Hank Burch rushed outside his office at the state's new Five Rivers Delta Resource Center at the urging of a fellow center worker. From the deck, he could see the Mobile skyline in the distance across the marsh grasses and the broad expanse of Mobile Bay. In the wide blue sky above, he saw one of those unusual sights that is not uncommon at his workplace.

"There was a flock of white pelicans circling overhead, 100 strong," Burch said.

Burch is the manager of the new $10.5 million state-built education and convention center in Spanish Fort just off the Mobile Causeway. Within sight of the busy roadways connecting Mobile with the bay's eastern shore, Burch watches fish jump, egrets stalk, 8-foot alligators cruise, and endangered red-bellied turtles nest on the shores.

The Delta Resource Center is designed as a gateway to 250,000 acres of watery wilderness, 100,000 of them under public ownership, where the principal river systems of Alabama collide, the Mobile-Tensaw River Delta. It was paid for by natural gas royalties collected by the Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources.

"We envisioned this place to be a gateway to the Delta, to show people what we bought and why," Burch said. "There will be powerboat tours leaving from here. It will be a hub for nature-based tourism for coastal Alabama."

At the center, which is at the southern end of the delta where it empties into Mobile Bay, visitors can launch or tie up at the docks, rent kayaks and canoes, charter trips or learn about the delta in an exhibit hall and in the 90-seat theater. In coming months, a regular charter boat will take eco-tourists into the marshes rich with birds, fish and alligators and the occasional manatee, marshes that gradually transition into tupelo gum and cypress swamp, cross-cut with narrow river channels.

The department is working to connect the center by waterway trails to the Bartram Canoe Trail, which starts about 30 miles north of the center. The 200-mile Bartram Trail includes floating campsites among the swamps and bayous of the northern delta.

Tourism growing:

The center adds another aspect to Mobile's growing tourist industry. The Retirement Systems of Alabama invested in the renovation of two historic hotels in Mobile, the Riverview Plaza and the Battle House Hotel. RSA was also a partner in the city's cruise port construction, now home to a Carnival Cruise Lines ship. RSA's total investment in downtown Mobile is estimated to exceed $300 million. And the center is opening at a time when nature-based tourism and paddle sports are exploding in popularity.

This weekend, the center is hosting the fourth annual Alabama Coastal Birdfest, the departure point for birders watching for flocks of migratory birds moving south for the winter.

On the last weekend in October, the center hosts the Bartram Trail Conference, a gathering of academics and enthusiasts interested in the 18th century naturalist who explored the South recording the wilderness before it was altered by European settlement. William Bartram's travels through the South were a forerunner to and something of an inspiration for the Lewis and Clark expedition to the west.

"He explored pristine natural wilderness and writes about it in a really romantic way," said Kathryn Braund, an Auburn history professor and president of the Bartram organization. "Most of the places Bartram visited have been changed dramatically. In Alabama, the delta area is most like what Bartram saw."

Sharing the center that weekend will be participants in the inaugural Five Rivers Fall Kayak Fishing Tournament. Interest in that sport has grown rapidly in recent years. Manufacturers have turned out a host of sit-on-top kayaks rigged for fishing rods, even adding advanced offerings such as GPS, fish finders and live-bait wells.

"It is cheap, especially now with the price of gas, and we can get places where motorboats can't. We go into areas that have never been fished," said Mike Bosarge, the kayak fishing club's president. "It is quiet. Alligators swim by. Porpoises surface next to you. Eagles watch you from the trees. You see families of otters peeking up at you.

"You are able to get closer to nature and you are not scaring them away because of the sound of the motorboat. And it's just so pretty up there."

At the lower end of the delta and in the bay, you find saltwater species including redfish, flounder, Spanish mackerel, tarpon and trout. In the upper delta, freshwater species such as crappie and bass predominate.

Migratory paradise:

As the weather cools and seasons change, the area becomes more inviting.

"This is the time of year I personally love," Burch said. "When you are out on the waterway out here, there is no telling what you will see with the birds flying south."

While some people might be spooked at the idea of sharing the water with alligators, they aren't a threat if you don't corner them and don't keep stringers of fish dangling in the water. If they're too close for comfort, a whistle blow or bang on the side of your boat will send them scurrying. "It is basically common sense and you do fine," said kayak fisherman Bosarge.

"Don't feed the gators," Burch said. "They will bite the hand that feeds them."

Braund said the state's decision to buy and preserve ecologically and historically important land was wise, and making those holdings available and accessible makes it an even better investment. Participants in the Bartram conference will come from across the South to explore the waters Bartram once canoed.

"What the Alabama Department of Natural Resources has done just boggles the mind," she said. "It is not just a gift for the people of Alabama, but for people everywhere."

E-mail: tspencer@bhamnews.com

Facility would have 'significant adverse impacts' on the Gulf, says Fisheries Service

A key federal agency has come out against a proposed liquefied natural gas import terminal 62 miles south of Dauphin Island, arguing that the facility could cause "significant adverse impacts" in the Gulf and result in an "inappropriate" use of public resources to benefit a private corporation.

