Introduction

wcwlogo1a.fw I’m Ronald Mixon Sr., President of Warriors For Clean Water. I have been working for the last 25 years to bring needed attention to the toxic poisonous releases into The Tennessee River.

The river has been a special part of my life style for over 60 years. I’ve had a boat in the river since I was 14 years old. When I was in high school I either fished or duck hunted in the morning before school or in the afternoons.

The Decatur Daily, our hometown newspaper, has pictures of me hunting and fishing when I was a young man, if combined it would be a book. I was one of the owners of The Alabama Star riverboat. It wasn’t until I started diving for mussels, that I realized how bad the river really was. I was the Chairman of the Board for the mussel association. That was over 24 years ago. We didn’t incorporate or seek any legal status. We foolishly thought that the State of Alabama and ADEM would want to help! We were looked at as low class trash, even though many of us were highly educated, and most of us had Native American heritage. We warned them that they were killing the river ! We also had a publicized dive, bringing up dying mussels and even mussels on the endangered species list. We were told that they were going to be sent off to identify which species they were. When we called back a few weeks later they informed us that our samples had gotten lost! This was a very discouraging time for us. Because it was evident that absolutely nothing was going to be done to stop the standard operating procedure. They were going to concentrate their efforts into silencing all efforts, to bring the toxic state of the river to the public eye. We knew then that these practices, if allowed to continue would kill our river! Many of us feel now, that we have failed our children and grandchildren. By our apathy and by allowing ourselves to be pacifist, that our river will be unusable for our children and our grandchildren. The pictures below are just a few of my special memories, my oldest son,one of my grandsons and my 95 year old father. I can’t put an actual cost on the loss of this for my family.

Arrowhead Landing-Limestone Creek

anemptytextlline
Engels Landing

anemptytextlline
Flint Creek

anemptytextlline
Hickory Hills/ FlintCreek

anemptytextlline

These boat ramps are being abandoned

These pictures are boat landings in Morgan County. Notice that there are no boats at these landings. Not too many years ago, you would not have been able to find a place to put your trailer, when you unloaded.There may be a few bass fisherman, but most of them now refuse to fish the lake on principle. My generation has grossly failed to protect the river! Now it’s unfit to eat fish from its waters, this affects the 95 percent of us that would have eaten the fish from the river, more than the top five percent. Wheeler Lake should supply, hundreds of tons of fish each year for the people who need the protein the most. They have been robbed of this necessary food supply.

When I was a young child, my father would get off work at 5 o’clock, we would be unloaded and in the lake by 5:30. That would give us a couple of hours of fishing in the summer months ,we also would fish many mornings before work. In this amount of limited time he kept our family in a variety of fish to eat. I now have grown sons, but when they were young I took them fishing many times at daylight or after work at sunset. Besides keeping my family in fish to eat, I created memories for my sons that are priceless. I’ve let these precious moments be stolen from my grandchildren. We can still drive a long way to fish, but not in the morning or evening, there simply isn’t enough time! What is a hundred sunsets or sunrises on the river worth? My grandchildren can’t be told your great-grandfather caught a 3 pound crappie here or fell out of the boat here, had a snake get in the boat with us here, caught four bass and lost his lure and reel to a big bass, then he jumped in after them. They won’t be able to say, their grand father came flying around the corner here and washed their great-grandmother who was fishing in a little aluminum boat plum up on that tree there. Those memories will be lost! I doubt that our river can get cleaned up in time, for my sons to share three lifetimes of memories with my grandchildren.

I had Barney Lovelace in the boat with me, we were catching crappie . About 6 o’clock he told me he needed to be in court at 6 o’clock. I ask what was going to happen to the client when he wasn’t there, Barney said he was the judge and they were holding court for him. I put the boat on plane in flint creek and throttled down, all I hoped that I didn’t meet another fool coming my way. I ran past my mother in law and Edd and never saw them, another fisherman pulled their boat off the log. I consider Barney a friend till this day he’s helped me out of some legal issues on more than one occasion. He’s going to be sitting on the other side of the room this time. He’s the best and represents some of the ones we’ll be confronting. I going to be working with others to clean up the river for his son and grand children. I want them to have a chance at memories like we had. Memories can’t be sold or bought only shared . Memories are your most valuable possession they define who you are.

The picture of this building is Decatur Bait and Tackle shop. There is a for lease sign on the building. Mr. Crow has run that bait and tackle store for decades, he raised crickets for years to help get the money to stock his store and has about everything you could want for any kind of fishing, except CUSTOMERS! He was self employed and that shop is his retirement. I personally think the chemical plants and their executives would care more about their pet gold fish, then they would be about all the peoples only way of life, which has been ruined! We are like squeaky little mice. Now we are sure the facts will show that their chemicals have invaded our homes. When all test results are made public, you are gonna hear that little mouse roar! I think that little mouse will put the elephants in a panic. No, I don’t think the little mouse will kill the elephant, don’t even know why he would want to try, but maybe he could sue for piece to keep the elephants from stepping on them.

There are thousands of boats behind people’s homes that have not been fished in for years, because our river is polluted and it’s our fault for letting it happen!

This time a group of business men and scientists have been working together; slowly and carefully documenting all of the effects of toxins being released into our river. We are setting into place the proper legal tools to accomplish our goals. All of our board members and committee members will be made public in the near future.

I personally have heavy metal poisoning, and after 27 doctors been diagnosed with chronic neuropathy. Which eventually led to having my foot amputated. Even though I have never worked in a plant or around any chemicals. One of my sons and one of my daughters have a extremely rare skin disease. My oldest son now has the beginnings of neuropathy from heavy metal poisoning. I’m out front on this and there are many people already on board with this project. I have an expiration date that’s sooner than I might have hoped for. My dad is 95 and my mother is 90, but they may very well out live me. I am posting pictures of fish that I have caught with my family and friends in one spring Crappie season in March and April. We also caught Brim and Shell Cracker in May. Channel cats in June on the bluffs, noodled yellow cats in May and June. We caught blue cats in June and July on shell beds and stripe in August and October. I personally have put up over 50 quarts of fish in my freezer for the last 40 years and so has many of my friends. My friends who aren’t dead yet, are all suffering from extremely bad health. By becoming aware of the factual conditions of the river water I will not even get into the water, but the sad thing is it’s following me into my home! My children and grandchildren are at risk, even though they will most likely never put their feet in the river, if things don’t change drastically.

I have had in my boat, scientist and professors of toxicology, taking soil and water samples in the most toxic sections of our river, in the vicinity of chemical plants. Even though they wore protective gear,they threw away all of their clothing, including socks and shoes. Also they did a serious job of scrubbing themselves when finished.

This is deadly serious to all of us,and only by a unified joint effort can this be stopped! My family and I personally hope you will join us in our efforts to clean up our river. It’s about to be too late!

-Ronald Mixon Sr.

These boat ramps are being abandoned

How the fishing used to be

Go Here To Sign Washington Petition