Hurricane Creek Surveillance Flight

 Hurricane Creek Flyover 

Summer 26

All flight photos courtesy of SouthWings

I have to give a huge shout out to SouthWings for another successful surveillance flight over Hurricane Creek. With their help I can survey the entire watershed in a matter of a couple hours that used to take days.  From the plane, I can see any potential pollution sourced and where the access to them is located.

Today's flight started out from Tuscaloosa airport in a pretty thick haze. Ordinarily that would be a problem but I was not there to get scenery photos.

Hurricane Creek enters Black Warrior River

I always like to start at the confluence of the Black Warrior River and Hurricane Creek. I had seen some dark foam on the river and suspected it may be coming from the creek. I was gratefully surprised to find it was not us this time. Heavy rain upstream had the river running pretty strong. It was clear that the foam was coming from the open flood gates at Holt Lock and Dam.

 

 

Holt Lock under repairs

  

 

 

 

 

The dam has been under construction for some time now. From here I can see down into the lock pit

Holt Lock and Dam, Black Warrior River

Black Warrior reclamation 2026

Next we flew up to Fleetwood to check on Black Warrior Minerals coal mine reclamation. It looked pretty good and has been in reclamation since about 2016.

Black Warrior Minerals reclamation, 12/18/15

A little farther to the north is the Town of Brookwood Alabama. Brookwood is in the middle of a big battle over the coming of a data center not for away. I saw a new patch of bare red dirt behind the ballfields complex that I will have to inspect from the ground. I'm not sure what it is but I will find out and report back.

The town of Brookwood is not that large and for the most part, working class people who knew little or nothing about data centers or the total impacts to a small community like this, but it seems now, that there's one coming.

You can see the road that runs from the center left of the photo and leads to the top of the photo. That is the Brookwood Parkway where a massive data center is planned. That road was built to encourage sustainable light industrial use. Recently the land was purchased by a Korean company specializing in finding and procuring large tracts of land in rural areas for these huge campuses.

New housing is about 200 yds from the "project"

It's hard to believe anyone could consider a hyper-data center as "light" use. The amount of power data centers use is incredible. Alabama Power Co (APCO) just recently increased the size of the transmission lines running to the Mercedes plant due to increase demand for power at Mercedes. That line runs across my land and will not be enlarged without another fight. Someone needs to explain to me what the need is first and then why does it have to be so intrusive and secret. 

 

The mayor claimed not to have any information about a data center but then went on for 8 and 1/2 minutes explaining details about employment, environmental impacts, number of jobs, and other details which seemed like a lot of information for someone who claimed not to know anything about it. 

 

At the Brookwood city council meeting on 07/21 26 the mayor admitted that he signed an NDA (non disclosure agreement).  That may explain how he comes to be so familiar with a project he claims doesn't exist yet... At least available for the public. 

The mayor claimed there would be thousands of jobs which may be true during construction but the truth is...

A typical data center employs a small skeleton crew per shift, usually ranging from 3 to 10 people on-site, depending heavily on automation and total power capacity. Total permanent staff for a facility generally maps to about 0.15 to 0.35 workers per megawatt (MW), meaning larger campuses run lean relative to their massive size. 

Staffing Breakdown Per Shift
* Core Operations & Engineers: 1 to 4 critical facility engineers or systems technicians monitoring power, cooling, and network uptime.
* Security Personnel: 1 to 5 security guards managing physical site access and perimeter monitoring.* Shift Leadership / Support: 1 shift lead or network operations center (NOC) specialist overseeing immediate response tasks.

APCO power sub-station feeding Mercedes

 

  The mayor also claimed in error that the "power is already there". I beg to differ. Recently APCO took part of my land in imminent domain to build this power line leading to Mercedes Benz. Yes, there are power lines in the area, but not enough power to handle a hyper-data center and Mercedes Benz. 

 This is a photo taken taken 07/30/26 showing the new sub-station. station. There is power there but will it be enough to supply both? Not according to APCO claims when the took my land.  

 

 

 

I took this shot for scale. The Mercedes footprint is roughly 690 acres.  The so-far undisclosed Brookwood project, which most of us believe is a data center is between 1,200 and 1,800 acres of disturbance according to who you talk to. Nearly twice the area of the current Mercedes plant.

There will be a lot more on the Brookwood data center story after the planning and zoning meeting which is 8/11 at 6:00. at the Town Hall. I am urging all Brookood citizens concerned with this issue to attend and ask any questions you may have. None of your questions should ever go unanswered. The mayors entire speech in which he says he doesn't know anything can be seen below.

My main objective for this flight was to help people get a better understanding of what "the project" looks like from a wide perspective. I am so blessed to have a flight service like SouthWings to get me up in the air. 

 

 

Leaving the Brookwood I took a path to an old familiar pollution source at the Miller Crossing development in Peterson. This was the site back in 2025. 

 

 

Millers Crossing in 2026 doesn't look like they are even working on it. I see some issues that I will have to ground-truth to be sure if they are in compliance.

 

 

 

Down the road from Millers Crossing, I saw a sand pit I have been watching for some years and they looked to be in good shape from the air.

Heading back over Holt, I had a look at another old pollution source, Eagle Bluff landfill (buzzards roost as it was called by locals. It has been closed for several years now and is in "reclamation". It looked pretty good and I noticed a new flume ditch where an old clay ditch had been problematic for years.

 Like I said, all in all it looked much better that when it was operational.

 

 

 

 This photo was taken 2022. Look at the mud stream leaving the landfill and flowing across cemetery property across the road. All of this was going on even during funerals.

That was the end of the official Hurricane Creek patrol but my pilot was kind enough to allow me a few detours for a few other interesting scenes.
For instance this one of the Friends of Hurricane  Creek property that was decimated by the tornado that hit Tuscaloosa in April 2011 

FOHC Holt Peterson Rd Property Apr. 2011

 

FOHC Holt Peterson Rd Property Apr. 2011

         

The  FOHC Holt Peterson Rd Property Apr. 2011                                                            

This is the same site today

Almost every flight I take leads me back across the spillway at Lake Tuscaloosa. It's almost mandatory to get at least one shot.

Lake Tuscaloosa Spillway and dam

On final approach I happened to get a shot of the new Northport Beaches and Lagoon project. People laughingly refer to it as the new Mount Northport. That's a subject for another post.

As always, I want to give a big thanks to SouthWings for another great flight!

This is the video clip of the mayors entire speech telling us how much he does not know about a project that isn't happening yet.