Houston-based TORP Terminal LP has proposed using 46 billion gallons of seawater from the Gulf of Mexico each year to warm the super-chilled liquid into a gaseous product that can be injected into the nation's natural gas pipeline network.

Living things in the water -- primarily the eggs and larvae of creatures that swim in the Gulf, including swordfish, red snapper, grouper, jacks, crabs and shrimp -- would be killed, with a toll that could be measured in the billions per year, according to federal documents.

There is another method for treating the imported LNG that doesn't use seawater, but it would require several million dollars per year in additional costs.

In formal comments on the Draft Environmental Impact Statement for the TORP facility, the National Marine Fisheries Service wrote that the seawater method causes a portion of TORP's "operational costs to be borne by the public" because, in essence, the company has not offered sufficient compensation for damage caused to public fisheries.

Vocal opposition

The fisheries service is the federal agency charged with protecting the nation's fisheries and analyzing the impact of LNG terminals on those fisheries. It has become more vocal in its opposition to LNG terminals as the number of terminals proposed for the Gulf has grown.

"The comments are not really a surprise to us. They've been critical of all of the (seawater) systems," said Joseph Berno, chief executive officer for TORP.

Berno said that from his perspective, TORP was trying to create a solar-powered LNG plant, utilizing the Gulf water as a method of capturing the sun's energy to heat the LNG.

While TORP officials dispute that the terminal would have a measurable impact on the Gulf ecosystem, scientists at the state and federal level oppose the project.

Those scientists have argued that no one knows how severe the terminal's impact on Gulf fish populations might be. The scientists were especially worried about the cumulative impact of the dozen LNG terminals proposed for the Gulf.

"Although the science is not definitive in terms of what the impact will be, can we afford to make a mistake and realize 10 or 15 years later what we've done?" asked Vern Minton, director of the Alabama Department of Marine Resources. "You kill a million red snapper larvae, there's no mess, you don't see the loss. But over time, once you get to the point where you can see a loss in the fishery, you may have lost so much that the resource can't recover."

Derailed plan

An LNG terminal proposed near Alabama's coast by ConocoPhillips was derailed after federal scientists determined that its potential impact wouldn't be apparent until Alabama's redfish harvest fell by more than 36 percent a year. Gov. Bob Riley announced he would veto the project, and ConocoPhillips withdrew its permit application.

TORP Terminal LP proposed building an offshore terminal in May 2005.

Federal fisheries officials wrote in their comment letter that the available data "support the possibility that impacts could be substantial."

Crux of controversy

The controversy centers on TORP's method of preparing 1 billion cubic feet of gas a day for possible consumer use. The method advocated by TORP would run the warm waters of the Gulf through a radiator-like network of pipes, warming super-chilled natural gas moving through an adjacent pipeline network.

An alternative technology uses natural gas to warm the LNG, and does not require seawater.

None of the LNG terminals slated for the Atlantic and Pacific coasts will use the seawater method, due primarily to resistance from the coastal states.

First CNN.com insults Mobile, then calls it the mecca of the South.

Thank the Lord, Southerners are forgiving.

Mobile and Montgomery were listed among the top 10 bounce-back housing markets in the country by CNN.com this past week.

CNN called Mobile "a low-wage backwater" just 10 years ago, but said it is now "emerging as the South's next boomtown and magnet for mega projects."

The city was praised for all the jobs that will be created by the $3.7 billion Thyssen-

Krupp steel mill in north Mobile, the new container terminal at the Port of Mobile and the Airbus North America engineering center that will employ 150 people at Brookley Field.

Executives running industries around the world often base their perceptions of the South on the civil rights era, according to David Bronner, chief of the Retirement Systems of Alabama, a $28 billion set of pension funds.

"If they haven't visited Alabama since then, the people we take around are blown away by Montgomery, and it's the same in Mobile," he said. "What we've accomplished in the last 14 to 15 years is quite phenomenal."

RSA has invested $220 million in the newly opened, 35-story RSA Battle House Tower and 238-room Battle House Hotel in downtown Mobile. It also bought and is investing $60 million in renovating the 375-room Riverview Plaza Hotel at 64 S. Water St., and built and manages the Alabama Cruise Terminal at Mobile.

Those downtown improvements have prompted other business owners to update their buildings and drawn investors looking for properties to buy and fix up, according to Realtors.

Companies looking at Mobile like what they see, according to Bronner.

"Companies are not coming in to save your town," he said. "They want a good environment and a chance to make money. And they want somebody else in there eyeball-to-eyeball with them. They don't want to look at themselves as being there to provide manna for your city to survive. They can go somewhere else where there are good schools, parks and recreational activities."

CNN.com also said the city's housing market was "heating up" because of the 7 to 9 percent appreciation rate, which had caught the attention of investors from as far as California and Colorado.

Mobile's growth rate has been even better than that, according to Lee Metzger, president of Mobile Area Association of Realtors. "I think we ran about 12 percent last year and this year it's 8 percent. When it's us versus the national market, we're running way above the rest of the world."

Even if not perfect, added Metzger, such publicity "is great for people to take a look at the big economic development growth we've had."