It is not an overstatement to say rivers are essential to all life. Healthy rivers help communities face the effects of climate change by dampening floods, recharging groundwater, and providing drinking water to communities. Additionally, two-thirds of our water supply comes from rivers and streams and are of deep cultural significance for many Tribal Nations and communities of color, offering nearby nature for all of us to enjoy.
Unfortunately, communities of color are also experiencing a nature deficit that is acutely connected to a systemic lack of safe access to rivers, riparian protected areas, and river-related decision making. According to The Nature Gap, a report by the Hispanic Access Foundation, the United States has fewer protected areas—including forests, streams, wetlands, and other accessible natural places near Black, Latino, and Asian American communities. Notably, families with children—especially families of color with children—have less access to nearby nature than the rest of the country.
The report also highlights that nature is not an amenity but a necessity for the health and well-being of all people. The Hispanic Access Foundation coined the term “nearby nature” to refer to the need and right of all communities to have access to nature, regardless of their circumstances. Access to nature should enhance quality of life and amplify the values of residents and therefore, communities must be at the forefront of all decision making related to the planning and management of their local green spaces.
The Rivers of Opportunity Initiative
With nearly every person in the United States living within a mile of a river or stream, waterways provide the nearest nature for most people. American Rivers seeks to address the nature gap and historic racial injustices by working to make sure that fewer communities are nature deprived and left out of river-related decisions that impact their lives. Historically, the environmental community, including American Rivers, has often focused on the protection of remote and pristine areas, thereby ignoring developed and urban areas. American Rivers is working to increase protection of and access to free-flowing rivers close to where most people live, with an emphasis on collaborating with and amplifying the leadership of communities of color. Over the next three years, we will establish 10 new collaborations with communities and organizations of color and Tribal Nations to jumpstart equitable river protection, improve access, and advocate for new federal, state, and local funding.
To launch our effort, American Rivers and the National Park Service joined forces to create the Rivers of Opportunity Initiative, which seeks to engage communities of color in more equitable river protection. As a first step, we developed the Rivers of Opportunity Assessment Tool, which mapped the locations of high value rivers and vulnerable communities to assess opportunities for more equitable protections and improved access to rivers for communities facing climate and economic injustices. We condensed this information into an interactive story map that describes the Rivers of Opportunity Assessment in an easy-to-use web tool. This tool can be used to learn about communities facing climate threats near rivers with outstanding values, engage communities in conversations about how protecting their rivers supports their interests, and explore opportunities for collaborative projects that advance equitable river protection.
How You Can Use the Rivers of Opportunity Assessment Tool
The Rivers of Opportunity Assessment Tool can be used in several ways to learn about and engage communities in conversations about river conservation opportunities that address climate, environmental, and social burdens. It highlights river values that can be amplified to bring resources to communities that protect rivers in ways that elevate local values and interests. In this way, river conservation can be a powerful approach for protecting communities from unsustainable development and gentrification, addressing climate hazards such as flooding, providing greenspaces for residents, and boosting local economies. We offer some suggestions below about ways that you can use the Rivers of Opportunity Assessment Tool.
- Learn about a community: The assessment tool can confirm, amplify, and contribute to information already known to community members, help to identify relevant funding opportunities, and justify funding requests. It can also be used to educate conservationists, funders, elected officials, and other interested groups about a community and their river values.
- Start a conversation: The tool displays ecological, cultural, geological, and other river values that can be used to spark conversations that help potential partners visualize how protecting those values can improve quality of life. Developing additional materials that explain relevant funding opportunities that can help communities realize their vision, can offer opportunities to discuss potential partnerships that support community-led projects.
- Explore connections between communities: Connecting communities across landscapes is critical to successful river protection efforts. It allows communities to discover their shared interests and foster a greater movement for change that benefits people and the rivers they depend on. In addition, community-led protection efforts produce the most effective outcomes when they create new protections for rivers that amplify or complement existing protections. Connecting communities through projects that also connect their protected areas, can improve floodwater storage, conserve freshwater supplies in drylands, enhance habitat and migration corridors, preserve additional cultural resources, and offer opportunities to expand greenspaces that provide community benefits- employment and entrepreneurship, gardens, trails, and other recreational and educational amenities. The tool can also be used to discover areas where one or more communities might be facing similar challenges on the same high value river. Connecting those communities could provide greater opportunities and capacities to create and manage large-scale projects that have significant impact.
The Rivers of Opportunity Assessment Tool offers a dynamic and interactive approach to understanding how river protection can support the interests, needs, and values of the most vulnerable communities in our nation. Through its wealth of information and user-friendly interface, the tool can help facilitate conversations, build relationships, plan projects, and develop funding proposals that advance community-led river conservation.
In August 2023, American Rivers and the National Park Service began phase two of the Rivers of Opportunity Initiative which focuses on using the tool to engage organizations led by people of color to develop strategies for collaborating with the communities they serve. We will share the tool to build relationships, facilitate learning, and collectively envision possibilities for partnerships. We will also ask for feedback about the tool to understand its usefulness and how it can be improved. This collaborative work will serve as a model for equitable community engagement and demonstrate how healthy rivers can support healthy communities.
As we work with our partners to build on our work, we encourage you to follow along and see how you can get involved, and continue to help protect our rivers. Check out the Rivers of Opportunity Assessment Tool and stay tuned for future developments.
