FM Talk 1065 Podcasts
Captain Richard Rutland asking for Dredging Project to be more responsible - Midday Mobile - Thursday 8-01-24
This is Midday Mobile with Sean Sullivan on FMTalk 1065. Right 1234 FMTalk 1065 and Midday Mobile. Glad to have you along. Phone number 3430106. Same for the text line that you can always leave us. A talk-back message when you use the FMTalk 1065 app. If you haven't downloaded yet, go get it. It's online at the App Store for iPhone users and at Google Play for Android users. All right, good to see this man. Last time I was talking to this man, we were there at the dock at the Alabama deep-sea fishing rodeo at the 91st, which was the heck of a success. Yes, sir. Past president of the rodeo, all around good guy, a man who served his country with the Navy and now serves fishermen as a professional guide. Richard Rutland, good to see you. Hey, thank you for having me on. Yeah, we're just talking, still talking rodeo stuff here during the news break and some of the big fish that came in. It's impressive. Yeah. Yeah, no, it was the record setters. We were talking about on the podcast yesterday, the Reelephantuna record got broken three times in one day. Right. So I remember on Sunday I was weighing in and some guys were getting some really nice yellow. I mean, I wasn't there for the weigh-in, but they were getting them out of the bags, right? And I was like, oh, that's another good one. Another good one. We were sitting there and there were people coming back from the weigh-in. Yeah, we probably don't need to go weigh them. And I'm like, those guys have 160-pound tunas. Yeah, there was 190-pound fish that did in place. I mean, that's a heck of a story. It's insane. Yeah, well, the guys with the 170 out there, putting them back in the bag sheepishly and putting them back in the boat, you're like, holy cow. It's some big fish. And that's like what you think about from the winter time. Not these big giants this time of year. No, it's summertime. You're supposed to catch 50-pound tunas. And that's what I've seen that before. I've seen less than sub-100-pound fish win. And then something happened. Giants coming in. I want to talk about this story I've been talking about for two and a half weeks or so here on the show, but through your perspective as a fishing guide and somebody who spends a crazy amount of time on the water, but a homeboy like me that loves the bay, and this question of the dredging or the continued maintenance dredging of the now deepened and widened ship channel and what the Corps of Engineers is going to do with dredge spoil. Right. So to me, in my eyes, the dredging effort of the channel, it never stops. Right. It seems like there's always a dredge boat. I was upper Mobile Bay yesterday. And I saw three, there was three dredge boats, you know, two up by the river and then one halfway to Guilliard Island, you know, and it's just, it's like, I don't know. There's always someone. There's always a Guilliard. Yeah. There's always a dredge boat out there. There's always some dredge pipe running. Right. And for people who don't pay attention to this, just to back up for a second, this has to be done. You don't, 99% of y'all know this, but once you dredge the channel, once you dredge the channel, it doesn't stay that depth. Correct. You have to maintain that. Correct. I'm just going to actually fill back in with the tide and storms and things of that nature. But the big concerning thing to me with the dredging and then just, I guess their complete lack of disregard of where they're putting the spoil because they have to, they're basically digging up new ground and they're dumping it out in the middle of the bay. And what that's doing is it's killing an ecosystem down there. The mud, just because it's mud down there, it doesn't mean that it's not important. It's a reef. It's actually a reef. There's all kinds of things that live in the mud, in the bay. You got crabs, shrimp, gobies, all kinds of worm dealings. Yeah. All kinds of little organisms and creatures that live in there that add to the health of the bay. And, you know, you can just, we can look back in history and see where we've like kind of destroyed some ecosystems. You look at like Chesapeake Bay, right? Where they wiped out all the poggy population, right? And you look at Mobile Bay and we have like shrimp is kind of like one of our, you know, one of the things that a lot of fish forage on and they're at the bottom of the ecosystem. And you take that away and you can potentially crash all kinds of things ecologically. Right. There's another whole slew of things we could talk about. Yeah. Okay. That's what it's doing. But I always try to find, is there a third way? And that's what it sounds like when I talk to William. This idea is not, and I'm not putting words in your mouth, but it's not to stop the maintenance dredging of the ship channel. Right. It's to keep it deep and wide so we can get these big ships in here. It's not the actual dredging. It's the hey, once you get the stuff you've dredged up, what you're going to do? Where we putting it, right? And that's something I've been trying to remind people when I've taken this stand with, with Mobo Baykeeper is, I understand that the commerce and what the port brings to the port city, Mobio, what, what, how important that is to everything, you know, to, to a lot of things. And so I'm