Calhoun, Liberty Call for Responsible Navigation
If someone told said you could have a slap in the face or a kick in the shin, you’d be wise to insist on another option. And that’s just what the commissioners in Calhoun and Liberty counties have done. By unanimous votes, they were the first two counties to pass a resolution that supports a return to navigation on the Apalachicola River — but not a resurrection of the same unrestricted, reckless dredging practices that caused problems we’re still dealing more than 20 years later.
They’ve now been joined by Gadsden, Gulf, and Franklin. (Jackson hasn’t taken up the issue yet.)
If you haven’t been keeping up, the US Army Corps of Engineers, an organization that has been second-guessing God since 1802, got $100 million from Congress to fix the three major lock and dam systems on the Apalachicola-Chattahoochee-Flint (ACF) river system. Of that total, $3 million was set aside to develop the environmental assessments necessary to restore navigation on the system.
Congress essentially said, here’s money to fix your infrastructure and to find a reasonable way to restart navigation.
That’s what Congress said. The problem is that what the Corps heard was, “Dust off your plans and do what you’ve always done.” As a result, people in our counties are debating the whether to support or oppose dredging — when that’s the wrong question entirely. What we should be asking is, “How can we turn this into an opportunity to improve the Apalachicola River?”
There are lots of ways, if the Corps will cooperate. That’s why counties are wise to push back and remind folks at the district headquarters in Mobile that we haven’t forgotten the mess you left us in the sloughs and creeks — and we expect you to clean it up. And we expect a plan that doesn’t repeat those same mistakes.
The resolution does not oppose dredging per se. In fact, many believe that’s the only realistic way to reduce the amount of sand the Corps left in the river and floodplain. What it does do, however, is call for the Corps to remove dredge material all the way out of the flood plain. With some flexibility from the Corps and our state leaders, we might actually be able to put that material to good use.
In other words, we know there are a lot of options, so the most important message to the Corps is: We expect you to sit down and have meaningful conversations with the people who live and work in our counties, the people with experience and data you don’t have, and come up with a plan that works for everyone.
We might not get exactly what we want. But history shows that if we leave the Corps to its own devices, we can certainly get something none of us do.