This blog was co-written by Amy McNamara, Northern Rockies Director, Natural Resources Defense Council, Alicia Marrs, Western Water Director, National Wildlife Federation, and Fay Hartman, Southwest Conservation Director, American Rivers
________________________________
Freshwater ecosystems provide clean drinking water, reduce the impacts of floods and fires, and are essential habitat for fish and wildlife. Despite these benefits, rivers and wetlands are often undervalued and overlooked, and the rapid loss and degradation of freshwater systems is undermining our ability to tackle the climate and biodiversity crises. Some of the most common sense and cost-effective options to address these crises are nature-based solutions.
Nature-based solutions use or mimic natural features or processes to improve biodiversity, strengthen resilience for disaster and hazard-risk management, support climate adaptation, and store carbon to mitigate climate change. For freshwater systems, these strategies include protecting and restoring wetlands to capture and filter water, reconnecting streams and rivers with their floodplains to increase their ability to refill groundwater stores and dampen flooding, and managing for beavers to create, maintain, and expand wetlands. For example, managing for beavers can increase the health of streams and wetlands when established in the right location with minimal human-beaver conflict, making them one of the most cost-effective restoration practices available.
Fortunately, this month, the United States took important steps to stimulate future investment in protecting and restoring these critical freshwater ecosystems. The U.S. Department of Interior, which oversees the Bureau of Land Management, National Park Service, and Bureau of Reclamation, among others, released a new policy designed to prioritize the use of nature-based solutions and a roadmap which will guide investment in our river systems as well as inland and coastal wetlands. The Department also announced a plan to invest $51 million to restore and protect rivers across the country. These actions position the U.S. to accelerate thoughtful and strategic investment in our natural water infrastructure.
Prior to settlement and expansion across North America, healthy rivers and streams were abundant, recharging aquifers, slowing wildfires, and sustaining fish and wildlife. Over time, the stream systems that were once full of water and life have become narrower and straighter and less capable of serving the valuable role as natural sponges and vital habitat. Today, in part due to the absence of beavers on the landscape, most of our freshwater ecosystems are a shell of their former selves, leaving our communities and economies more vulnerable to persistent drought, record rainfalls, and urban flooding. Worse still, one of the nation’s principal tools for protecting and restoring healthy streams and wetlands, the federal Clean Water Act, was dramatically weakened earlier this year by a reckless Supreme Court decision.
The severity of the climate and biodiversity crises requires urgent action backed by national plans and strategies that integrate and accelerate restoration for rivers and wetlands. As the U.S. looks to implement nature-based solutions at scale, here are three areas ripe for investment:
- The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) should launch a Healthy Riverscapes Initiative to prioritize riverscape restoration on BLM managed lands and partner with states, tribes, and local stakeholders to create good paying, private, non-profit, and public sector restoration jobs in rural and tribal communities. The Bureau should invest where: (a) conditions are right for low-tech, process-based restoration, (b) ecological and hydrological benefits are high, and (c) partner interest and stakeholder engagement is high. Finally, to support such an effort, the BLM should finalize its Public Lands Rule with strong provisions for both conserving and restoring priority lands and waterways.
- The Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies should invest in and partner with tribal wildlife management programs that are leading the way in restoring beavers on their ancestral lands. Tribal communities have long recognized the value of maintaining beavers on their landscapes and are demonstrating what is possible when beavers are returned to these ecosystems. In addition to making deep and sustained investments to increase the capacity of tribally led fish and wildlife programs and agencies, we all have the responsibility to acknowledge and learn from our tribal and Indigenous colleagues as we seek to employ resilient and time-tested approaches to protect and restore our shared natural resources.
- Congress should pass the bi-partisan Recovering America’s Wildlife Act (RAWA) to make a generational investment in state, tribal, and territorially led wildlife conservation programs which include habitat restoration. States like California, Oregon, and Utah have already begun incorporating beavers, and the habitat they create for other fish and wildlife, into their State Wildlife Action Plans—sustained and increased funding from RAWA could empower other states to follow their example.
As the impacts from climate change march forward, our freshwater ecosystems will only increase in importance and value. It’s essential we use every tool in the toolbox, including nature-based solutions, to protect and restore our rivers, watersheds, and the benefits they provide.
If you’re reading this and are a Willow Flycatcher, beaver, or other adorable fauna of the Sierra Nevada, stop now. You already know how important mountain meadows are to river health and why we need to keep them healthy and functional. But if you’re a human who enjoys clean, abundant drinking water and breathtaking natural space, this is the blog post for you. This summer and fall American Rivers worked tirelessly alongside our project partners to restore 415 acres of mountain meadow in the Sierra Nevada mountain range that defines California’s skyline.
One of the most significant roles mountain meadows play involves water storage, a burning topic for Californians in the face of drought and climate change. Meadows are like green glaciers in how they hold groundwater and release it slowly, allowing our rivers to stay hydrated during periods of drought. In a similar vein, meadows are the first floodplains our rivers encounter as they tumble down steep granite slopes into the Central Valley (where American Rivers also does a lot of work on floodplain restoration). A healthy meadow is connected to its stream channel, allowing high stream flows (like historic last winter’s spring runoff) to flood out onto its broad, flat surface, where that abundant water slows down and percolates into the shallow groundwater just beneath the surface. That shallow groundwater, in turn, supports lush plant communities and willow thickets, the habitat of choice for countless wildlife and plant species in the Sierra Nevada, a global biodiversity hotspot. The shallow groundwater is held into the summer season, when the meadows begin to draw down, contributing that stored groundwater to streams headed to California’s downstream habitats and communities. Beyond water storage, healthy meadows also sequester (absorb) carbon, which directly counteracts the impacts of climate change, and meadows provide key habitat and fuel breaks that mitigate the impacts of high-intensity wildfires.
