The battle over access to Mobile’s Big Creek Lake is now in Montgomery County Circuit Court after the Mobile Area Water & Sewer System (MAWSS) sued Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources (ADCNR) Commissioner Chris Blankenship for saying its reservoir is a public waterway.

According to a complaint filed Thursday, Sep. 25, by attorney Benjamin Espy on behalf of MAWSS’ board, Blankenship’s March statement to MAWSS that the J.B. Converse Reservoir — locally known as Big Creek Lake — is a public waterway upon which the public has the right to fish and boat flies in the face of the state law that empowered MAWSS to construct the reservoir in the 1950s.

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