Erosion: What You Can Do
A few weeks ago I posted videos showing erosion issues at local development sites. The response I received from those videos was “what can I do?” I posed that question to Hartwell Carson, the French Broad Riverkeeper who took the videos. This is his response:
The Muddy Water Watch program is a terrific outlet to help improve our region’s water quality. It was derived from the Chattahoochee Riverkeeper’s Get the Dirt Out. Both are very similar programs where we train citizens how to recognize erosion control problems and how they can help enforce those problems.
A big part of this training is educating our volunteers and the public on the severity of the problem of sediment. It is the number one polluter in the French Broad Watershed, the number on polluter in the state of North Carolina, and the number one polluter in the country. Yet there is still an extreme lack of enforcement and regulation to prevent that type of situation you saw on the video at the future Walmart site. The pollution from the Walmart site has completely choked the two streams that are featured in the video and severely impacted Reems Creek and the French Broad. Because of sites like this for the first time since the passage of the Clean Water Act in 1972 the French Broad River is becoming less healthy. According to the Division of Water Quality the amount of failing streams has increased by 75% in the last two years, mostly because of the impact from sediment.
I would encourage anyone that is interested to help with the problem to volunteer for our Muddy Water Watch training that will start September 9. This program will give them the tools they need to successfully address the rampant erosion control issues in our community.I would also encourage everyone to let their city and county officials know this is unacceptable and we need more strict laws and better enforcement. Buncombe County erosion control is completely overwhelmed by the number of sites they are required to monitor and almost nothing is done in a proactive manner. It is all reactive after sediment has already impacted our waterways. RiverLink is also working on a tracking website to highlight how frequent and severe these issues are.
Continuing to let our leaders know that the destruction of our streams and rivers is unacceptable will bring much needed change.
