Illegal road on Delta wetlands still in place months after corps learned of it

Six months after the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers learned of an illegal road built atop wetlands in the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, the 700-foot-long strip of red clay is still there.

The silt fences the corps required back in May are falling down in places, and it was easy, during a recent visit to the site, to see low spots where red mud had flowed off the roadway and into the Tensaw River.

For months, corps officials have told the Press-Register that the agency was in negotiations with the property owner, but refused to provide details, citing privacy laws.

Friday, corps spokesperson Lisa Coughlan said the agency and Rod Crigler, the man who built the dirt road, had been at an impasse for months.

On Monday, Crigler said he was simply trying to extend the road on his property.

"I'm doing everything that the corps and (the Alabama Department of Environmental Management) are telling me to do. They've been as nice as they could, no malice or anything. ... They are trying to let me resolve the issue, and that's what I'm trying to do, get that violation removed.

"I messed up and I am trying to correct it." Crigler said.

Crigler made various proposals over the last several months that the corps rejected.

"They would submit a proposal, we'd take a look at it, tell them what our determination was, then they would make another proposal," Coughlan said. "The other proposals were denied. They increased the potential destruction of wetlands."

Crigler, according to neighbors, wanted to build houses on the road, which lies on a narrow peninsula between the Tensaw River and Hurricane Bayou.

The corps had been unable to move forward, Coughlan said, because Crigler never filed a request for an after-the-fact permit, required when landowners do unpermitted and illegal work in wetlands.

Crigler filed for such a permit a few weeks ago, asking for permission to build a single house on the property, Coughlan said. She said the corps is "requiring him to remove the road."