French Broad gets healthier, but much work remains

Source : http://www.citizen-times.com/article/20100222/OPINION01/302220004/1006

The French Broad River is one of the earth’s oldest, flowing before our mountains were even born millions of years ago. But for generations, we’ve not always treated those waters well. Wilma Dykeman, the pioneering writer who first championed the French Broad, wrote in 1955 of a muddy polluted waterway that was “too thick to drink and too thin to plow.”

More than a half century later, stepped-up enforcement has stopped the straight-piping of industrial waste into the waters. Countless volunteers have helped pick up litter and debris, making the French Broad River a destination for paddlers, fishermen or the folks who enjoy a stroll among the many green spaces and parks that have sprung up along its banks.

So there’s good news and bad in the North Carolina Division of Water Quality’s draft report last week that shows 224.5 miles of impaired streams in the French Broad River basin. That’s 69 fewer miles from the year before, showing a promising trend of improvements.

Most of those streams won reprieve from the impaired list submitted regularly to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency because their waters were clearer, says Hartwell Carson, a water quality specialist with the Western North Carolina Alliance.

Just as it took years of pollution to turn the once-pristine French Broad into a sewer, cleaner waters don’t happen overnight or by accident. It has taken hard work by many.

For all you Asheville residents, if you paid your annual storm water bill earlier this month, you did your share to improve the river. That $28 per single family residence, on top of the monthly water and sewer bills, comes out of already pinched pocketbooks for most residents, but the funds help the city of Asheville hire erosion inspectors and take other measures to keep sediment from fouling the French Broad.

Others contribute their time to guard the river. In his previous job as the French Broad Riverkeeper, Carson trained 100 citizens to monitor construction sites for problems with runoff. Riverlink, the nonprofit group, brings in volunteers regularly to pick up trash along the stream banks and champions green spaces along the flood plain.

There may even be good news for the river in the Great Recession that brought most development to a screeching halt last year. Carson says that slowdown may have meant less erosion and sediment across the French Broad River basin.

Everyone hopes for recovery and new growth with homes and new businesses, but the economic downturn offers some breathing room for the river and for our landscape.

But what about the bad news?

Those miles of streams that were dropped from the impaired list could be quickly added again if development takes off again at the same pace without any erosion oversight, Carson warned. Before we see developments taking shape on fragile mountain slopes, where heavy rains can send sediment straight into the river, we may want to ask what kind of growth do we need, and how do we protect our river and natural resources.

Understand that a clean river isn’t just a tourist attraction, a feel-good luxury. It’s the lifeblood of our communities.

The city’s water treatment plant is situated at the confluence of the Mills River and French Broad, with intake pipes into both currents. At times of low flow, that plant is pulling water from the French Broad.

What was unthinkable in Dykeman’s day, when people blanched at the thought, is an unspoken fact today. Many residents in southern Buncombe and Henderson counties are getting their drinking water from the French Broad.

And far downstream, our neighbors in Knoxville, Tenn., rely on drinking water drawn from the Tennessee River, just below the confluence of the French Broad, which winds over the mountain to join the Holstein River.

Asheville has been here on the banks on the French Broad for only a blink of time, but poor stewardship nearly killed the river once in our own lifetime. We’ll have to work at it if we want those living waters to roll on for generations to come.