Alabama Rivers Alliance Names River Hero of the Year

John Wathen Video

MONTGOMERY, Ala. – Nelson Brooke, the staff Riverkeeper at Black Warrior Riverkeeper, received the 2010 River Hero Award Monday night at the Alabama Rivers Alliance’s Watershed Leadership Conference in the state capitol.

Glynn Wilson

Nelson Brooke

Brooke patrols and photographs the river and its tributaries, looks for pollution problems, responds to citizen complaints, researches and analyzes polluters’ permits, collects pollution samples for laboratory analysis when necessary, educates the public about the beauty of the river and threats to it, advocates compliance with environmental laws, and is a spokesman for the Black Warrior River watershed.

In the past year, Brooke and his group have seen a lawsuit settled against the Birmingham airport for erosion and sediment controls, advocated for conservation restrictions on land along the Locust Fork, the final step in a two-decade long fight to stop the Birmingham Water Works from damming this one wild and free-flowing river.

Black Warrior Riverkeeper is part of a coalition of Alabama environmental organizations petitioning the EPA to take over Alabama’s water pollution permitting program.

The group is also challenging two coal mine permits on the Black Warrior River’s Mulberry and Locust Forks.

Read the rest of this entry »

Mark Martin

The Tennessee River at Decatur, Alabama in the snow, 2010…

The Tennessee Riverkeeper, a new environmental watchdog non-profit group, is hosting its first concert fundraiser Friday, Feb. 19, in Decatur, Alabama at “The Brick Tavern and Deli.”

A $5 suggested donation can be made at the door, with 100 percent of the proceeds going to Tennessee Riverkeeper’s efforts to protect the river. The event, organized by David Whiteside, who founded Tennessee Riverkeeper in 2009 and Black Warrior Riverkeeper in 2001, kicks off at 8 p.m.

Whiteside is the godson of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. who is the President and a Founder of Waterkeeper Alliance. David Whiteside’s great-uncle, Judge Frank M. Johnson Jr. made a number of landmark civil rights rulings that helped end segregation in the South.

In the words of journalist and historian Bill Moyers, Judge Johnson “altered forever the face of the South.” David Whiteside served as a political correspondent for MTV Choose or Lose 2008 — an Emmy Award-winning project with 51 state-based citizen journalists covering the 2008 presidential elections from a youth perspective, across all media platforms: web, mobile, broadcast and virtual.

“The communities of the Tennessee Valley are all interconnected neighbors upstream and downstream and everyone needs clean water, whether you’re black or white, rich or poor, Republican or Democrat,” Whiteside said. “We advocate for the watershed to ensure that future generations will inherit safe, clean water in their communities.”

“The performers at this event are renowned in Muscle Shoals, Nashville and across America,” Whiteside said a a press release for the event. For more, see below…

Read the rest of this entry »

A pollution lawsuit against the Birmingham Airport Authority was closed on February 16, signifying that the airport has fulfilled the requirements established in a court settlement with the Black Warrior Riverkeeper environmental watchdog group.

The airport has spent more than $1.7 million implementing erosion and sediment controls at their runway extension construction site, contracting with several local businesses to participate in the project over the past 12 months, according to a press release in the case,

The Black Warrior Riverkeeper group filed a lawsuit under the Clean Water Act on April 3, 2007, alleging that muddy water from much of the airport’s runway extension project had been inadequately contained or treated. The construction storm water runoff polluted Village Creek, a tributary of the Black Warrior River’s Locust Fork.

Sedimentation from storm water runoff is one of the leading causes of impairment in Alabama’s streams and rivers.

“This case highlights the value of the Clean Water Act’s citizen lawsuit
provisions,” said Charles Scribner, executive director of Black Warrior
Riverkeeper. “Our Riverkeeper, Nelson Brooke, collected pollution evidence at the airport for years while the Alabama Department of Environmental Management failed to solve the problem. We are pleased that the Birmingham Airport Authority improved their site as a result of our action.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Glynn Wilson

Fog in Autumn on The Locust Fork River

In another challenge to the Alabama Department of Environmental Management’s failure to protect the purity of the state’s waterways, the Southern Environmental Law Center today petitioned for a hearing on the permit issued last month for a 3,255-acre coal mine in Blount County.

The proposed mine would have more than 60 pollution discharge points into the main stem or feeder streams of the Locust Fork, a tributary of the Black Warrior River that is already on ADEM’s list of the worst polluted streams in the state, mainly due to sediment.

The petition was filed on behalf of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper and The Friends of the Locust Fork River.

