While these freshwater systems are vital for humans and other creatures, they also are under a great deal of stress because of several environmental challenges facing the region, including rapid growth and development; water quality and supply issues; and construction and relicensing of large power-generating dams. Taken together, these and other presses are causing a decline of aquatic habitat, which puts freshwater species at risk of extinction.
As an Alabama native, Wilson applauds organizations that protect and restore rivers, streams and watersheds in a section of the U.S. that biologists often compare with the Amazon Basin because of its biological diversity and global significance.
“Small efforts will have large returns in the Southeast. When organizations and funders put their time and money into this region, they are putting their resources in the right place, because a little bit goes a long way down here,” said Wilson, author of The Future of Life and several other books.
“Foundations and nonprofit organizations that support this conservation movement have a certain freedom and flexibility. They can go after specific results and achieve them.”
In 1998, the Mott Foundation initiated a program area called Conservation of Freshwater Ecosystems in North America to support conservation and restoration work in the binational Great Lakes basin and the Southeast. To date, Mott has made almost 200 grants totaling $48.4 million for freshwater initiatives in both regions, including $19.5 million for work in the Southeast.
Mott aims to strengthen the overall nonprofit community that is committed to the long-term conservation of freshwater ecosystems in these two regions. This means supporting groups that work at the local, state and regional levels to raise awareness among the general public and decisionmakers about water-quality and -quantity issues. It also involves providing grants to build the organizational capacity of specific groups, and the community of freshwater groups as a whole, by making available trainings, conferences, printed materials and collaborative opportunities.
In 2002, Mott made a two-year $150,000 grant to the University of Maryland-College Park to help fund a collaborative project in which professors from several universities studied the nation’s river restoration movement, developed a database of restoration projects and identified characteristics of successful ones. The team’s work has received considerable attention, including a feature in the April 2005 issue of Science magazine.
Judy Meyer, a professor at the Institute of Ecology at the University of Georgia, was one of the authors. For much of the 20thcentury, she said, the threats to southeastern freshwater ecosystems came from poor agricultural and forestry practices and extensive dam building. Today’s threats are largely the result of rapid urban and suburban development as the Southeast becomes a destination for individuals and families moving to warmer climates or looking for economic opportunities.
“The Southeast is just waking up to the reality that water is not a limitless resource,” said Meyer, who developed a love for streams while catching crayfish as a child in Wisconsin’s Menominee River. “States, counties and municipalities are looking to nearby jurisdictions for easier sources of water, which has shown us the need for statewide water management plans.”
The increased demand for water in the region has prompted some to foresee future “water wars.”
Scientist Brian Richter downplays that doomsday scenario, but he also sees the need for water-management plans and suggests they be integrated into development plans.
If properly managed, there is potentially enough water to meet the Southeast’s growing needs with minimal adverse environmental impact, said Richter, co-author of the book, Rivers for Life: Managing Water for People and Nature and director of The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) Sustainable Waters Program (formerly called the Freshwater Initiative), which has received three Mott grants totaling $850,000 since 1999.
“On the global scale, the southeastern United States is an incredibly important place,” he said. “But with the large numbers of families moving into cities and towns, we want to make sure we protect the health of our ecosystems.”
Richter has observed that longtime residents of the Southeast -- whether they live in Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee or elsewhere -- have strong emotional ties to freshwater ecosystems, partly because their memories are flooded with vivid images from their early years. They remember frolicking in favorite swimming holes, fishing from steep banks, and watching water meander around familiar river bends.
“Poll after poll about concern for broad environmental issues shows that water and rivers come out on top,” he said. “Water quality has been the issue, but the other big issues today are water volume and water flow.”
Natural water flow has been disrupted by dams, reservoirs and water diversion projects, which can dramatically change the amount of water in rivers, and destroy conditions that aquatic creatures need to migrate, spawn and feed.
Richter says that it does not need to be a people-versus-wildlife dilemma; instead, there can be agreements with solutions that benefit all interested stakeholders.
For example, the Nature Conservancy and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers are working together in a dozen locations to develop ways to operate federal dams with minimal adverse effects. They also are discussing how to share what they have learned in those situations with hundreds of other communities around the country addressing similar water-flow issues.
Like TNC, many other Mott grantees work on freshwater issues throughout the Southeast, but their on-the-ground impact is often most evident at the state level. Work that is being done, and still needs to be done, by groups in Alabama provides a clear illustration of Mott’s funding interest in not only a single state but also in the entire Southeast.
