By Sherry Lynn Gros for the Highland Park Review 02/24/2025
Optimist Lake at Milkhouse Creek in Mobile AL was destroyed in August of 2021 by someone closing the standpipe during the height of Hurricane Ida in August 2021. *In the 1950s at a meeting of the Great Alabama Watershed Planning meeting of Engineers in Montgomery Alabama, Mr. Langan gave his promise to a gathering of Alabama’s brightest and most innovative Civil Engineers that he would go back to Mobile and speak with the developers about an overall watershed program that would include all new developments going forward.
It was from that meeting that Milkhouse Creek was designated the backup water supply source to JB Converse Lake should the need ever arise for the City of Mobile. Milkhouse Creek is the little sister to Big Creek Lake since before MAWSS existed. Long term strategists could see, therefore if the dam at Milkhouse Creek was destroyed and the land laid to waste, then the land could be blighted by the city. If it could be blighted then it could be taken away from private citizens the way they took the land around Big Creek Lake (by strongarm and given to the City). If it could be taken by the city it could then be sold to a developer or a public utility who could get grants to restore it to it’s original purpose; a backup source of water to the City of Mobile. Water: a taxable commodity and long-term source of grant income. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_N._Langan