Our meadow restoration projects require a level of adaptability and creativity as we work to balance our attempts to restore natural functions and processes with the needs of special-status species, recreation, land management, and other interests. At Faith Valley in the West Fork Carson River watershed, we are raising the water table of the meadow through the construction of beaver dam analogs (BDAs), which mimic the positive impacts of natural beaver dams. This summer and fall completed the second phase of restoration, installing 25 BDAs, which over time will allow sediment to accumulate and flows to spread, raising the water table and restoring natural flow patterns to the benefit of recreational enthusiasts and native fish and wildlife. The project aims to help the resident beaver population restore and maintain the meadow over the longer term, and in exciting news, beavers adopted one of the project structures and started making it their own. This season, the project also repaired the off-highway vehicle road alongside the meadow to protect the meadow and enhance recreational opportunities.
Restoration at Ackerson Meadow, located in the Tuolumne watershed along the western edge of Yosemite National Park, marks a significant milestone in our efforts to scale meadow restoration across the Sierra Nevada. The Ackerson Meadow Restoration Project is the largest full-fill meadow restoration attempted in the Sierra Nevada to date (in this particular ‘full-fill’ restoration, we used 150,000 cubic yards of soil, or 15,000 dump truck loads, to fill in the incised streambed that reached as deep as 15 feet). A robust coalition that includes Stanislaus National Forest (SNF), Yosemite National Park (YNP), and the Yosemite Conservancy is working to revitalize Ackerson and we look towards the next phase of implementation, set to begin in early 2024.
In designated Wilderness, you can’t move a thousand dump trucks worth of dirt because motorized vehicles and machinery are not permitted, so we needed to start thinking outside the box and looking at alternatives. Log Meadow (18 acres), located in Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks in the Middle Fork Kaweah watershed, presented a unique opportunity for restoration in a world-famous natural space. The meadow is in Sequoia National Park’s Giant Forest, one of the most important sequoia groves based on land area, the size of sequoias within the grove, and current conditions. The meadow had a large gully which was filled with onsite grasses and soils so flows could spread across the floodplain surface. The larger goal of this project was to use low impact hand-labor techniques to conduct full-fill meadow restoration to inform potential future work in designated Wilderness. Log Meadow Restoration was a collaborative effort undertaken alongside Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks, hand crews (the California Conservation Corps, American Conservation Experience, and Walker Basin Conservancy), and funded by the CA Department of Fish and Wildlife and the CA Wildlife Conservation Board.
We also finished implementation at Wilson Ranch Meadow (60 acres) in October! Wilson Ranch Meadow is in the South Fork American River watershed in Eldorado National Forest (ENF). The meadow was selected as a priority site for restoration during our 2017 assessment of meadows in the American River watershed. The fundamental issue at Wilson Ranch was a road crossing at the top of the meadow. This crossing created a pinch point and channelized flows entering the meadow, which resulted in a large gully through the entire meadow. We replaced the crossing with a series of 8 culverts and fully filled the gully with onsite soils to spread flows and improve groundwater storage. Another important aspect of this Project was building the U.S. Forest Service’s (USFS) capacity to conduct meadow restoration work. We did this by engaging employees to follow the lifecycle of a project, as well as providing guidance and mentorship at each stage. We worked with USFS employees to identify this project, complete planning, and implement the project. This model led to broad-based support and enthusiasm for meadow restoration within ENF and directly to additional meadow restoration efforts in the footprint of the 2021 Caldor Fire.
It’s been an exciting and expansive year for meadow restoration in California’s headwaters. And we need meadows as much as rivers do, whether for their practical functions like clean drinking water, or that sense of peace that arrives when one steps into one of these unique biomes. Mountain meadows in the Sierra Nevada have held cultural significance for thousands of years and continue to inspire generations of residents and recreators. American Rivers is working alongside our partners within the Sierra Meadows Partnership (SMP) to restore 30,000 acres by 2030 and ready the headwaters of the Sierra Nevada to face the changing climate. By leveraging private philanthropy and public funding, we are creating comprehensive impacts on California’s rivers. Get involved! Join us on-site at one of our volunteer events and get some dirt under your fingernails or reach out to pcallahan@americanrivers.org to see how you can support our work in the Sierra Nevada.
The Middle Fork Nooksack River flows from the glaciers of Mount Baker, with only one dam interrupting its free-flowing course for nearly 60 years. In 2020, the process began to remove the Middle Fork Nooksack Diversion Dam, located near Deming, Washington, and was part of the original supplemental water supply diversion facility for the City of Bellingham. Three years after the dam was removed, we returned and marveled at the resiliency of nature – the riparian vegetation starting to grow back, the free-flowing natural river coursing through the previous dam site – and how creating sustainable infrastructure improvements support restoration of this important cultural resource.
The old water supply diversion infrastructure was replaced with a modern water supply diversion that did not require a dam to operate. This enabled removing the dam, opening 16 miles of cold, pristine habitat, and gave the river an opportunity to adjust back to a more natural state. The project has become a real example of how giving back control to nature, gives benefit to the environment and people.
Additionally, this project helped restore culturally significant resources for the Nooksack Indian Tribe and Lummi Nation, increased resiliency and reliability of Bellingham’s municipal water supply, and removed a safety hazard for whitewater kayakers.
These types of multi-benefit projects are critical, and while complex to plan and implement, can be efficiently achieved through partnerships and use of best project planning, restoration, and management practices to accomplish the end goal. As a result, the project achieves more than one desired goal. For example, fish passage to critical habitat for ESA listed species produces broader social, economic, and ecological benefits.
