By Sherry Lynn Gros for The Highland Park Review
In Answer regarding this interview: https://mynbc15.com/news/local/the-bitter-dispute-over-a-dried-up-lake-that-divided-a-mobile-neighborhood
Dear Andrea, It was a pleasure meeting with you yesterday and I appreciate you highlighting our management challenges here in Highland Park, West Mobile. Now this is my story.
In regard to the story aired on your newscast with Helms and Damoff, why would anyone discourage the beautification of a neighborhood park? While I work every day, 7 days a week for this community, Helms and Damoff come after me every day to destroy my positive environmental work. They have created a toxic environment that has tainted this nonprofit beyond repair without effective restorative intervention. I don’t know if that intervention has to come from God, legal, political, community or all.
This is no longer a battle to save the dam or insist that Mike and Allen stop dewatering a 25 acre lake without Army Corps of Engineer permit as required by law, which was my original objection because they were destroying natural habitat and wildlife without qualified oversight. That is how the battle began in 2019. Concerned that the dam would collapse due to non-licensed reengineering of the dam, Highland Park residents raised an emergency board of directors under Alabama State Code Chapter 3 after no lawful board members could be found. This group of concerned Highland Park residents then voted to assemble a lawful Board of Directors to begin an orderly management program to save the dam. Once the dam collapsed at the height of the storm during Hurricane Ida in August of 2021, by direction of Allen Helms to close the standpipe, the standpipe was closed that morning filling the lake with torrential storm waters and that ecosystem was gone forever. Allen announced he closed the standpipe on social media. Again a deliberate issue by their group that caused total ruin of the area. So, Now we must work with what we have left, that being the park area, to restore creek embankments and wetlands. They are coming after us to destroy that opportunity as well. The battle today is one of Mike and Allen and their families continually molesting and maligning our work. The same sound environmental work all park builders, like Gina Gregory, Connie Hudson, Richard Dueitt, and other local citizens have accomplished except we don’t get the grants and we do not get the positive emotional support. So, the contentious neighborhood battle rages in the minds of Helms and Damoff while the rest of us are rebuilding a park.
What is it that Mike and Allen are trying to accomplish by constantly smearing HPca’s environmental civic work in this park? Helms and Damoff both live on the lakeside and if, according to local attorneys I have spoken with, if the Highland Park Community Association (the corporation) can be run into the ground and go away the lakeside lands can be taken by adverse possession or perhaps abandonment. I do believe this is their goal because they have spoken to us about taking the land by adverse possession many times in the past. They have used that exact language to this community in social media and in meetings. The entire community of Highland Park Subdivision, except the lakesiders were against this idea. Lake View West Subdivision people always said, “We don’t live on the lake. Why should we pay “HOA dues” for a lake we do not benefit from? The Helms group referred to their HOA as a “voluntary HOA” but their attorney on day 1 in 2019 said, “I think we can all agree there is no HOA.” The Helms group still to this day refer to themselves as an HOA.
Mike and Allen do not have a 25 acre lake management plan required to pass any City, State, or Federal criteria and they’ve never updated the buildings or structures on the park. For all their energy expended their legacy is that of land laid to waste. I am not the bad guy. I am not “the karen”. I am not the Queen of the Lake. And I am certainly not that HOA sociopath that inserts themselves into other people’s business or breaks laws to control others. I am an environmentalist administrator with a BA in Environmental Studies, President of Highland Park Community Association, mouthpiece of the corporation to save and rehab the park. The Helms’ legacy is, “the beautiful pristine lake” they described to you – was laid to waste by their own hands. My legacy will be a lovely little neighborhood park for everyone to go take a little break from their own backyards and enjoy the wildlife and nature under the orderly supervision of a well run administration for many more generations to come.
So, this is not a bitter petty battle of who is in control except in the minds of Helms and Damoff, I didn’t want this job when neighbors asked me to do it, but I was Called to do it. The Lake Optimist story stands as a testimony to the people who are willing to stand up and fight for the principles of upholding the law against manipulative people like Helms/Damoff and crew who attempt administrative land theft by mob tactics using intimidation, outright destruction, misinformation, administrative tinkering, and abuse of the english language or semantics. We did not go into their house and tell them how to paint, or what to paint as they told you. We stepped up to address and try to save the local environment, the lake, the dam, and now the park using every available law known to us. I love my nature park and our community aims to see it lovely and revitalized. We hope these men will stop menacing us, stop throwing chains and locks on the gates, stop trashing the HPca name and when we go down to work in the park we hope they will stop harassing and molesting our guests and workers so we don’t have to continue to call the police for protection from them.
Please note: We are able to get permits to do the work we need to get done and have been advised by City Counsel on how to go about doing that. It is important that our newly annexed park adhere and maintain local city ordinances so that we don’t get fined for being non-compliant. Please see attached the pavilion pictures taken this past March before the pavilion rehab. Our latest permit was BLDR-148695-2025 https://mobileal-energovpub.tylerhost.net/apps/selfservice#/permit/d40340a4-3352-4b98-ae13-ed8ec9146577 . And we are currently hammering out a contract with another contractor that will require a City Permit. I don’t understand why people are not celebrating this civic improvement instead of focusing on petty gripes of two old men who have done nothing but destroy the area and menace ALL of our supporters. Thank you for your time and thank you for listening.
In the attached pictures below you will see before and after pictures of the pavilion since March of this year. You will also see random destruction left by the collapse of the dam. After the collapse the bridge at Lakeview Dr West began undermining, the little dam was revealed and what had been intact is now crumbled. This collapse has had destructive far reaching effects all the way to the SCC chunchula energy lands along Cody Rd S. The erosion is exponential as the water buffering system is gone. There is a continual stream of water that flows from springs, rainfall, and stormwater runoff. So the stream does still cut through the forest you saw. It is not a dry bed, it is a lake lost and a navigable stream in its place that runs continually.
If you have any questions please feel free to reach out. You have my number and my email. I prefer email.
Kind Regards,
Sherry Lynn Gros
PS. It was always our motto to “Keep it Environmental” One of the first things our administration did was hire Barry Vittor Environmental services for consultation and also Mobile Baykeeper to test the waters for e-coli. There were a lot of waterfowl and fish in the water so expected high levels of bacteria at times. People in this area did not swim in this lake when I was here except for rarely. My husband raised his now 34 year old son in this neighborhood and was advised not to swim in the water by the1990s. Most people understood the risk for MRSA, upstream overflows of effluent from the trailer park, and subdivisions, septic tanks, and waterfowl discharge. It was catch and release fishing as posted. Neither Helms nor Damoff thought it necessary to test for public health and safety and criticised me publicly for doing so. Although back in the 1950s and 60s the Mobile Public Health Department did regularly test these waters because it was a popular public swimming spot. Find attached our annual report from Mobile Baykeeper. I believe the annual cost for this was 1500 usd.