Home to countless rivers and streams, Alabama boasts a remarkable variety of wildlife. In the CahabaRiver alone, there are more than 131 fish species.
Since 1988, the Cahaba River Society (CRS) has worked to restore and protect the rich diversity of life that depends on the longest free-flowing river in the MobileBasin. That includes both aquatic species and humans, because the CahabaRiver is the primary drinking water source for one-fourth of the state’s residents. CRS has received three Mott grants totaling $295,000 for general support and specific projects since 1999.
Staff and volunteers of the Birmingham, Alabama-based organization are known for joining watershed science with practical solutions for local and state governments, and for leading hands-on educational and recreational field trips on the river.
In the past, CRS played a pivotal role in halting plans to build a costly “super sewer” system in JeffersonCounty, where Birmingham is located. At the time, studies showed that the sewer system could have devastating consequences to the region’s drinking water and also cause considerable damage to life in the CahabaRiver.
Since 2002, CRS staff and volunteers have participated in land-use planning activities that seek to balance river protection and local growth.
This is familiar work for Executive Director Beth K. Stewart, because she worked for local governments as a planning and zoning employee for almost two decades before joining CRS.
“For many development projects in the community -- whether people are concerned about crowded schools, traffic congestion or just the overall growth -- they often make the river the flagship issue to rally around,” she said.
“People ask, ‘How will development affect the river?’ For them, the river becomes the issue because it symbolizes everything they are losing.”
There are several obvious consequences of rapid population growth, including an increased demand for access to clean drinking water and the need for more sewage treatment facilities.
But what isn’t as apparent, according to environmental specialists, are the many other ways that construction projects affect water.
For example, more paved roads, parking lots and buildings reduce the amount of open ground available to absorb water. This forces the water to run off into rivers, streams, creeks and lakes, often carrying soil, pesticides and fertilizers. River banks sometimes collapse once the soil becomes saturated. Also, the rapidly moving water and sediment can trigger flooding problems where none existed previously. Equally important, runoff sediment can kill freshwater creatures by blanketing mussel beds and clogging fish gills, and can degrade the quality and supply of drinking water.
“Our message is that we humans have a common cause with the fish and water life,” Stewart said.
“We often attend zoning hearings to keep public officials aware of these issues. Our members are visible, vocal, and very effective and knowledgeable. In every city in our county, there is a core group of citizens who know their community’s current and ongoing environmental challenges quite well.”
According to Stewart, rapid growth in the region has contributed to tremendous flooding problems in the past several years. During one five-hour period in May 2003, the CahabaRiver rose and fell 17 feet. As a result, a suburban city hall was inundated with five feet of water.
Flooding, and other pressing environmental issues, prompted more than three dozen Birmingham leaders -- developers, environmentalists, property owners, and government officials -- to pull together to find solutions.
One goal for the greater Birmingham area is to reduce the projected extent of “greenfield growth,” or new development, at the suburban fringe, Stewart said.
By encouraging developers and local governments to make older commercial districts more viable and by improving city center growth patterns, suburban sprawl issues can be lessened. Where greenfield development does occur, land-use planning and higher standards can greatly reduce the negative watershed consequences.
The Southern Environmental Law Center (SELC) also addresses challenges related to the region’s swelling population, and the demands that puts on water supply. SELC, the recipient of five Mott grants totaling $1.275 million since 1999, provides leadership on policy issues related to water-quality and water-quantity issues.
Increasingly, communities are withdrawing or diverting water without calculating how their actions affect other communities and aquatic wildlife also dependent upon the same waterway, including those living downstream and even sometimes in other states.
In response, SELC helps analyze water-allocation agreements, and also provides legal and technical assistance to environmental groups working on water-policy issues, said Rick Parrish, a senior attorney with SELC.
“Communities need to make sure people’s spigots don’t go dry, but we also need to be concerned that the streams don’t go dry,” he said.
“We want adequate water for our health and also our enjoyment. And we want our streams to be protected for other uses, especially aquatic habitat.”
Parrish’s goal is shared by environmental organizations working throughout the state of Alabama, resulting in joint projects such as returning water flows to their original paths. Mobilizing the collective strength of environmental groups has reaped several successes, including partnerships with power companies and the Army Corps of Engineers.