The law center already represents the Black Warrior Riverkeeper in an ongoing legal challenge of ADEM’s actions in permitting the Shepherd Bend coal mine in Walker County. In both cases, the agency has ignored federal and state laws and its own regulations, according to a press release..

“Ultimately, the problem goes beyond these projects, and lands squarely on the shoulders of ADEM which is consistently failing to protect water quality throughout the state,” SELC Senior Attorney Gil Rogers said. “The Rosa and Shepherd Bend coal mines are exhibit A.”

The Rosa coal mine permit is deficient in numerous ways. The mine would discharge pollution into a segment of Locust Fork which is listed by ADEM as “impaired” under the Clean Water Act. Alabama law prohibits causing or contributing to the pollution of an impaired water body. The agency acknowledged the impaired status of the Locust Fork in their permit rationale, but issued the permit anyway.

“ADEM needs to quit rubber-stamping these pollution permits and get serious about its role as the environmental regulator of coal mine operations,” Black Warrior Riverkeeper Nelson Brooke said. “Our waterways are much too precious to be so utterly neglected and exploited.”

Read the rest of this entry »

A wastewater discharge permit for a coal mine proposed for Shepherd Bend Mine along the Black Warrior River’s Mulberry Fork, right across the river from the Birmingham Water Works Board’s drinking water intake, will be considered by the Alabama Environmental Management Commission Friday. It’s ninth on the agenda of a meeting starting at 11 a.m.

“Putting a massive 1,773 acre strip mine adjacent to one of Birmingham’s major drinking water intakes is ludicrous,” Nelson Brooke, the Blackwarrior Riverkeeper, said in a statement. “This mine proposes 29 wastewater outfalls into the river and its tributaries.”

Native Americans used the river here for centuries while respecting it and the land. Six known archaeological sites dot Shepherd Bend. The Alabama Historical Commission has asked for continued study prior to disturbance of any kind.

The Mulberry Fork supplies Birmingham with tens of millions of gallons of water each day. He said the Birmingham Water Works is concerned about this mine’s potential to pollute the water and raise treatment costs.

“Watershed protection is the key component to a healthy water supply, especially for the land immediately adjacent to the water intake. Once watershed protections are lost and pollution is inevitable, chemical treatment of the water becomes necessary,” Brooke said. “It is much more costly to treat polluted water than clean water.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Drive-By Truckers Help Get the Group Started

A new citizen-based organization, Tennessee Riverkeeper, has been created to protect the Tennessee River and its tributaries by enforcing environmental laws and educating the public, according a press release.

The organization was approved by non-profit Waterkeeper Alliance which licenses the Riverkeeper trademark, according to David Whiteside, one of the founders. The group has set up an office in Decatur near the geographic center of the main stretch of the Tennessee River and plans to open a second office upstream in the state of Tennessee.

The organization has submitted an application to the IRS for a 501(c)(3) non-profit status, Whiteside said, and the group plans to address sewage from failing waste water treatment plants and “point source” industrial pollution as top priority pollution threats. The organization will monitor polluters and their pollution permits, respond to citizen complaints, and utilize other methods to further protect the Tennessee River and its tributaries. When the organization discovers illegal pollution, Tennessee Riverkeeper will enforce environmental laws, he said.

Tennessee Riverkeeper is against the proposed TEPPCO fuel depot a half-mile upstream from Decatur, Alabama’s only drinking water intake.

“The Tennessee River basin is one of the most biologically diverse watersheds in the world,” Whiteside said.

Read the rest of this entry »

Glynn Wilson

by Glynn Wilson

ONEONTA, Ala. — More than 102 people packed the Frank Green Building auditorium Tuesday night to protest a proposed coal mine by a Canadian company near the banks of the Locust Fork of the Black Warrior River.

Dr. Randall C. Johnson, the director of the Surface Mining Commission and a wildlife biologist with a Ph.D. from Auburn University, would not say whether the overwhelming opposition might sway the commission to deny the permit. But he said the commission did deny one recently in Lamar County.

Nelson Brooke, executive director of the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, said the Alabama Department of Environmental Management illegally granted the water discharge pollution permit and broke the law when passing the ultimate responsibility for the coal mine approval to the Surface Mining Commission, an agency that is not equipped to perform environmental impact assessments under the Clean Water Act and the National Environmental Policy Act.

“They broke the law,” he said.

Sam Howell, president of the Friends of the Locust Fork River, urged the commission to consider the “cumulative” impacts of the mine on the ecosystem, the watershed and the community.

One by one, residents of the area went to the microphone to urge the commission to deny the permit.

Read the rest of this entry »