Community Wants Progress on 98 Bypass

Construction of the new Highway 98 bypass has been halted for almost two years after lawsuits were filed to make the Alabama Department of Transportation address environmental damage. Now, some who live near a two lane stretch of 98 near the Alabama-Mississippi state line believe its time to move forward with the project.

"This project has been bogged down for so long in lawsuits and two of the suits have been dropped and taken care of," says Larry Godfrey, who lives on the Escatawpa River at the Highway 98 bridge.

Just last month lawsuits filed by the attorney general and Mobile Baykeepers against ALDOT were settled. The suits, filed two years ago involved environmental concerns over design flaws in the bypass. Godfrey says with the environmental problems addressed, its time to move on, but:

"Mawss is holding the gate on this situation--and we feel as a group in our community that mawss is the stop gap here that's keeping this thing from getting back on point," he says.

Godfrey and others addressed the Mobile Water and Sewer board at a meeting on November 16th. MAWSS filed suit against ALDOT in November 2007 seeking to protect Big Creek Lake, Mobile's water supply, from contamination from runoff from the bypass project. In a letter to Godfrey, MAWSS Chairman James Bell said MAWSS is not responsible for delaying the project. He says the water service continues to negotiation with ALDOT and hopes for a settlement soon. Bell also points out that the 98 bypass cannot open anyway until the gap connecting the new 98 to Highway 158 and ultimately to Interstate 65, something ALDOT says will take a few more years.

Godfrey wonders how many more drivers will be injured or killed before the project is completed, many of those accidents he's seen personally over the past 20 years. Between 1995 and 2008, fifty fatalities were reported on the stretch of highway 98 from the Alabama-Mississippi state line to the city limits of Mobile.