Star Staff Writer
A canoe float down Choccolocco Creek near Oxford on a fall afternoon can be a beautiful thing — and a disturbing one — all at once.
The sun shines through the trees, multicolored with leaves and the remains of plastic bags hung on high branches by spring floods.
The water dimples occasionally with fish, though more often with discarded bottles.
Butterflies waft by, outnumbered by hundreds of empty mollusk shells, spread on pebbled shoals like pairs of tiny white wings.
Sometimes, the mild fog of stench lifts for yards at a time.
A recent boat trip down Choccolocco Creek, from Friendship Road in Oxford to Silver Run Road in Talladega County, turned up wildflowers and wildlife and small rocky rapids.
But it also showed the litter and pollution that has collected for years in the creek and does not appear to be stopping.
Some of the pollution is invisible, like the PCBs that made their way down Snow Creek from the former Monsanto plant in Anniston and rest in the sediment.
Some of it is small but accumulated, like the discarded Wal-Mart bags strung in trees.
Some of it is big, like the dead cow draped down a sloping shore, where the pastures are just beyond view.
Or like the 55-gallon chemical drums that have been turning up in the stream and on its banks.
In October, two barrels from the Anniston chemical weapons incinerator turned up next to the creek in Talladega County.
The Anniston Star found at least three more, apparently unrelated to the incinerator, out in the stream, bearing labels that say “Poison” and “Flammable.” Others have been spotted caught up in downed trees.
Then there are the countless old tires, sunk in the mud or caught on branches like heavy rings on thin fingers.
Because of pollution, mainly PCBs, the creek is listed as “impaired” by the state environmental agency. The Alabama Department of Public Health advises that people not eat any fish out of the creek from Oxford on down.
“It’s great fishing, probably some of the best in the state,” said a man who found some of the metal drums. “But I wouldn’t eat out of it if you paid me.”
The creek begins pure and clean in the Talladega National Forest.
But as it continues its journey through developed areas in Calhoun County, it picks up trash that washes off of roads or is dumped straight in. It takes in water pollution from Anniston’s industries, which flow down Snow Creek.
It absorbs runoff from sod farms and treated wastewater from two sewage treatment plants.
Residents are not sure whether the problem is getting worse or better. Maybe, despite the attention paid to the creek over the years, things are just about the same.
“It’s just awful, because the upper section of the creek is like Eden,” said Francine Hutchinson, a Golden Springs resident who once tried to organize a creek monitoring group. “You get to the lower end of the creek and it’s just hell.”
Hutchinson founded Friends of Choccolocco Creek a few years ago, to track the water quality and, eventually, try to fix things. But the group sank under the weight of the creek’s problems.
“The problem is so immense that our little band was overwhelmed,” Hutchinson said.
People who were monitoring water on the upper end of the creek were getting nice, clean results, she said. But she and others who came into contact with the lower creek, which eventually runs into Logan Martin Lake, have gotten sick, she said.
“I’m just positive it was the bacterial count,” Hutchinson said. “People … been getting such bad results that they were scared to monitor.”
People who have spent years along the creek say there are many things about it worth saving. There are historical sites such as an old family cemetery, said Wanda Champion, 50. Her family has had property along the creek for several decades, and she lived on some of the land for a year and a half, until the May floods. Now she’s doing repairs.
She looks out on the creek and sees the pipes that drain wastewater from nearby facilities.
“At times you can go out there and see a whole bunch of brown stuff coming out of that pipe,” Champion said of one outlet.
From the Tull C. Allen sewage treatment plant, she sometimes sees a blackish-gray release. From the Anniston Army Depot, she said, she sees sudsy bubbles.
“It always has that foul odor,” Champion said of the creek. “And when other, cleaner small waterways run into it, it only makes it seem worse.”
“You can see the dirtiness of Choccolocco.”