By removing vulnerable infrastructure from the ever-evolving dynamic riverbed and maintaining the functional purpose of the dam with smarter off-channel infrastructure; liability associated with take of endangered species and costs associated with maintaining the old dam, disappear. As such, the City’s water supply reliability increases, as does species resiliency as volitional access to critical habitat and natural ecological processes, like habitat-forming sediment transport, are restored.
We can continue to grow natural resiliency and buffer the quality of life and economic impacts of extreme events on communities if we just give nature a chance. By applying what we have learned from the past century of costly landscape transformation, and the last several decades of dam removal and water resource infrastructure modernization, we can support an environment that will in turn sustain us all.
The Middle Fork Nooksack River Fish Passage Project was re-initiated in 2017 when American Rivers became a formal partner, with funding provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation for project management and coordination, as well as planning and construction. The private foundation funding was critical to reinitiating the project with key partners, streamlining technical design development and permitting, and in leveraging over $20 million of public funding for project completion.
The project was a collaborative effort between American Rivers, the City of Bellingham, Nooksack Indian Tribe, Lummi Nation, and Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, with funding and collaboration from the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation, the City of Bellingham, Resources Legacy Fund, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, and the Puget Sound Partnership. Additional key project partners include Long Live the Kings and American Whitewater.
The dam is gone. Now what?
There are many aspects to managing dam removal projects. I seek out good projects. Fundraise for them. Gather partners and stakeholders. Try to lay out the full scope of the project puzzle. Hire and manage contractors. Solve problems. Review designs and work on permits. Keep the project train on the tracks. Chug. Chuuuug… Chug? Chug!
Once we’ve completed a project, perhaps many years down the road, we want to share it with others! Sharing our example projects can raise awareness of why we remove dams and how our work can help both rivers and local communities thrive.
About a year ago, I shared a sneak peek behind the scenes of the Paper Mill Dam removal project in Reading, PA. This summer, we completed additional site restoration work at the site and completed the project! It looks great!
We’ve also been busy sharing the lessons learned from this project and exploring other avenues to connect with different people about the importance of dam removal. Here are some of those examples:
Good Medicine Event
On June 3, 2023, American Rivers partnered with the Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge, Barrio Alegria, Berks Nature, and the City of Reading to host an Indigenous Wellness Celebration for the local community called Good Medicine. We kicked off the event with a Rally for the River, where the public paraded around with giant fish puppets and listened to speakers talk about the importance of protecting our rivers and streams in support of their own health and wellness. The puppets were made by Albright College’s Artist in Residence, Michael Miller, and kids from the local community.
After we were all inspired at the rally, American Rivers hosted a fun Dam Bustin’ Photo Booth at our information table. We talked with many people about why we remove dams and how they can get involved in their community. The adults and kids alike had a great time bustin’ a dam on the Klamath River.
Meanwhile, Michael Miller worked with other community members to refresh a mural along the river.
Later in the day, we had a wonderful dance performance from Barrio Alegria’s Grupo Uarhani. This group is comprised of local students who are inspired to share traditional Mexican folkloric dance with the public. They really did a lovely job sharing this form of dance that many people had never experienced before. Prior to the performance, American Rivers supported Barrio’s efforts to get Grupo access to the park for rehearsals. Barrio Alegria wants to frame the use of public spaces, “as an example of how this natural attraction in our city can be used to amplify beauty, light, elegance, and excellence.” We just love that!
In case you are wondering, people indeed were out on the river splashing around and having a great time.
The merging of art, Indigenous knowledge, and connection to the river at this event was inspiring!
Nahi Downstream Brochure
One of the outreach items that we were required to do through permitting was to create an interpretive sign about the Paper Mill Dam removal. Our partners at Berks Nature took the lead on developing that sign and have since installed it along a nearby public path.
Over the course of conversations about the sign, we realized that we did not have enough space to convey all of the information that our Indigenous partners were interested in sharing. We began to think about other ways to get that information out to the public and decided to collaborate with the Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge on a brochure called, Nahi Downstream: An Indigenous Perspective on the Future of Southeastern Pennsylvania’s Watersheds. The brochure was written by an Indigenous writer, Paige Willett (Potawatomi Nation), designed by an Indigenous graphic designer, Shana Mofarrah, and printed by Tribal Print Source, a tribally-owned non-profit print and training facility. We are so pleased with how the brochure turned out and hope it inspires those who read it to steward their natural resources, gain an understanding of Indigenous ways of thinking, and reconnect with rivers.
Youth Fishing
In April 2023, we partnered with Berks Nature on a fun youth fishing event in Reading with the local Boys and Girls Club, Barrio Alegria, and others. We had about 60 kids out there learning how to fish, plus at least six adult volunteers, not counting staff. We were able to provide fishing kits, bait, water shoes, and a pizza lunch for all of the participants. The kids received instruction on how to put their equipment together, bait their hooks, be safely aware of others while fishing, and learn about why it is important to have clean water and healthy rivers. The kids really jumped right in, and stuck with it pretty well, considering the fish were not really biting. Still, we had a great time learning about fishing!
Tree Planting
On a very wet day back in April, Berks Nature took community volunteers out to the Paper Mill Dam site to plant trees. They planted 164 riparian species, including red maple, black willow, redbud, sycamore, river birch, and others. Then, in the fall, they planted another 209 trees, including many grey and silky dogwoods. Soon, the site will have a nice riparian buffer established to help protect the river from runoff from the roads.
Project Presentations
Lastly, we have been sharing the results of this project with other practitioners as a case study. We feel that it is important to share both the ups and downs of our projects with others so that we can all learn from what works and what does not on projects. No project is perfect. There are always nuggets that we can take away for future reference. We shared presentations on this project at the National Stream Restoration Conference, PA Organization for Watersheds and Rivers Conference, and at a project manager training event in New Jersey.