not saying that we're against that. I'm saying, you know, like what you just said about responsibly putting the spoil somewhere. Now, in talking to Maggie Oliver with the port and I think some, I think even with William Strickland too, and things I read, I think the core is bound legally that 70% of it, they have to use for beneficial use. I think it's a term. So we're talking about the 30% that they keep 70, 30% can go back and they're kind of putting it in the water column, right? Right. And you're talking about it settling down as well and I'm going to get into that because I've got questions from the text line. But the other thing that worries me, there's so much effort we've put into restoring oysters. Attempted, I've been out there doing programs to restore seagrass work sometimes, then work other times. This idea of trying to clear up the water in the bay, right? And if you clear it up, then oysters and grasses can be deeper. It clears up some more oysters and grasses can be deeper. And you have this cycle of, I mean, we are a river system. It's not going to be, we're not a crystal clear. But there's a lot of dissolved, I mean, who am I telling? It's Richard Rowan. But every time the day wind blows, you know, okay, Mississippi sounds a good example. Wind blows, and all of a sudden it's chocolate milk, even though when the wind doesn't blow, it's green. Right. That's not, that's because there's all this sediment. Yeah, no, I mean, it's a natural delta. And that's what makes, that's what makes our ecosystem here around mobile base of rich. You know, is all that, all that silt and sediment that naturally is supposed to come down from rainfall and things like that, it re-nershes everything. This is additive, I guess. This is, yes, very, very bad additive, in my opinion. And they, the idea, I forgot the term, I was talking about this morning with Rob Holberg from Laniac, but is it, it's not spraying prey, but it's, the way that 30%, they, they just, do they pump it right out of the dredge pipes there or do they spray it out in the water? I mean, how does it? And they will run miles and miles and miles of pipe away from the ship channel from where they're actually moving into. Yeah, because you don't want to fill in your work. Right. And so they bring it a long way away. And, and then they're supposed to kind of, you know, they have like the pipe where it's shooting out all the material. They're supposed to be moving that pipe constantly. So that doesn't make just a big, you know, sand mound right in the middle of the bay. And that hopefully, just putting a little bit of a layer across everything is not as destructive as piling it up right, right out of all in one area. Patrick Garmisen has, he's told some great stories about finding humps in the middle of the bay from Judge Boyle, right? And then also he's told a lot of stories about, from 25 and 30 years ago, they used to go out and find these really fruitful areas in the middle of the bay where there's lots of shrimp, lots of, you know, game fish activity where they would sit there and catch fish till they were tired of catching fish. And those areas where, you know, there's been some of the areas where they've been dumping spoil and it's gone. There's no shrimp there anymore. And he's even talked to, we both talked to some of the bait shrimpers around some places that they used to catch a lot of shrimp. They've been dumping that spoil there and it's gone. It's done. The shrimp don't want to be there. You mentioned Chesapeake Bay and I know William Strickland mentioned Chesapeake Bay even closer here in Biloxi. I think he mentioned that what is, what they're asking, I think, what Baykeepers asking is being done in places like now in Chesapeake Bay and Biloxi that they are like a better term there or a better term. They're keeping all the dredge, not putting it back. They're putting it for beneficial use. And so the 70%, it's 100%. Right. So he's, he told me, and I have not done my own research on this, but the core is not, the core is doing this in other, other bodies of water. They are. It's not unprecedented to do this. No, it's just going to cost them a lot more money. Yeah. And that's what it all comes down to. Well, I mean, this, I'm on the subject way back when they were taking the sand out from the lower end dredging and putting in the beneficial use area offshore at the same time the federal government after a tropical storm or a hurricane was paying, you know, FEMA was paying money to bring sand back in to Dauphin Island. I was going, I got an idea. How about y'all just take that and put it on Dauphin Island? And they said to me in a conversation back then, and maybe Mayor Collier or somebody said, hey, they are bound by the law that they have to do with the cheapest way possible. And for some reason, putting it offshore and letting it come on to Dauphin Island was cheaper than just going ahead and cutting out the middleman and putting it on Dauphin Island. So is this one of these things that they always have to use the cheapest route? If that's so, what did they do in Virginia? What did they do in Mississippi to make them break that rule? I mean, you know, that's what I'm trying to figure out. How big of a lift is this? It's money. How much money is it? Right. And it, you know, back to that conversation. Yeah, they built these little spoil islands out by Sand