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The Jefferson County Commission will decide Tuesday whether to spend $7 million over five years to help purchase property for Red Mountain Park.

Commission President Larry Langford said the purchase would include enough rail lines for a possible trolley system across the 1,108-acre tract of land and also connect a 64-mile network of walking, biking and hiking trails.

Under the proposal, the county would enter into an agreement with the Black Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust to help it buy that property, beginning with an initial $2 million investment from the county’s general fund.

Several miles of existing rail beds line the property and can be used for trolleys to carry riders through the park and nearby communities, Langford said.

The property is north of Lakeshore Drive, running 4.5 miles from an eastern boundary along Montevallo Road to a western endpoint near the Bessemer city limit. It is owned by U.S. Steel Corp. and valued at $16.5 million.

The company has given the land trust two years to buy the land for $7 million.

Commissioner Bettye Fine Collins said Langford was making a unilateral decision.

“We have a five-member commission here. We don’t have a mayor,” she said. “So for a group to pitch this, for me to read about it in the paper as if it’s a done deal is not the way I think we should operate. I was elected to be fiscally responsible for the county’s funds. I don’t know what our reserve fund is. I don’t know where all of this money is coming from.”

Langford said the money will come from annual property reappraisals, which bring $5 million into the county’s coffers.

He said the initial $2 million payment is not due until October 2006, and the county will spend $1 million per year afterward.

“I love this because it has everybody’s quality of life at heart and it sits in the heart of District 2,” said Commissioner Shelia Smoot said.

The county’s investment will make the project a reality, said Wendy Jackson, executive director of the trust. “It gives us the power to tap into the private-sector funding that is waiting and watching to see this happen,” Jackson said.

E-mail: bwright@bhamnews.com

What is it going to take to make the proposed Red Mountain Park a reality? For starters, $7 million to buy the 1,108 acres from U.S. Steel. While most of us don’t have that kind of money to give away, those who support this important project are making it easier for all of us to contribute to the park and follow its progress.

The Friends of Red Mountain Park now has a Web site (www.redmountainpark.org) where people can find out more about the project and donate to it as well. The Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham has set up a Red Mountain Park Fund that can handle contributions, large and small.

Already, the Hugh Kaul Foundation has donated the first $100,000 for the fund-raising campaign and, equally important, has provided the money to hire a full-time employee to apply for grants and to seek donations.

This is all good news. For the effort to be successful, the $7 million purchase price will need to be raised within two years, before the Black Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust’s option on the land expires. The group believes the goal is well within reach.

Let’s hope so.

Why? The park is important on a number of levels. It would be one of the biggest urban parks in the country – bigger than Central Park. Indeed, it would give us more public green space, compared to our population, than any big city in the country.

But more important than any ranking, the park, which will stretch almost from Homewood to Bessemer, would give those who live in and around Birmingham the opportunity to hike and bike and enjoy other types of recreation. In short, it would be a real asset to our metro area.

It’s an important philanthropic effort, too, for U.S. Steel. The company, which is the county’s largest landowner, has agreed to sell the land for the park for less than half its appraised value (more than $16 million) and also has agreed to give $1 million to help develop the park property.

No wonder those involved in the project are already gratified at seeing so much support – not just from movers and shakers, but from everyday Joes and Janes as well.

The goal now must be to make sure the momentum keeps building until the park is completed. This is one project we can’t let get away.

Red Mountain Park is beginning to sound less like a concept and more like something real and popular seven months after U.S. Steel Corp. offered steeply discounted land to establish one of the largest urban parks in the nation.

“There is so much positive enthusiasm from diverse sections of our community that we’re very encouraged that it will be a reality, that it will happen and be a great success,” said Frank Young, a Birmingham lawyer who sits on the Red Mountain Park steering committee.

A grant from the Hugh Kaul Foundation is the most concrete development since the idea was announced in January. The foundation donated not only the first $100,000 for a fund-raising campaign, but also money to hire a full-time employee to write grant applications and raise money for the next two years.

With a skilled grant writer and fund-raiser on board, the executive director of the Black Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust said, there’s no doubt the project can raise $7 million in time to meet U.S. Steel’s two-year deadline for buying the 1,108-acre site.

“We’ve got to have someone who wakes up every day and does nothing but search for grants,” said the director, Wendy Jackson.

Jackson said her increasing confidence in the project also comes from involvement of a group of civic powerhouses that have helped with other Birmingham projects such as the Civil Rights Institute and Vulcan Park.

She also was encouraged that people became so excited about the plan they formed a Friends of Red Mountain group. One of the leaders, John Cobbs, a Mountain Brook Web designer, set up a Web site for the Friends group.