We are so grateful for our partners at Berks Nature, Widoktadwen Center for Native Knowledge, Barrio Alegria, and the City of Reading for helping us reach the local community to talk about the importance of river restoration.
If you are interested in learning how to manage dam removal projects and are located near the Delaware River Basin, we will be having a dam removal project manager training event March 26-27 at the Jacobsburg Environmental Education Center in PA. Let us know if you are interested in attending!
We all make a mess sometimes. Maybe it’s filling up the sink with dishes and leaving cups and glasses scattered around the apartment after that party. Or the school project where your kid scrambled to make that baking soda and vinegar volcano for a science class the morning it was due.
Or left a deadbeat dam sitting in a river after say 100 years of generating electricity?
I’m sure you remember being told by an adult that you made that mess, so you get to clean it up, right? Or maybe you had that roommate who never did the dishes or left their dirty clothes in a pile?
Being a good roommate or a responsible member of a family means that cleaning up isn’t optional and that in order for everyone to enjoy the place that we live or work there are basic responsibilities. These good habits and responsibilities should apply to everyone.
Well, not so much.
Unfortunately, some hydropower dam owners are kinda like that roommate who just never seems to do the dishes, no matter how high the pile of greasy, caked-on plates and pans are staring them in the face.
Most hydropower dams in the United States are regulated by the federal government (the responsible agency is the Federal Energy Regulatory Agency, FERC). In exchange for this federal license to generate electricity and make money, the dam owners are allowed to use the public’s water. Part of the deal is that dam owners have to provide benefits to the public and minimize the harm to rivers by how they operate the dam (more on that in another post).
When hydroelectric dams (usually the older and smaller ones that are in rivers all over the country, including many in the northeast) are no longer profitable the owner can request to surrender their federal license and get out of the bargain they set with the public.
Maybe you are already ahead of me here, and are thinking, “Yes! This is where they are told to clean up their mess and take down the dam!”
Well, not so much.
Federal license surrender only requires that the dam owner decommission the facility. That means that they need to unplug from the power grid, remove or disable the generating equipment and allow the river to freely pass through the structure. The federal government will not require removal of the entire dam. If a dam owner volunteers to take down the dam, that’s good enough by the federal government.
So it’s kinda like they only have to do some of those dirty dishes in the sink and leave the rest if they feel like it. And if the rest of those proverbial dishes are going to get cleaned or that dam actually taken down, it’s up to the proverbial roommate. That’s us, the general public.
I don’t know about you but to me, that’s unfair and really frustrating. At American Rivers, our goal is to work together across the country to remove 30,000 dams by 2050. That’s a big pile of dirty dishes! To meet this goal we need everyone to do their part.
A great example of how dam owners are being let off the hook (among the many unfortunately) is playing out on the Salmon Falls River, which runs along the border of Maine and New Hampshire. The owner of the Somersworth Hydropower Project (FERC license P-3820) Aclara Meters, LLC has asked to surrender their license for this small (2.1 megawatt, which is a very small facility) generating facility. FERC has agreed to the surrender but has denied requests by the states of Maine and New Hampshire as well as river advocates to require not just the decommissioning but the complete removal of the two structures that comprise this facility.
FERC argues that removal is entirely voluntary and that they only have the authority to decommission provided that the remaining structure meets dam safety requirements, their understanding of environmental considerations, and the public interest is met by leaving the dam in place.
In case after case the federal government has ruled that leaving an unplugged dam in place meets those criteria. We and many others disagree. Leaving a dam in the river creates unsafe conditions for recreation, prevents safe, timely, and effective fish passage, and often leaves an eyesore and maintenance challenge for future generations.
Big shout out to one of our partners, American Whitewater for continuing to fight these shortsighted rulings.
Want to read more about American Whitewater’s case arguing for removal? Here’s their brief.
Want to see what Aclara’s parent company says about their environmental stewardship and social responsibility?
For our 50th anniversary, American Rivers collaborated with five artists around the country on original works that explore how important healthy rivers are to the future of humanity and nature. Get apparel featuring all the collabs at AmericanRivers.org/wearrivers.
It was Memorial Day weekend, 2019. It was about a hundred degrees out, and it looked like just about everybody in a four-county area was at Sprewell Bluff Park. Huge family picnic set-ups lined the riverbank. Kids of all ages were playing, splashing, and swimming in the water. Little ones were in the gravelly shallows while their bigger siblings explored deeper holes, happy parents looking on. On the big jumping-rock in the middle of everything, a crew of young boys with one teenage ringleader made the leap, one at a time, plunging into the water.
Me? I was in the stern of a fully loaded canoe, my friend of 20 years in the bow, paddling nonstop and trying to make some more miles down the river in the daylight. It was Day Three of a two-week trip—four of us in two canoes—running what we could manage of the full length of the Flint River as it makes its way southward through Georgia. I had never seen so many people at Sprewell Bluff Park in my life.
And the scene that day would have been impossible if history had turned out differently on the Flint. Like so many other rivers throughout the South and the nation, the Flint’s future for a time was written in the proposals for large dams that would have blocked the river at Sprewell Bluff and two other locations, flooding the surrounding land, and destroying the river as it’s been for eons and as we know it today.
But 50 years ago, in 1973, then-Governor Jimmy Carter saw the deep flaws in those dam proposals. He studied the plans himself, and he listened to both sides of the debate over them: the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers on one side, and on the other a dedicated crew of Georgia conservationists which included among them the late Claude Terry. (Terry was also among the group that founded American Rivers the same year.) After paddling the Sprewell Bluff section of the river himself in a canoe, the Governor began to look more closely. In October of 1973, Carter sent the Corps of Engineers a letter that vetoed the plan for the Sprewell Bluff dam.
