Drones help police pollution in Alabama. Lawmakers want to make that a crime.

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

This is the sort of picture coal lobbyists in Alabama don’t want you to see. This is the sort of picture a bill before the Alabama Legislature would make it a crime to take.

We look down on a patch of woods by a river. In the midst of evergreen trees and dormant hardwoods is a gray swath of land lined with sickly yellow veins creeping toward the water.

There by the water is what we’ll call the Triangle of Death, at least the size of a football field where nothing grows. On one end is the Maxine Mine owned by the Drummond Company. And at the other is the Locust Fork River, just a few miles upstream from where the Warrior River Water Authority and Bessemer Utilities pull drinking water.

When a granddad takes his grandchildren fishing, this is the sort of thing that keeps them from eating the fish.

This picture was taken by a drone.

The folks who made that mess down there want to make pictures like this one illegal. And the Alabama Legislature is ready to help them. A bill sponsored by state Sen. Cam Ward and state Rep. Chip Brown would severely restrict where drones can fly — to almost nowhere there’s people or roads or power lines or running water. /snip

More at https://www.al.com/news/2020/03/drones-help-police-pollution-in-alabama-lawmakers-want-to-make-that-a-crime.html