done this and it didn't put back the amount of spoil into the water, waterway. Sure. So every project's different. But for our project, we are using every bit of material from the channel project. Every bit of material from the channel project that can be used, beneficially, is being used beneficially. The port has committed that to the community. We are taking sand and we the Corps is taking sand from our project down to the West End of Dauphin Island. We've got oyster restoration happening, working on Deer River as well. So we're using this material beneficially. And it's curious to me that the Baykeeper wants us to push, dump all of this material offshore. They call it mud, but really that mud is full of nutrients and little critters that make the ecosystem of the bay thrive. And it's frankly responsible to want to get rid of that. Yeah, I'm sure we could get geologists on here to walk us through. But just as a hasty guy, but I'm a person who grew up here, certain parts of the channel, it will be mud. Certain parts of the channel has a sand content in it as you get further down, especially towards Dixie Bar and all that big sand content. So could you split loads and say, "Okay, well, we've got sand here. This goes to West End." That's exactly what they do. Okay. And then now we're kind of more into a mud thing, what it would do with it. You talked about those projects. I think something I read, you had sent or you come out from the port and I think they talked about as well. It's 70, in their requirement, 70% of this fall, I don't have it in front of me, is bound to go somewhere. Nationally, the core has a mandate to use 70% of all material from their projects beneficially. And that's their national federal mandate. On this project specifically, the port committed any beneficial material to be used locally. Okay. So then if it's being used locally, then the idea is that the beekeeper said, William said yesterday, that it's being ejected into the water, making it more turbid. That's a beneficial use. You want to keep those little critters and nutrients in the bay. You don't just want to dump that in the golf. Okay. So the idea is though, they're in there, but then there is a sediment load that is settling on the floor of the bay. Sure. So mobile is a naturally muddy system, right? And this, the redistribution of sediment, you know, from the channel to other parts of the bay, it's not creating more turbidity or mud or cloudiness than an afternoon thunderstorm would do. And this is again, vetted by so many different people. And truly, if you think about the core, they're literally an army of scientists and engineers whose responsibility is to ensure this project is done in the absolute best way possible for the specific environment that we are in. And so to pull from other projects that the core has done nationwide or other ports, it's not, it's apples and oranges. Every project's unique. But if, but just in defense of that, if it has been done elsewhere, and I would like to see both things, fan of the port, what goes on, like the deepening and widening. And I would like to say, I mean, there's no way to say no, you're not going to try to have no, you know, turbidity issue. But to maximize how much it's taken away, I mean, that money has been spent elsewhere with core projects, right? Why don't we say, hey, core, we want you to do the same thing you didn't wherever, put Kipsey or whatever, you know, well, when this process was being evaluated, that really long GRR process I mentioned, they defined exactly how this project would be done. And they knew going in that there would be this much sand, this much mud, this much this, this much that that would need to be taken care of. And that's how they defined the scope of the project and the budget for the project. So they would know how to handle it in that research process that the core did. There were no adverse impacts found to the bay. And despite that, just because there's not an adverse impact, it doesn't mean that you can't do something better, which is why the port and the core have taken the additional step of using all of the material that's coming out of the channel for things that are productive in the bay. And, you know, that is it's something that we're committed to, we all care about the bay. And I think it's just really important to keep in mind that all of the materials being used for a good, for a good reason. Okay, so just joining us, we're talking about the port authorities view of what we talked about yesterday on the show, Maggie Oliver, from the port authority end. Let's look at this, the amount has seemed to be dredged now to doing the remodel for lack of a better word on the shift here, deepening widening. That's X or whatever in this thing, or that's A, B is maintaining. Do you all have those numbers like it's it? Because right now we have been maintaining the ship channel with dredging for all these years. How does that change? Like, here's the big part where you're deepening widening, then what is the yearly, you know, what's the maintenance on it? Right. You have to keep the channel open for commerce, right? And we have several cycles that we go through to ensure that the channel is at the depth that it is supposed to be. And I don't have on off the top of my head a yearly number of cuba. I just wonder how much more like, okay, because there's an accepted in our system right now, a amount of dredging that's