In the case of the Cahaba River, a group of nonprofit and government agencies, including TNC, CRS and the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), succeeded in 2004 in removing a concrete slab that had functioned like a dam, creating physical barriers to fish and wildlife migration for more than 40 years.
Protecting and restoring rivers that flow within the state is the mission of the Alabama Rivers Alliance (ARA), a Mott grantee that has received three general-purpose grants totaling $630,000 since 1999.
“We have so many unique natural areas and species in Alabama,” said Adam Snyder, ARA executive director.
“Maybe people don’t comprehend the full ramifications of tampering with the rivers. It’s not like a box of Kleenex that you pull one out and another will pop up. Once these diverse species are gone, they are gone forever.”
ARA’s members work to improve and protect the health of the state’s 70,000 miles of streams and rivers, and their connected waterways. One such member is LakeWatch of LakeMartin. The all-volunteer group, founded in 1991, has 300 members who are committed to ensuring the well-being of the largest lake in Alabama.
The 40,000-acre lake boasts more than 700 miles of mostly wooded shoreline in the east-central heartland of the state. Its most vocal protector is an unlikely spokesman -- retired Army Colonel Dick Bronson.
“I never envisioned I’d be doing environmental activities. I thought I’d move out here to the lake, put my feet up, and open a book or maybe catch some fish,” said the Michigan native.
“But when you see something that needs fixing -- I saw a pollution source on the lake -- you either decide to do something about it or you do nothing. I decided to do something about it.”
That was more than 14 years ago. Since creating LakeWatch, Bronson has served as its president. He’s testified at state hearings on water pollution and protection matters, spent hours pouring over federal dam policies, helped develop local and state environmental policies, traveled internationally as a member of Global Water Watch, welcomed environmentalists from around the world to his lakefront home, and shared his love of the water with local school and civic groups.
“I’ve learned a lot: how spraying orchard trees affects the lake with pesticide runoff, and how people’s pretty lawns put fertilizer into the water. But it’s tough when you start telling people how they can use their land, especially here in the South.”
Because LakeMartin is fed by the TallapoosaRiver, Bronson’s interest also was piqued by local and statewide river restoration work. So six years after creating LakeWatch, he was a founding member of ARA. Today, LakeWatch and ARA collaborate on matters of mutual interest, including water quality, water diversion and dam relicensing issues.
While ARA focuses on the state of Alabama, it and other environmental groups occasionally link arms with organizations working at the national and international levels. One of the most well-known groups associated with protecting natural environments across the globe is WWF, and it has made the rivers and streams of Alabama a top priority.
Wendy Smith is director of WWF’s Southeast Rivers and Streams Program, the recipient of a three-year, $171,000 Mott grant in 2002 to help fund a program to provide small grants, ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, to environmental groups in Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee for specific projects.
Among other things, these initiatives included developing watershed management plans, monitoring practices that affect water quality, educating the public about local freshwater issues, restoring freshwater habitats, and replenishing rivers with native species that had dwindled in number or were no longer present.
Mott also provided a 2004 grant to WWF for efforts surrounding dam licensing renewal in Alabama’s Mobile Bay Basin.
Smith grew up in Detroit. Like many newcomers to the Southeast, she marveled at the spectacular beauty of the region’s mountains and oceanside beaches.
But as an environmentalist, she knew what many are still discovering: Much of the region’s truly unusual wonder lies below the water’s surface.
“We are blessed with an abundance of freshwater wildlife diversity here, which is something to be cherished and protected,” Smith said.
“The father of modern environmentalism, [Aldo] Leopold, said that when you tinker with something, it’s not good to throw out any parts because you never know when you might need them. We’re finding out that it is expensive to do the wrong thing.”
Environmental groups, she said, are mistakenly viewed as being opposed to all types of development. Rather, such groups are supportive of more sustainable forms of development.
“It is important for communities to work with local and state officials to push toward holistic planning so projects approved are ones that demonstrate best practices in water and land management.”
When it comes to supporting such work, donors should be flocking to Alabama because of its potential to have a huge impact with a small amount of investment, said Snyder of ARA. From his perspective as a former journalist and a current environmental leader, he views Alabama as a key state for many reasons, including its multimillion dollar fishing industry, and its potential as a tourist destination.
“It’s unfortunate that many people have only heard negative things about the state,” Snyder said.
“We have these wonderful natural resources here. My argument is that if rivers can be restored and protected in Alabama, we can succeed anywhere.”
This article first appeared in the August 2005 issue of Mott Mosaic.