AWW at the 2024 Alabama Water Rally
By Sergio RuizCordova
Every March for the past 26 years, the Alabama Rivers Alliance holds the Alabama Water Rally to recognize and celebrate notable organizations and individuals who have made outstanding contributions toward protecting clean water and healthy rivers in Alabama.
AWW has been part of many of those events, conducting water monitoring certification training and celebrating the recognition of the River Heroes and other award winners who may also be AWW monitors. This year, as many others in the past, the Rally was held at the beautiful and unique Camp McDowell at the edge of the Bankhead National Forest in Winston County, Alabama.
The AWW Bacteriological Monitoring Training
On March 15th, AWW Staff once again headed to the northwestern region of our state to join the 2024 Alabama Water Rally where a dozen new citizens were certified at a Bacteriological Monitoring Field Day. Camp McDowell Field Day participants included teachers, lawyers, and residents from as far as Elmore, Etowah, Jefferson, Lauderdale, and Montgomery counties.
The ARA Water Rally
All ARA Water Rally attendees were rewarded with wonderful speakers, engaging sessions, and two fantastic and charming keynote addresses. The first one, How does Decarbonization affect water for energy systems? by Dr. Emily Grubert with the University of Notre Dame, brought insight to the controversies of new water uses in energy systems. For example, water use in activities like critical mineral mining, clean energy technology manufacturing, hydrogen, carbon dioxide removal, and synfuels could be large, and result in significant impacts on both water quality and quantity.
A second keynote address was, Tales of a ‘Keeper by the retired founding director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, Sally Bethea. For more than two decades, Sally worked tirelessly to protect and restore the Chattahoochee River, which provides drinking water for millions of people, as it runs from north Georgia into Florida forming the Alabama / Georgia border on its way. In her retirement, she wrote an enlightening and powerfully inspiring account of her journey in her book titled Keeping the Chattahoochee.
Water Rally presentations and conversations topics varied from intergenerational climate change, constructed wetlands for wastewater treatment, understanding groundwater, to tips for environmental group sustainability, and the extremely complicated process for a bill to be approved and become a law in the State of Alabama.
The ARA Water Rally Interactive Sessions
On Saturday and Sunday, Water Rally attendees had the opportunity to get up a little earlier and enjoy Camp McDowell trails while Birding with Bill Deutsch, the former director and founder of AWW and author of the books, Alabama Rivers: A Celebration & Challenge and Ancient Life in Alabama: The Fossils, the Finders & Why It Matters two must-haves for any environmental advocate.
Before closing, Water Rally participants were provided with a dynamic panel ARTIVISM UNLEASHED: Creativity as Catalyst for Change lead by imaginative and innovative personalities who discussed the powerful constructive interaction between art and environmental advocacy. Award-winning documentary filmmaker and Southern Exposure Series producer Michele Forman, shared tips on how to improve the use of your cellphone camera to amplify unheard voices from your communities through photography and video.
This activity reminded me of a common phrase I heard during my childhood “De médico, músico, poeta y loco, todos tenemos un poco,” which translates from Spanish to “of physician, musician, poet, and madman, we all have a little.” What this really means is that from time to time everyone does embarrassing or terrible things, but also creative and rational things. I often heard this phrase when someone offered advice for an unknown ailment without having any medical background, reminding us that no one is completely rational all the time. On the other hand, it also teaches us that it is not necessary to be a professional to sing, play an instrument or write poems, which we can and should do simply for fun.
At the Rally some of us participated in an insightful session with Tina Mozelle Braziel, an eco-poet that embraces environmental stewardship and activism. Her session was focused on creative writing ideas and how anybody can write poetry. After a brief introduction and guidelines, we were asked to write something on the spot. We all did and shared our writings, and I found all of them exceptionally beautiful and inspirational. The following are some poems, whose authors agreed to share with you through our AWW blog.
Forest and Millipedes
By Joan Cox
My feet feel the cool damp forest floor.
My toes feel the mosses and crunchy leaves.
My cheeks feel the spray from falling water.
My lungs feel the mist weighing down the air.
Millipede crawls by
Does he feel the earth one hundred times over with all those feet?
Does he feel the cool mist on his body or is his hard exterior a shield?
Does he feel the welcoming shade of the hemlocks, and can he smell them?
Does he feel tiny in the moss like I feel tiny in this place?
My body is alien. My spirit is home.
——————— ∞ ———————
Memories
By Sergio RuizCórdova
Today I felt like returning to my place of birth,
I could smell the wet soil after the early morning rain,
I could feel the embrace of the old rocking chair’s unpolished wood,
And I could hear crows, bluejays and mourning doves in the distance.
Today I went back to my place of birth in a memory, in a dream,
as I daydreamed past good memories with the beauty of where I am now.
——————— ∞ ———————
Nature Ghosts
By Jack West
Beside the wet-weather creek
A single blue jay lights in the white pine
And speaks a single note of greeting
By the changing stream the air is purified
Again and imbued with a natural health
That belongs to all
From the seasonal stream
A fawn takes a long drink, cold and precious
By the waning creek summer moss
Velvets the stones where I rest
——————— ∞ ———————
Losing a River to Sewage
By Meryl Kruskopf
I remember clear water.
A window into another world
Our liquid, their atmosphere
I remember a rainbow of gray stones.
Snuggled close together.
Smoothed edges polished by running water for a stone’s lifetime.
A millennia of life impervious to fear or joy
I remember water skippers with their slender legs.
Floating gently on the water’s surface
I remember the water’s edge smelled fresh.
Like biting into a summer cherry tomato grown in a black pot on your front porch
I remember stepping in
The cold awakened my senses
Massaged my feet and welcomed me in like a familiar friend.
Now I cannot see the ancient stones
through the murky brown waters that move sluggishly along
Now the surface is dead
A cemetery for aquatic life that once skated gracefully across its surface.
Now I recoil at the putrid smell of feces
A reaction so ingrained in us that I want to turn and run.
Now, if I dare step into the waters
It is warm and I am afraid.
Now, a place that was once so healing
Is now poison for my body.
——————— ∞ ———————
Birding at Water Rally 2024
Bill Deutsch, March 2024
Our small band of birders trudge into a cool, overcast morning.
We pause to listen for songs, chirps, and scolds.
We listen to soft crunches on a gravel path,
To muted conversations and occasional laugh.
We listen to a Pine Warbler’s water-whistle warble,
To a Piliated’s Woody-Woodpecker-crackling cackle.
We marvel at avian diversity and habits,
Pondering vast journeys from tundra to tropics.
We listen for birds and hear Life and Community,
A marvelous system in which we belong.
Visit the Alabama Rivers Alliance website to learn more about this statewide network of groups working to protect and restore all of Alabama’s water resources through building partnerships, empowering citizens, and advocating for sound water policy and its enforcement.