done to have kept it where it is. Sure. Then we go to the deepening widening. Is it twice what the dredging would be? Is it five times? Is it half? Is it? It's hard to say because so many things can factor into that. You think man-made sediment and runoff from new construction and you think storms or different things like that. It can, you know, if you have a really rainy season, you know, in the upper and waterway system, what would run off and run down. I mean, think about geographically where we are. So we really have to analyze that on an ongoing basis. I can't. It's not a it's on a prescribed amount each year. Okay. So it varies. It does. Then, you know, talking about using it, using those spoils for the best purposes, yesterday conversation came up of course about Gileard Island, right? And what's been for pelicans and actually a bunch of other, everybody says pelicans, those were there, but a bunch of the shore birds that benefit from that that that spoil in the middle that, you know, what about creating more Gileard islands or something like that to say, let's just take, you can dredge it and then put all of it right here so it's not in the water. Well, and we've asked Baykeeper for their input on that. And that's again why we were so surprised that they chose to pursue a threat to impose litigation against the core on this project because we've asked for their input. We've asked for projects they would like to see. And we're open to that. You know, we've got a lot of ideas beyond where we are putting dredge material right now. We have a lot of ideas for how we can, how we can do more with the material that we have to remove. Now, how you talked about kind of the ninth hour here, you know, towards the end of this lawsuit comes, how close are y'all to this? I mean, where is it like you're about to connect everything? Where's the dredging? It's very close to being finished. We're anticipating spring, early spring next year. So there is, there are portions of the ship channel that have been deepened and widened to the new depth. Yes. So if you all had some kind of stop to it, that this has been done, but you wouldn't be, you couldn't use it. I mean, it's the top section, south section. Right. You have to have all, all of the portions of the project complete because you can't just bring a ship into, you know, Gileard, Theodore Channel, turning around. Sure. And then if you said there was this open comment period in the past, you said you heard from some people, but not to, I'll say, here's what happens a lot of times. It's not on y'all, but it's probably all everybody in media. A lot of people don't know about these things until it, until it pops off and it becomes a story. Sure. Right. So because I see, I'm going to text the text page here full of people that said, well, they had no idea this was going on, this and that they were kind of caught unaware. Yeah, it has been a while. So the process, the comment process, the approval process closed in 20 May of 2019. So it's been a minute, but that is one thing that, you know, we always try to have an open line of communication with the environmental advocacy groups, the chambers, elected officials and let them know the progress we're making and what we, what we see coming so that they can answer questions as well. Okay. So barring anything lawsuits, you'd say this is finished in the spring. Correct. With the core, I don't know what kind of interaction y'all have is the port authority with the core, but is there a discussion where even outside the apex of talking with Baykeeper that you could say, hey, is there any way we could squeeze out a little more to not be returned into the water column? Is that a conversation y'all have with them or do they have to go through another entity saying that? I think it would have to be entirely re-engineered to really to find something different at this point. Yes. So like I said, it's a very detailed process. And we've had a plan laid out since 2019. And to up in that or try to, you know, flip the script right here at the last minute, that this is not the opportunity to do that. And that's why we've asked Baykeeper to come to the table to look for future opportunities where we could use material that we pull from, from our births and from the federal channel and use that for something that they would like to see. But again, this project, it's, it's fully baked. Okay. So in that, because the lawsuit is, I don't know, it's like we'll put it in some mobile ways, it's fiction to be filed, but not filed. Right. Right. That there is a chance for, are y'all going to sit down with them? Is Baykeeper going to sit down with y'all to talk about if there's anything to say, Hey, we're going to divert this and here's a deal. I'm not sure. At this point, honestly, like I said, we were pretty blindsided by their intent to file a suit against the court on our, on our project. So I can't answer that right now, but I would, I would certainly hope they would come back to the table and, and work collaboratively as we have all expressed, we would like to do. Okay. We'll be watching for Maggie. Thank you for your time. Thank you. Maggie Oliver, she is Vice President of Communications and Federal Affairs with the Alabama Port Authority. Hopefully we got some of the questions asked. And I know there's a bunch on the text line, before I get through those when we come back at three, four, three, zero, one, zero, six. [Music]