Today, the Flint River is free-flowing from its source on the south side of Atlanta well into the farm country of southwest Georgia. It faces a complex array of 21st-century challenges: runoff from its headwaters in Atlanta, the world’s busiest airport sitting on top of those headwaters, and repeated and unprecedented drought conditions—all occurring while southside Metro Atlanta communities rely on the river system for public water supply. Drought conditions in 2008 led some political leaders, including a congressman who would later become governor, Nathan Deal, to revive talk of damming the Flint at Sprewell Bluff. This talk brought the river onto the list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers® in 2009 and helped catalyze the formation of the Flint Riverkeeper organization.
Yet the river, like any river, is resilient. If it were no longer a river, but just another reservoir, we wouldn’t get to see the grace with which the Flint takes today’s challenges in stride. And if it weren’t for President Carter and an earlier generation of Georgia advocates, the reach of the river above Sprewell Bluff wouldn’t be a river at all.
Postscript
Through President Carter’s work, the Flint River’s story has informed the rest of the story for rivers all across the country. In Washington and as President, just a few years after vetoing the Sprewell Bluff dam as governor, Carter took a hard look at 18 more Corps of Engineers water projects across the country and canceled them. The era of big-dam building was coming to its end, with the President’s help. And although the Flint did its part to help, too, it still needs our help today.
There are many paths one can take to wildlife conservation. I grew up hunting whitetail deer on my great-grandfather’s land in the headwaters of the Wild and Scenic Au Sable River in northern Michigan. For my family, this was a way to fill our freezer with healthy venison, deepen bonds with family and friends, and welcome in late Fall and early Winter. Hunting requires deep observation and intention, quietly observing one’s surroundings while using all of one’s senses for hours at a time, days on end. Hunters, bird watchers, anglers, foragers, wildlife photographers, and solo wilderness travelers observe details of the natural world in ways that most humans no longer do.
I have been lucky enough to experience coyotes yipping at each other playfully, foxes hunting for voles in deep snow, otters fishing with their pups, chickadees eating pine nuts while calling cheerfully, a bobcat chirping loudly, and wild turkeys grooming themselves 50 feet up in a stand of white pines (yes, they fly!). As a teenage hunter, I was entranced by black bear tracks and comforted by the hoots of great horned owls in the moonless darkness while I sat quietly against an eastern red cedar waiting for dawn.
I don’t really hunt any longer, but I still treasure the chance to observe wildlife going about their daily lives – playing, napping, eating, drinking, hunting, scratching their backs, scolding their young – as I travel through their homelands. This is especially true in river corridors. Protecting wildlife is largely the work of protecting important habitat and connectivity corridors, and by far the most important places that we can protect and restore are our rivers and riverside lands.
Riparian areas comprise a relatively small percentage of the land area in the U.S., but they are among the most productive and valuable of habitats. 80 percent of all species including migratory birds rely on riverside lands at some stage in their lives, according to the Natural Resources Conservation Service. And in the arid West where I live, intact rivers, wetlands, and the clean water flowing through them are literally ribbons of life.
At the same time, freshwater mammal, bird, fish, reptile and amphibian populations declined 83% between 1970 and 2014. Migratory freshwater fish have declined 76% during that same period. In fact, nearly 40% of all species may face extinction by the end of the century (Isbell et al.). Anthropogenic climate change is exacerbating this trend, increasing droughts, floods, wildfires, and other habitat changes as our world warms. Now, more than ever, wild(life) needs rivers to adapt and survive.
There is a global movement to halt this collapse by protecting half of the Earth by 2050. AR has committed to doing our part by helping to protect 30% of all rivers by 2030 – 1 million miles of rivers – and 50% by 2050. We can do this for the creatures we share this amazing planet with, and by doing so we also do this for ourselves.
We invite you to read through our new interactive Wild(life) Depends On Rivers page, including a concept paper that explores this concept in the Southwest. Be sure to visit our bibliography page and share what you learn with friends and colleagues. It used to be common to think of river conservation as only important for “river dependent” species. We know now that all species are river dependent species.
I left my house early this morning to make the trek north to Vernal, Utah, where the rest of our crew was set to meet. It’s a Friday in early September, which normally would mean I’d be finishing up any last-minute vegetable harvesting and packing, and then heading out for deliveries. This has been my routine for the last five months, as I run a vegetable farm with my partner in Southwest Colorado, fed and irrigated by the Mancos River.
For years now, I’ve settled into a rhythm each season that becomes the foundation for my daily and weekly activities – the main components consisting of planting, weeding, harvesting, washing, and delivering. Sometimes it’s planting seeds into flats of trays – 72 cells, 98 cells, 128 cells, and sometimes it’s transplanting hundreds of baby lettuce heads into the field beds, on their way to eventually becoming our salad mix, of which we sell hundreds of pounds each week. Sometimes it’s digging carrots out of our heavy clay soil (a job that has broken many digging forks), and sometimes it’s picking cherry, heirloom, and “slicer” tomatoes (a job that needs to be done every other day because of how fast the fruit ripens in the peak of the season).
But I’m not on the farm today. Instead, I’m cruising along in my Subaru, comfortably enjoying the air conditioning and a cold brew coffee I picked up in Moab. I’ve just turned onto I-70, heading east after passing through Moab and Arches National Park. There’s an episode of “You’re Wrong About” playing on my car’s stereo, but all I can hear are my thoughts, relentlessly asking over and over, “What are you doing?”