In addition to giving the latest details on progress, it has a spot where people can be directed to donate to the Red Mountain Park fund established at the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham. Jackson said that’s important not because the park can be built on $5 donations, but because potential large donors will look at the number of people who donate to gauge community commitment to the park.

Jackson calls those small donors “the Michaels,” after a young boy who wanted to send his allowance for the park before such a fund had been set up. Unfortunately, that possible donor hung up because he wasn’t allowed to give out his phone number so Jackson could call back when a fund had been established.

Community commitment:

She said a variety of other people, including parks officials, mountain bikers, runners and parents, have asked for information and expressed their willingness to help.

U.S. Steel’s proposal was the largest in its corporate history, but it requires a large commitment from the community, as well.

In January, the company offered to give the Black Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust the land atop Red Mountain at a $9.5 million discount. The company also offered to clear the roads it had used so they could be made into hiking or biking trails, and to give $1 million to develop recreational areas in the park.

It offered an option on the land for two years. After that time, the deal requires that the community be prepared to pay $7 million for the land, which is valued at $16.5 million.

U.S. Steel once had coal mines throughout the area, and remains Jefferson County’s largest landowner. It has donated smaller pieces of land throughout the area, including tracts to help protect the Cahaba River and Shades and Village creeks.

But the Red Mountain land has no streams on it, so the Black Warrior-Cahaba land trust, established to buy land that would preserve those two watersheds, cannot use its funds to establish the park.

Leaders of the land trust say that, ultimately, they expect the Red Mountain Park to be maintained and owned by a separate nonprofit group similar to New York’s Central Park Conservancy or the Vulcan Park Foundation.

No `one-trick pony’:

Cobbs said he sees his Friends group remaining a loose collective of people who will later merge with whatever nonprofit group is set up. He said he moved to Birmingham after years of living near the similarly sized Golden Gate Park in San Francisco, where people could run, ride bikes, fish and attend museums.

“It’s a great opportunity to have so many things going on,” he said. “It won’t be a one-trick pony in people’s minds.”

A demonstration plan for the park showed soccer fields, baseball diamonds, untamed forest areas with trails for hiking, biking and bird-watching and other activities. But Jackson said it’s essential to get public opinion on what should be on the land and consider such ideas as handicapped-accessible trails or a museum showing the land’s connection to the steel industry that founded Birmingham.

To some members of the steering committee, one of the most significant aspects of the Red Mountain Park is that it could bring together citizens from the north and the south who historically have been divided by the mountain that has been a symbol of separation from the city.

“I think this project, more than any I’ve worked on since the creation of the Civil Rights Institute, gives us an opportunity to come together to bridge some of our racial and community and municipal divides,” Young said. “In years past, the … (mountain) has been a barrier. Instead of tearing down that barrier, it would bridge it.”

The park is planned to run for 4.5 miles on the north side of Lakeshore Parkway, from Homewood on the east to near Bessemer on the west.

EMAIL: kbouma@bhamnews.com

EARTH DAY, APRIL 22

“I can’t believe it, a sea of lilies on a congressional Web site!”

That was the reaction a friend of mine from a Washington, D.C., environmental organization had when he saw U.S. Rep. Spencer Bachus’ congressional Web site. Right there on the front page, a beautiful photo of the Cahaba River and its famous Cahaba lilies in all their splendor.

“Of course he has the lilies on his Web site,” I responded. Bachus drafted the legislation to create the Cahaba River National Wildlife Refuge a couple of years ago. He is one of the river’s champions.

“Think globally, act locally,” I said to my friend, repeating an old Earth Day bumper sticker usually seen on a Volvo station wagon.

Thirty-five years ago, on Earth Day, our nation’s environmental movement bloomed like a Cahaba lily in May. In Alabama, the movement was slow to start, but had attracted congressional champions, especially in Birmingham, where in the early 1970s the Sipsey Wilderness campaign was supported by Sens. John Sparkman and Jim Allen. A great new book, “The Battle for Alabama’s Wilderness,” by local attorney and former Alabama Conservancy Executive Director John Randolph, documents the birth of this new kind of movement that has subsequently given us cleaner air and water and preserved many of our state’s ecological treasures.

More than a generation later, with little fanfare, Alabama’s environmental movement has become more and more mainstream and progressed despite obstacles. But do we “think globally and act locally?

We have been effective locally at protecting special places. During the past five years, Alabama’s congressional delegation has created the Dugger Mountain Wilderness Area in the Talladega National Forest, carved out two new national wildlife refuges and, through the federal Forest Legacy program, secured more than $8 million to preserve threatened working forests in south and north Alabama. And of course, on a statewide level Alabama’s Forever Wild program is successful.

