The Salt Line, Vol. 101: Florida's Front Door Begins With a Retention Pond
The mailbag is open. The letters are invented; the news inside the answers is not.
The Lead: a question about the grand entrance
Dear Salt Line, I drive in from Alabama every fall and I’ve always wanted Florida to greet me properly. Is anyone working on that? — Waiting at the Welcome Center, Loxley
Dear Waiting,
They are, and you will be pleased to learn the greeting begins with a hole in the ground.
Escambia County commissioners take up two items Thursday tied to the planned Interstate 10 Exit 1 interchange at Beulah Road, a state project WEAR puts at $240 million. Exit 1 is, by the arithmetic of mile markers, the first thing Florida says to anyone arriving by interstate from your side. And according to NorthEscambia’s rundown of the agenda, what has to be settled first is a land swap, a $287,000 payment, the land rights for a state retention pond, and a major inspection contract.
I’d like to defend the pond, because nobody else will. Ribbon cuttings photograph the ramps. Nobody poses in front of the basin. But on this coast the pond is the part of a road that decides whether the rest of it works in August, and the tradition hereabouts has been to discover that after the pavement is down. A project that clears the rights to the drainage before it pours anything is a project doing the chores in the correct order. That is rarer than $240 million.
The inspection contract deserves a kind word too. Somebody gets paid to look at the work closely while it is being done, as opposed to the traditional method, in which the public inspects it for free, afterward, from inside a stalled car.
What it means for the rest of us: the western edge of the county is growing, and the state is building for it on purpose rather than in apology. Beulah will get its exit. You will get your greeting. It will be a ramp, a merge, and somewhere just off to the side, a large and dignified depression in the earth, quietly holding the rain so the ramp doesn’t have to. Wave at it. It’s doing more than the sign.
🦪 A back bay asks for a personal day
Dear Salt Line, we rent on the Orange Beach side and paddle the back water every trip. Anything I should know this week? — Kayak on the Roof Rack
Dear Kayak, yes. The Alabama Department of Public Health has issued a swimming advisory for Wolf Bay in Orange Beach after poor water tests. Paddle if you like; stay in the boat. The advisory is also a small argument for the unglamorous institution behind it: someone goes out, fills a bottle, and tells the public the truth before the public finds out the other way. The Gulf gets the postcards. The back bays get the lab work, which is the less photogenic form of love.
A raise that arrives in the quietest week
Dear Salt Line, my server last night seemed unusually cheerful. Should I be worried? — Suspicious in Unit 1104
Dear Suspicious, she may have read ahead. Florida’s minimum wage rises Sept. 30 by a dollar, to $15 for non-tipped workers and $11.98 for tipped ones. On the Key, the tipped worker isn’t a line item; she is the economy with an apron on. Note the calendar, though. The raise lands at the end of September, in the thin stretch after the summer money leaves and before the snowbirds arrive, when an hourly rate matters most and a full section matters more. The state has done its dollar. The rest of the dollar is on the table, next to your Bushwacker.
🎡 Seventy-five years of the same good idea
Dear Salt Line, is there anything to do on a Friday night that doesn’t involve a sunset? — Restless on Canal Road
Dear Restless, the Baldwin County Fair is marking its 75th year with more rides, games and food. Hours are 5 to 11 p.m. Tuesday through Thursday, 2 to 11 on Saturday, and on Friday it runs until 1 a.m., which is the most honest scheduling decision made in Baldwin County all year. Anyone who has eaten a funnel cake at 12:40 in the morning knows the fair was never really about the livestock. Seventy-five years, and the formula hasn’t needed a consultant once.
The Closer
A pond before the ramp, a water test before the swim, a raise before the slow season: this week the region mostly did things in the right order, which is so unusual it almost reads as news. Prudence has no ribbon to cut. It just keeps the water where the water belongs.
— Chris
P.S. Know a restaurant, charter, shop, or event we’re missing? Add it — free, Florida side or Alabama side: /submit/