I’m certainly feeling some guilt for abandoning my station at the farm. I’m also mildly ecstatic to be off the farm and headed to a river. I’m anxious about meeting the group in person, wary of the impact negative group dynamics can have, and self-conscious about my own personality traits that can come off cold or sarcastic.
We briefly met on Zoom twice before this trip, but those calls flew by with talk of logistics and what to expect on the river. From what I can tell I’m the only person of color in the group, and instinctively my guard goes up, influenced by one too many past experiences of off-handed comments or feelings of being “othered” by my ethnic ambiguity. I’m not a writer (or would never outwardly call myself one), and this trip is a writing workshop. Yes, I try to reassure myself, I received a scholarship that allowed me access to this trip, but will I be able to hold the charade for five days with the rest of the crew?
These thoughts all swirl in my head, but I try to keep them at bay by remembering the powerful presence of the river. It’s been a few years since I’ve had the privilege of a river trip. Still, those memories are there: camping along the Upper Klamath and floating the Rogue in Southern Oregon, the steep canyon walls and Amtrak train passage through Ruby Horsethief Canyon. It’s a feeling of home.
Much more than one physical place, I’ve found, and continue to find, this feeling of home in a variety of ecosystems – forested rivers on the Cascade-Siskiyous, sandstone deserts of Southeast Utah, alpine ecosystems of the San Juan Mountains. These places provide a respite for my overactive mind and a grounding when I feel untethered. It’s a feeling of letting the walls down, knowing these landscapes can hold me as I am, no preconceived notions.
A CONFLUENCE OF PRIORITIES
We’ve wrapped up our evening orientation the night before launching into the Gates of Lodore. I’ve just pulled up to my home for the night, a welcoming pull-out off of a dirt road on a BLM parcel just east of Vernal. My car is just big enough for me to sleep in, my own casita for the night. There’s one other vehicle camping out here, but my solitude is protected by a half mile or so. But sleep is slow to come tonight, so I gaze up at the stars out the side window. The pitter-patter of little desert mice scurrying beneath my car pulls me back from the brink of sleep. My thoughts are taken back to Mancos, and the mice that also make their homes in the walls of our house. As I finally drift towards slumber, I wonder how different this river experience will be, compared to my home Mancos River.
Forming in the peaks of the western La Plata Mountains at around 13,000 feet in elevation, the Mancos River is small but mighty. Often overlooked in comparison with the neighboring river networks of the Animas, Dolores, and San Juan, the Mancos River feeds the agricultural communities of Mancos, Mesa Verde National Park, and the Ute Mountain Ute Reservation – including us, Outlier Farm. It continues flowing onto the Navajo Nation before meeting with the San Juan River in Northwest New Mexico. Aside from the occasional impromptu river crossing or searching for rapids created by runoff flows, there is little recreational use of this river. Instead, its primary purpose is agricultural, and it is not uncommon for the river to diminish to a trickle in the late summer months.
When I began farming in the Mancos Valley in the Spring of 2019, I also began learning about the way water is administered in Colorado. As with many states in the Western U.S., water in Colorado is determined by the doctrine of Prior Appropriation. Essentially, those who used water for a “beneficial use” first, have a senior position, or a higher “priority”, in years when there is not enough water to go around. But what did that mean for the water that flowed by our farm in our irrigation ditch? How did that relate to legal terms like “prior appropriation” or “beneficial use?” What about communities like the Southern Ute Indian Tribe or the Ute Mountain Ute Tribe, who have been in these places for millenia – why did they seemingly have “junior” rights?
As I became more and more obsessed with these questions, my pursuit of answers led me to a cohort-style educational program for farmers and ranchers I found online. This was a can of worms I’m still in today – I now run that same program I was a participant in, through the National Young Farmers Coalition. We provide education and resources not just on water administration and water laws, but supplement that with education on advocacy and the importance of being involved in the protection of water in the West.
The main principle that drew me to Freeflow Institute and the Gates of Lodore was the intersection of creativity and art, with the need for advocacy and protecting these wild places. Perhaps because I had not nurtured creative pursuits in a while, but these concepts all appeared separate to me. Instead, that was the foundation of this trip. And I was yearning for it. As we floated and hiked over the next five days, shared conversations and stories, and got to know each other’s personalities and passions, deep connections were formed. I was seen by this inspiring group of women. I could crack my snarky jokes with Mack, and I could feel my big feelings with Molly, not afraid of letting my tears flow when they needed to. They could see me, but I could also see myself in them. As our time on the river dwindled and our connections forged, I could begin to picture a life with intentional creativity for myself.
EMBODYING ADVOCACY
It’s now the following January, and I’m in a new place. Years of physical and mental burnout, exacerbated by drought and other climate impacts, has taken its toll on my partner and me, and we need a season of rest to reset before exploring the future and what may be next. Our current home is in the headwaters of the Animas River, high up in the San Juan Mountains. The snow has a satisfying crunch under my feet as I run up a snow-packed road. It’s been a bountiful start to the winter, and I’m hoping the frequent storms continue, replenishing the snowpack and calming my anxieties about the future to come (for now, anyways).
As I plod along on my feet, I’m planning in my head. I am currently working with a cohort of ten farmers and ranchers in Colorado, and I’m putting together an agenda for an upcoming workshop, preparing for a massive day of advocacy in Washington D.C. with other farmers from across the country. The Green River and my time in the Gates of Lodore is a constant presence as I carry out this program, inspiring me to think creatively about how I structure our fellowship, and how I can support this cohort.