Island, not dredging the ship channel. And they're beautiful, beautiful white sandy beaches out there, or they were. They're going now, but. Oh, you remember when they built the island with all the BP money? Oh, yeah. They built around Sand. They built around the White House. I said, that's not going to last long, but. Okay. So a couple questions here. First of all, Adam says, Sean, you may know the answer to the question, but if not, maybe you can, or Richard, I'll ask Richard. He said, are there any fish that hang out at or near the bottom of the ship channel through the bay? If so, what kind and do people fish for them? That don't give up to me. Yeah. There's, uh, there's all kinds of stuff that loves that real deep water there. Uh, I know you see a lot of folks, uh, fishing for white trout. And I don't know if they're fishing down in the middle of the ship channel, but I know, at least on the edges where it's, uh, where it's, uh, a little bit shallower. Um, I know it's a great place to catch a gaff top catfish. They like that deep water. Uh, and of course there's a lot of shrimpers that shrimp the edges of those channels as well and do very well. And then, you know, once it gets on up into the harbor proper, we won't even say there's probably no fish in that deep water there for nothing of their speckle trout. There's lots of life there. Jerry says the dredging up on the Alabama River is also causing problems for the Mobile River. I guess more sediment coming down. Right. I've never heard about that project. Uh, this texture is asking you, do you know, we mentioned Chesapeake Bay and, and then I mentioned Biloxi there, do you know how they're doing now? Like with those efforts to not have the spoil, do you have like, is it working there? I guess is what they're asking. Right. Now I have not. Uh, I do not know that off top of my head. The. See, I mean, you're one of the, of the captains around here, but obviously y'all, y'all are pretty tight at circle and talk. Is there, I mean, you've, you've shoot me straight all the time. Is there any disagreement or y'all pretty much all the same page when you talk about this? What are you hearing? I think we're all pretty much on the same page. Cause the things I think about are like a, a, like the old timers talking about how much grass there used to be on the eastern and western shore up and down Mobile Bay. That is all gone. It's all just flat mud or sand and whatnot. I feel like probably a lot of that boat traffic up and down those, those ships, even though they're, don't look like they're moving very fast, they throw a giant wake. Yeah. Be going down the west side there soft showing one night and that baby coming in that wave. Yeah. They're, they're, they're. I mean, if you're not careful and don't know where you are and aren't looking for that, it could really, I'm surprised when it's gotten hurt by one. Yeah. To be honest with you. Like, have you ever been a Gileard Island and seen what happens there? Uh huh. It's a tidal wave. That's when it hits those rocks. We like surfs up. Maybe let's go. You know, like, uh, okay, it's a, it's a terrible talk. You talk about two things and maybe, you know, they actually depositing. Like you said, all that sediment in one place that kills everything under the foot of it. And the other thing, and maybe I'm not on, but I'm, the thing I've been worried about may be different is just more turbidity for the bay because we talk about seagrass. So I got a great book. You can borrow a guy that used to his stories of shooting ducks off of the, uh, uh, out front of dog river in the forties and stuff. We're on Rio. He talks about all the ripping grass and it was out there, but just, you put more sediment in the water and that's just, the light just doesn't get down. It was deep and therefore grass can't grow cause it needs, but that's why I just, I think there's an effort and I wonder how much time and money has been spent for these projects for oysters and seagrass to try to clear up the water, some to get the sun down further. You know, right, that are we, you know, we, we fight in ourselves on this. We could be because government spending money also to finance projects, to do restoration, to try to clear up the water. And another part of the government is going to be putting spoil in the water, which is fighting the project that they paid for on the other side. Right. They could potentially cover up oyster beds that are, that'll, it'll silt them over and that kill, that kills oysters. Yeah. You silt them over. So I just, and you know, I just look at things like this. I don't know if it's apples to apples, I'm not sure, but it's interesting when government spends money to do one thing, then another part of government spending money to do a thing that is undoing typical government left hand, that know what the right hand's doing. Well said. Coming right back. The day mobile. This is midday mobile with Sean Sullivan on FM Talk 1065. He's one of the voices out there that is asking, if I get this, what are you asking? What would, what would you have changed in the way the program set now for the court? I just want to say we'd be responsible about, about how they're doing it. There's, there's, there's other, there's other ways of going back and dispersing the, the dredge ball. And it's not potentially dumping it back on a reef, you know, or, or potentially a