Posted in Georgia Rivers, Water health, tagged Environmental, health, pollution, river restoration, water conservation on March 18, 2013|
We would love to showcase the river issues in Georgia so people are more aware of the problems that need to be addressed and can learn how to get involved in restoration efforts!
Email your photo to Gwyneth@garivers.org
Posted in Georgia Rivers, Water health, Water Trails, tagged adventure, camping, canoeing, ecosystem, event, family fun, fish, health, inner tube, kayaking, Paddle Georgia, paddling, pollution, river restoration on October 19, 2012|
Did you have a blast on a waterway this summer and have a cool video to share about it? Want a chance to win a pair of KEEN shoes?
If you answered yes to both questions then this contest is for YOU!
The Georgia River Network and Outdoor Afro have teamed up to help share how people are enjoying their waterways all over the country – like these Outdoor Afros on California’s American River below!
All you have to do is submit your original, short (no more than 3 minute) video that shares what you enjoyed and valued about your local rivers and waterways over the summer!
Contest submissions will be posted on the Georgia River Network and Outdoor Afro social media pages, and five (5) finalists will be selected by Georgia River Network and Outdoor Afro fans, but ONE selected winner will get a pair of KEEN shoes!
Here is how to enter:
We will announce the winner November 1st!
Good Luck!
This blog series is sponsored by the Georgia River Network
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged advocacy, Altamaha Riverkeeper, cleanup, pollution, riverkeeper, watershed on October 2, 2012|
Please join the Altamaha Riverkeeper’s efforts to get Jesup’s Rayonier pulp mill to clean up its pollution of the mighty Altamaha by viewing and sharing their new video production.
Click into You Tube here: http://youtu.be/yAWNI1hknPo to see the video and pass it on to your friends.
Special thanks to Judy Sharpton for her ballad “Uncle Toad’s Question” and to Donata Renfrow of J. Galt and Associates for producing the video. They need your help to get this out, so please take a few minutes today to view the video and share it where ever you can.
You can also view the video on ARK’s website at www.altamahariverkeeper.org.
Please get involved and support ARK’s work to secure stricter permit limits for Rayonier’s discharge.
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adventure, advocacy, agriculture, boat, camping, canoeing, clean water, clean-up, cleanup, creek, ecosystem, Environmental, event, family, fish, fun, fundraiser, Georgia river network, health, inner tube, kayaking, lake, litter, non point source pollution, nonprofit, paddle, Paddle Georgia, paddling, pollution, raft, riverkeeper, rivers, runoff, sandbar, sewage, stream, tires, trash, tributary, waterkeeper, watershed on June 11, 2012|
Some people call the Altamaha River “Georgia’s little Amazon,” but not Dorinda Dallmeyer.
“I turn that phrase on its head and say ‘No, the Amazon is Brazil’s Altamaha,’” said Dallmeyer, director of the environmental ethics program at the University of Georgia. “People need to appreciate that the river is unique, that it is a national treasure.”
The big Altamaha is the longest free-flowing river system remaining in the eastern United States. Named one of the 75 “Last Great Places on Earth” by the Nature Conservancy, the Altamaha is home to a profusion of wildlife — hundreds of kinds of rare plants and animals, including some that grow nowhere else on Earth.
About 350 people, including several Athenians, will get a firsthand look at the ibises, alligators and other creatures that call the Altamaha home on the upcoming eighth annual Paddle Georgia, a project of the Georgia River Network. Paddle Georgia is a week-long caravan of kayaks and canoes that this year will travel down 105 miles of the Altamaha, from Reidsville to Darien. This year’s trek begins Saturday and continues through June 22.
“It’s a great family vacation and a great way to stay cool in the hot summer,” said Daniela Di Iorio, who will make the trip with husband Donald Newman and sons Evan, 14, and Marco, 12. Di Iorio and her family have become regulars on Paddle Georgia, which chooses a different Georgia river each year.
But Di Iorio has a special interest in this year’s river trip. An oceanographer, she’s part of a University of Georgia-based research team conducting long-term research on the Georgia coast where the Altamaha pours into the ocean, nourishing salt marshes and fisheries.
Like many who know the Altamaha, Di Iorio is worried for the river’s future. Big and wild as it is, the Altamaha is dying by degrees, say some of the people who know it best. It’s being killed, they say, by a constant and growing barrage of large and small environmental wounds, many inflicted by folks far upstream, including Athenians who use water from the Oconee River system that feeds into the Altamaha.
“We can’t continue the way we’re going,” said former Altamaha Riverkeeper James Holland, who’s kept a close eye on the river for decades, first as a crab fisherman, later as the Riverkeeper, and more recently as a photographer documenting the mighty river. The University of Georgia Press this month published a book of his photographs, “The Altamaha: A River and its Keeper,” with essays by Dallmeyer and noted environmental writer Janisse Ray.
Big factories like the ITT Rayonier pulp mill in Wayne County pour wastewater into the river; in Appling County, the Plant Hatch nuclear plant sucks out 60 million gallons a day to generate electricity, and only half goes back in the river.
Upstream, cities like Athens draw millions of gallons out of rivers feeding the Altamaha, returning some of it as treated wastewater which still contains pollutants. Runoff from construction silts the river, along with pesticides from farms.
But those are just some of the wounds we inflict on the river, Holland says.
Large numbers of impoundments, from Jackson County farm ponds to Lake Oconee, hold back the waters that feed the Altamaha, reducing its flow. Add in a record drought year like this one, and the toll on wildlife grows from big to enormous. With less water that is more polluted, fewer fish can survive, and as the fish decline, so do the birds and other creatures that eat the fish.
The Altamaha River’s flow this spring has been lower than ever recorded during the 80 years the U.S. Geological Survey has been collecting data at a gauge in Doctortown, in south Georgia’s Wayne County. As the flow of fresh water ebbs, salt water is pushing farther upstream, Di Iorio said, threatening ancient forests that grow around the river — and even in it, in some places.
Meanwhile, invasive fish species like the flathead catfish are changing the stream’s ecological balance by displacing or even eating other fish species — though some native fish, including shad and sturgeon, may be increasing in number after long declines, said Bert Deener, a DNR regional fisheries supervisor in Waycross.
With all the big river has endured, it still teems with life, Deener said.
“This time of year there’s nothing like going on the Altamaha and getting a shady area and fishing for river bass,” he said. “There’s something special about it.”
http://onlineathens.com/local-news/2012-06-09/paddle-georgia-explore-altamaha-river
Posted in Uncategorized, tagged adventure, advocacy, agriculture, boat, camping, canoeing, clean water, clean-up, cleanup, creek, ecosystem, Environmental, event, family, fish, fun, fundraiser, Georgia river network, health, inner tube, kayaking, lake, litter, non point source pollution, nonprofit, paddle, Paddle Georgia, paddling, pollution, raft, riverkeeper, rivers, runoff, sandbar, sewage, stream, tires, trash, tributary, waterkeeper, watershed on June 7, 2012|