There are very real and tangible outcomes from my work that I am proud of, such as providing opportunities for farmers to meet with their legislators, or supporting these farmers as they work on individual community projects and look for positions on decision-making groups. The lack of representation for young farmers of color and women/nonbinary farmers is stark, so it is absolutely fulfilling to watch these farmers step into these spaces. I aid in the facilitation of this path, just as was done for me, but the most important point I emphasize to my cohort is that they already have the skills they need – their stories and their voices.
This is a Farm Bill year, happening every five(ish) years, and it presents a huge opportunity for us to share our intersectional stories of land, water, and climate issues: the challenges we face and ideas for solutions to make the future seem a little more attainable. I often need to remind myself that just as impacts to the headwaters of a river are felt downstream, this federal advocacy is also felt on the ground at the farms of our network members.
But perhaps most important are the relationships that form amongst the cohort, and the embodiment of being an advocate for water, land, community, and the places that make us whole. This embodiment, something I continue to strive for, offers an ethos, a foundation upon which more holistic decisions can be made long into the future.
Each year American Rivers’ Southwest River Protection Program partners with the Freeflow Institute to provide 1-2 scholarships to support regional writers and artists interested in river conservation in attending on-river workshops hosted by established writers. Megan Davey received the 2022 Southwest Emerging Artist Scholarship from American Rivers to participate in a FreeFlow Institute writing workshop with Heather Hansman on the Green River, which led to this essay.
The Grand Canyon is magical in any season, but fall may take the cake for the perfect boating season on that stretch of the Colorado River. Cool mornings, warm days that are still long enough to dry out your gear after a day of getting hammered by huge waves, and starry nights that appear after the sun has dipped below the ramparts of rock in the distance. This year, canyon explorers are lucky to experience the additional gift of abundant sand from the High Flow Experiment(HFE) that was conducted in April, 2023.
I was on the river a couple of weeks ago, conducting survey activities alongside scientists from the United States Geological Survey’s (USGS) Grand Canyon Monitoring and Research Center (GCMRC). This is part of a long-running program to quantify impacts to various resources throughout the canyon from the construction of Glen Canyon dam in the early 1960s. Since the early 1990’s, scientists from GCMRC and Northern Arizona University have been using geodetic survey techniques to measure sand volume, in three dimensions, to a select group of around 40 beaches and sandbars from Lee’s Ferry to Diamond Creek. The changes are compared year over year and show trends of how these beaches shrink or grow based on Colorado River flow conditions over the year. These measurements are coupled with photographic evidence from cameras also placed throughout the canyon to observe these changes across an entire year or multiple years.
My observation? There is a lot of sand down there, with huge beaches the likes of which I have not seen in many years. The last time an HFE was conducted in the canyon was 2018, and the last time a spring high-flow was conducted was in 2008. Without these HFEs, the sediment-reduced water coming out of Glen Canyon dam actually erode beaches and sandbars, deteriorating conditions over time that impact not only beaches for recreation but allow greater encroachment of vegetation as well as the gradual uncovering of cultural resources near the river throughout the 277-mile corridor. Nearly every beach that was either surveyed, seen from a distance, or camped on was larger – much larger – than what I have seen before. And many of the beaches actually had two stages of sandbars; a lower, very large bench of flat sand, and a higher, more piled berm of sand behind it which formed a tall dune crest or back-bench of soft sand. The volumes we witnessed in places were surprising to say the least.
This configuration of sand was created by the flow regime that was the HFE itself as well as the summer flows that followed. When the HFE was conducted in mid-April, about 42,000 cubic feet per second of water (a very high flow!) was released continuously for 72 hours before the flows were brought back down to normal (~10,000cfs). That mobilized more than 1.5 million tons of sand that had been deposited by the Paria River (roughly 15 miles downstream) over the past couple of years – this is the sand that rebuilt the beaches and sandbars I saw on my trip. After the HFE, though, Bureau of Reclamation moved nearly 10 million acre-feet of water from Lake Powell to Lake Mead, creating unusually high flows (topping out at about 19,000 cfs) each day all summer long. These higher daily flows actually stripped some of that new sand at the lower elevations of the channel, shooting it downstream. In September, Reclamation pulled the flows back a bit more, revealing those lower, expansive benches of sand.
Where is all this leading? Well, in early October Reclamation issued a Notice of Intent for scoping some supplemental rules related to the Long-Term Experimental Management Plan, or LTEMP. While much of what is being considered is related to a situation where invasive small mouth bass have come into the canyon from Lake Powell, threatening the humpback chub population in the canyon, it also is proposing to amend the guidelines for how HFEs are conducted. The new rules would make it so the period of time that sand is accounted for in the canyon would be longer (on an annual basis rather than two, shorter timeframes) as well as lengthening the one of the periods that HFEs could be conducted (importantly making it so HFEs could be triggered in May and June, which they cannot be under the current rules.)
Importantly, you can comment on these new rules. You can read more at the Notice of Intent link above and send your comments by email to LTEMPSEIS@usbr.gov. But you only have until November 3 to make your voice heard.
Seeing these beaches and sandbars firsthand is an extraordinary experience, but being able to speak up for the canyon and all that depend upon it is both a privilege and responsibility. I know that I for one am proud to be able to put my energy into making my voice heard for such a special place. And for even more Grand Canyon exploration, check out our award-winning storymap, Caught in the Middle, which we published last spring.
2023 marks 50 years of American Rivers! To celebrate, we are sharing 50 things we are grateful for because the only way an organization can survive this long and achieve the level of impact American Rivers has enjoyed is with consistent support from dedicated people who believe in its mission.
Thank you for standing by our mission to protect wild rivers, restore damaged rivers, and conserve clean water for people and nature.