reef. We know, we know we, you, you and I during the break, we're sitting here talking about oysters, um, the, uh, we had a, we, we had a oyster fishery that was pretty much completely decimated and has come back somewhat through the, through the state's efforts of, uh, re-nourishing the oyster beds and, uh, and, and I just really being responsible, uh, as, uh, setting the conservation limits and whatnot so that we don't over harvest like we've done zillion times in the past and, uh, and just not, not making things worse. We only get this one time, you know what I mean? We get, we get mobile by one time and if we destroy it, it'll never come back. Uh, it'll, it'll never be the same again. Yeah. And it's, and it's really, and it is diminished. I mean, it's still great. It's, you know, my thing in your thing, but it's still not where it would have been a hundred years ago. Right. I hate hearing the old tile stories, you know, I tell you the stories about what Polk at Bay used to look like that a friend of mine's grandfather used to talk about before Alcoa went in there. What, I mean, you blow your mind. Uh, and once again, this, it seems to be, at least in the discourse out there, it seems to be shaped as a binary decision and I want to make sure that I'm fair to all signs. So I have everybody in, but I don't know if it is a binary decision because people with the, the chamber are saying, listen, this is risking all these jobs. Right. This thing, this one thing could risk all these jobs, but I don't, I don't know how because it seems like if the core is doing dredging, like they're supposed to, and these other places, Chesapeake and Biloxi, they're still doing the dredging, right? They're just not pushing out the, the dredge board, they're taking it to better or a hundred percent of beneficial use. So it can be done. It doesn't. One, the core is not going to quit because of that, right? No. Uh, one, one thing they are doing, I know you've seen the, uh, the, um, the breakwaters they put along the calls way it going off an island. Yes. Uh, I believe that they're going to run and think about this. They're going to run a dredge pipe from the ship channel all the way to there. That's insane. But it's got a beneficial use and it's great. It's got to be eight or 10 miles of pipe there, but yeah, to run the baby down. That blows my mind. But there's supposed to backfill all of that down there with, with, uh, with spoil to create, to create a marsh. And that's what they said they're going to do there. And then maybe other, we have, you know, and it's what we, you mentioned, go yard, right? I mean, go yards there for spoil. And I mean, I know this is probably premature, but I got a discussion out of the other day about it a couple of years ago, they had talked about making a new set of wetlands kind of go yard, ask, you know, and, and, and using that for like, I'm, I think that's all great. I want, I mean, I want the ship. Yeah. I thought that was a great idea to, uh, that they were proposing and they were, I didn't like where it was proposed to go. Well, me neither. It's funny. We did not, we did not talk ahead of time on that. That's, I love the idea. I just want it further south. Yeah. It was too, too, a little too close for comfort to where we do have some very. Right. Listen, make new wetlands not cover up over to make new wetlands. Right. A couple of texts here to get a bunch of them, but I'm going to get to this one, uh, this is from Sam says Sean Goode. I heard one time quite a while back that one of the worst things happened to Mobile Bay was a neighborhood in Daphne Lake Forest. They say you can see the orange plume from outer space on satellite Sam. I've seen those pictures. They've used to be with red clay in those pictures, but I think they've mitigated that a lot with silk fences and all that. Yep, they, I know they definitely got on, on to, uh, onto those contractors and folks who were doing that. Same thing happened when they built Bass Pro Shops over there. A lot of that went into a doll of bay right there on the eastern shore. And I know I've talked to bass fishermen and, uh, folks who used to fish and all of Bay a lot. And it's unfishable. Yeah. You can't get in there anymore. It's completely filled in. Right. Yeah. And that, you know, you can see that. Siltation. This is the whole bunch of stuff even north of the causeway. The future, uh, but this funny, Adam says, Sean, it's funny, y'all mentioned shipwakes along Gileard Island. Mutual friend of ours was talking about that yesterday. He says that with certain wind conditions, the waves are easily surfable and even tube up to, we need to make like those old OPT shirts, but make it with Gileard Island in the background. So you're hanging 10. And then, okay, and this, uh, this from Leo said, I think it's not Leo. Who is this? And somebody here saying that, uh, Roger, sorry, Roger said they only want to sue the companies and organizations with the pockets, but the way I understand this, Leo, and we got just 30 seconds left here, they're not suing to get money from the court. They're suing to tell the court to, to not deposit that. Right. That's more responsible with it. Is that your understanding? Yes. Richard, I appreciate it. By the way, while we're at it, uh, people want to go fishing with you. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go. [MUSIC PLAYING] You