On a national level, programs such as the Land Water Conservation Fund, which were used to create the wildlife refuges in Alabama, are being slashed, even zeroed out from the federal budget. And speaking of wildlife refuges, would we allow oil and gas drilling within our national wildlife refuges in Alabama, like Congress is proposing in Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge?

Locally, environmental education in Alabama is expanding. Last November, a survey conducted at an Environmental/ Nature Education Centers Summit at Birmingham-Southern College’s Southern Environmental Center, showed that about $20 million in environmental education capital projects are on the drawing boards statewide. These projects include the creation of state-of-the-art environmental education centers at the 4-H Center in Shelby County, Oak Mountain State Park, Ruffner Mountain, Jacksonville State University’s field schools and the Alabama Wildlife Federation’s new facility near Prattville.

Globally, the picture is not so bright. There are proposals to weaken the Endangered Species Act and Clean Water Act. The Bush administration has proposed making substantial funding cuts to the Environmental Protection Agency and agricultural soil and water conservation programs. And despite $2.25-a-gallon gas prices, Americans refuse to demand greater fuel efficiency and conservation.

In the area of advocacy, local environmental groups have focused on reforming the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, pulling together more than 35 groups statewide. A group called Alabama WaterWatch has more than 75 community groups throughout Alabama monitoring our rivers and streams. Even business groups such as Alabama Power have gotten into the act, with its Renew Our Rivers project that organizes citizens to clean up our lakes and streams to the tune of 3.4 million pounds of trash and debris since 2000. And don’t forget, the commitment of U.S. Steel and the Black Warrior and Cahaba Rivers Land Trust to help create Red Mountain Park, a new 1,000-acre-plus natural area in Jefferson County.

Thirty-five years after the first Earth Day bumper sticker appeared, Alabama is making progress on the environment. We can thank legislative allies, farthinking leaders and environmental advocates for all these accomplishments. However, we still have to come to grips with the unfettered sprawl that is chewing up our state’s forests and agricultural land base that is endangering our natural heritage. There are water, air and land problems. And there is real concern about funding cuts and changes to environmental law.

Perhaps this year’s Earth Day bumper sticker should say “Act Globally and Act Locally.” I think I’ll send one to my friend in Washington – and one to Bachus, too. It is an appropriate addition to the Cahaba lilies on his Web site, and a reminder that his constituents continue to care passionately about the natural wonders of our beautiful state.

Folks in Birmingham like to talk about the assets other cities have. The stadiums and the sports teams. The ability to reach regional consensus. And, of course, the geographic features.

St. Louis and Memphis have the Mississippi River. San Antonio has its famous River Walk – an unparalleled example of a city making good use of natural attributes to boost its economy and reputation. Jacksonville, Fla., has the Atlantic Ocean, and Atlanta has, well, Atlanta has everything.

But many of those envious people in the Birmingham area can’t – excuse the cliche – can’t seem to see the forest for the trees.

Really, they can’t see the forest or the trees.

With the announcement a couple of weeks ago that U.S. Steel had agreed to sell 1,108 acres to the Black Warrior-Cahaba Rivers Land Trust at a huge discount, the Birmingham area could be on its way to having a series of parks and nature preserves that could reshape the city’s identity. The land trust has a couple of years to pay $7 million for the acreage along Red Mountain, which has been appraised at $16.5 million. The steel giant would then donate $1 million to develop it as a southwest Birmingham park with trails, soccer fields and more.

On its own it is an exciting idea. But it is just part of the broader picture. Birmingham already features the 1,011-acre Ruffner Mountain Nature Center, one of the largest urban nature preserves in the country. And plans remain in the works to build linear parks along old railroad lines through downtown.

With work and money, trails could be built to connect Ruffner to the railroad reservation, and on to the proposed Red Mountain park. The connected parks could give Birmingham that key feature, a natural haven, that would change both the character and the content of the city.

“I believe we’re on the verge of a green renaissance in Birmingham and Jefferson County,” said environmental consultant Pat Byington. “It’s an incredible opportunity.”

Of course, the deal is not done yet. The land trust has to raise the money to buy the U.S. Steel property, plans have to proceed with the railroad reservation and Ruffner Mountain still has proposed improvements to make.

For all those things to happen – for Birmingham to capitalize on its natural beauty – residents and leaders have to see the value in doing so.

It doesn’t seem like a hard sell, but it probably is. Nature is often one of the first items cut from government budgets, said Kathy Stiles Freeland, Ruffner Mountain’s executive director.

But a system of trails and greenways and pristine forests would give Birmingham something few if any cities can claim, she said. Thousands of acres of usable, connected park land that would raise property values, help draw business and improve the quality of life.

Seems like a gimme.

It’s time we stopped worrying about what other cities have. It’s time – while there’s still time – to appreciate and preserve our own blessings.

EMAIL: jarchibald@bhamnews.com