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Mobile County Protects Big Creek Lake, Prisoner Withdraws Abortion Lawsuit

Big Creek Lake
Warning sign near Big Creek Lake

The Mobile County Commission is taking steps to protect the area’s primary source of drinking water. APR’s Pat Duggins reports it’s a land purchase around Big Creek Lake…

Mobile County wants to buy 200 acres around the Big Creek Lake watershed. The county has close to $400,000 in grants from the Coastal Impact Assistance Program to pay for the property.

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service gave the County the go-ahead to make the purchase earlier this week. The goal is to protect the area around the lake, which is Mobile’s main source of water.

Benny White is with the Mobile Area Water and Sewer System. He says this pumping station pulls about 65 million gallons of water a day from Big Creek Lake

“We pump the water from here, approximately four miles to the first treatment facility. And it runs through the distribution system from the facilities there.”

Mobile County has purchased close to 800 acres surrounding Big Creek Lake to protect the watershed.

An Alabama prisoner who filed in federal court seeking an abortion now says she's changed her mind.

A lawyer for the unidentified Lauderdale County inmate filed a sworn statement from the prisoner saying she now wants to carry the child to term. The lawyer was appointed to represent the woman after the state went to court seeking to block the abortion by stripping her of her parental rights.

The document doesn't say whether the state's action resulted in the inmate’s change of heart. It does specify that the woman made the decision on her own.

The Lauderdale County prisoner filed a federal lawsuit last week against Lauderdale County Sheriff Rick Singleton seeking a court order that would clear the way for an abortion.

A federal judge had said a ruling in the case would have come tomorrow.

The city of Mobile is helping to bring a piece of World War Two history to life.

Today marks seventy years since the sinking of the U.S.S. Indianapolis. The ship was torpedoed after delivering the first atomic bomb. A film crew is in Mobile to shoot a motion picture about the Indianapolis starring actor Nicolas Cage.

Eva Golson is the director of the Mobile Film Office. She says they want people to know what happened to our military and how they defended our country.

“It’s a good story to tell about what happened during the war and what these men had to go through. It’s very heart-rending, men in the water for so long with sharks, nobody knew they were missing, so it’s a very sad story, but also shows what our military people have to go through.”

Golson says quite a bit of downtown Mobile and Orange Beach were used as sets in the movie. Shooting will be finished this week and the film has a tentative release date of Memorial Day 2016.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is arguing that Alabama’s Chief Justice Roy Moore violated judicial ethics in his comments about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.

Yesterday, the group filed a supplement to their Judicial Inquiry Commission complaint that they originally submitted against Moore in January. The filing cited statements about the marriage ruling made in speeches and interviews, including that he couldn't accept it as binding precedent.

SPLC President Richard Cohen says it's unethical for Moore to urge defiance of a Supreme Court decision.

The judicial ethics panel in 2003 removed Moore as chief justice for disobeying a court order to remove a Ten Commandments monument from the state judicial building.

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