Our river – and our water – are in danger

Spider lilies in the Catawba at Landsford Canal State Park. (photo courtesy of southcarolinaparks.com

Mt. Holly chamber gets grim State of the Catawba report, plus advice for making it better

Rick Gaskins Jr.

The Catawba River has some dubious awards – America’s Most Endangered River; Top 10 Endangered Places in the Southeast; Fourth Most Stressed River in the U.S.

How bad is it really? And what the heck can anyone do about it?

Rick Gaskins managed to cover both questions in 45 minutes recently, as the monthly guest speaker for Mount Holly Mornings. Gaskins, an environmental lawyer and head of the CatawbaRiverkeeper Foundation, packed both facts and heart-tugging feelings into his talk to the crowded room of local businessmen and businesswomen. For instance:

• Fact: NC Department of Health and Human Services estimates that 13,677 children per year are born with blood mercury levels that place them at risk for lifelong disabilities including fine-motion control and attention problems. The no. 1 source is eating fish containing high levels of mercury.
• Feeling: (Photo of girl – Gaskins’ daughter - holding fishing pole with fingerling circled so you can see it). The crowd laughs. “Who wants to tell her she should not eat it?” Gaskins then asked.

The Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation is a small nonprofit organization with a big mission. The three paid staff and several hundred volunteers work to protect the Catawba River basin’s water quality for the 2-million plus people and many millions of wild creatures that depend on it for life.

• Feeling: Setting sun’s golden rays glimmer across one of the 11 impoundments between Lake James and Lake Wateree.
• Fact: A projection done by Duke Energy shows that by 2038, our demand for the Catawba’s water will exceed the supply.

The Catawba is a special place with great natural beauty, Gaskins said as he showed photos of one of the river’s 37 major waterfalls and a bed of blooming spider lilies - the collection largest in the world – at Rocky Shoals.

The Catawba also faces grave threats from the region’s rapid urbanization and history of neglect:

We are running out of water, and when it rains, manmade rooftops and roads cause the water to run off rather than soak in.

Water transfers are sending millions of gallons a day to communities with limited water supplies in other river basins (including northeast Charlotte). The result: In times of drought (like 2008), lower portions of the Catawba will face serious shortages of water.

Water security – We have a nuclear power plant and four EPA-designated “High-Risk” coal-ash ponds just in the Charlotte metro area whose failure could eliminate the Catawba as a source of drinking water for months or millennia – without contingency plans to handle the crisis.

Gaskins showed a slide of the ruins of Mount Holly’s Armon Mill, destroyed in the great flood of 1916 when a tropical storm dumped 13 inches of rain across the region. All but one bridge on the Catawba was swept away in the deluge, which also destroyed the original Lake Wylie dam and claimed 80 lives.

“The river remains a wild, powerful force and can still destroy things, like coal-ash ponds,” Gaskins said. That risk may be greater now than ever. Between 1998 and 2008, the Catawba basin lost 180 acres a day to roads and rooftops, Gaskins said. Just one acre of impervious surface will generate 26,000 gallons of runoff from a one-inch rainfall.

“Imagine the impact of Northlake Mall on nearby streams, he added. Then imagine the impact on the Catawba when a tropical storm rolls through.

Water quality – From leaking sewage systems and septic tanks to chemical-laden parking-lot storm runoff to silt from construction sites to heavy metals spewed across the basin from coal-burning power plants, the river we all depend upon for drinking water is under attack.

Polluted water harms our wildlife. It also costs much more to clean up for human consumption, Gaskins said. Some things can’t be cleaned at all, such as the mercury- and pcb-tainted largemouth bass and channel catfish abundant Mountain Island Lake. Late last year, the NC Department of Health and Human Services issued warnings against eating any channel catfish caught in Mountain Island Lake. The state also recommends that women of childbearing age and children under 15 eat no largemouth bass due to the high levels of PCBs and mercury.

“Different parts of the country have dramatically different views of the need to safeguard their drinking water,” Gaskins said. “In the Northeast, you will find reservoirs ringed with barbed wire. In North Carolina, we put coal-ash ponds next to them.”

So what can we do to help the river? Gaskins suggested:

1.     Reduce stormwater runoff by collecting the water from your home and driveway in rain barrels, rain gardens and cisterns.

2.     Volunteer to help the Catawba Riverkeeper. Volunteers handle citizen complaints, lead classes such as this summer’s teen kayaking program and help monitor local water.

3.     Donate to the Riverkeeper Foundation. Community donations make up 85 percent of the group’s budget.

“2038 is coming up fast,” Gaskins concluded. “We’ve got to put things in place now that will affect water use in 2038.”

Learn more

Visit http://www.catawbariverkeeper.org