Improving Our National and State Waterways 

                                         PWJ Issue March 2023

All of us are heavily dependent on water resources and our private- and public-sector water infrastructure. Yet Professor Brian Richter claims that the vast majority of Americans are illiterate on water issues, even as water scarcity and purity challenges confront us. 

Unlike Professor Richter, I won’t try to describe water illiteracy as he does in his book Chasing Water and on his web site (https://www.sustainablewaters.org/water-illiteracy/). Water management policies and challenges in the USA are broad and complex. Richter claims that even experts on these issues have not yet been able to develop effective learning materials to generate greater public awareness. Basic knowledge about watersheds, aquifers, estuaries, impoundments, water cycles, water footprints, and desalination initiatives requires more time and learning motivation than most of us would be willing to commit.  

My focus, instead, is a simple overview of a few changes in American values and demands related to our waterway resources. Goals and policies for water conservation, starting more than a century ago, were associated with the use of our waterways to the fullest extent possible.  Multiple needs such as providing flood control, crop irrigation, and public and business water consumption led to many decades of dam and reservoir construction along most of America’s rivers. This grand effort also created more electrical power generation as well as opportunities for business and employment growth. One notable example was the Tennessee Valley Authority during the Great Depression. There was overwhelming national support for the governmental leaders and technocrats who planned, designed, and constructed these massive infrastructure projects.  

 

Environmental services consultant, David Hirschman, explains that views concerning our national waterways began to shift later in the twentieth century. There was less confidence in top-down thinking and political deals made among elites. Dam projects had sometimes brushed aside certain voices, having sustainability or ecosystem concerns, in a rush for a supposed greater overall human good.  

 

One high-profile example of this shifting mindset and controversies about waterways was the Buffalo River Campaign in Arkansas. The Ozark Society, Inc. was founded in 1962 by Dr. Neil Compton and his associates for the immediate purpose of saving the Buffalo River from dams proposed by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Through their efforts and those of others, parts of the beautiful Buffalo River were protected and designated as our first “national river” in 1972.  

 

The Ozark Society remains active today in its principal purpose – the preservation of wild and scenic rivers, wilderness, and unique natural areas. The parent Ozark Society now has a network of chapters in Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Missouri, all active in conservation, educational and recreational affairs. The Bayou Chapter is based in the Shreveport/Bossier City area and often sponsors events on the bayous, at parks, and in wilderness areas of north Louisiana. 

 

The Nationwide Rivers Inventory (NRI) is a listing of more than 3,200 free-flowing river segments in the United States that are believed to possess one or more remarkable natural or cultural values judged to be at least regionally significant. NRI river segments are potential candidates for inclusion in our National Wild and Scenic River System (NWSRS). Well over 200 of these segments have already been officially designated as “wild and scenic” rivers by the NWSRS. This agency was created by Congress in 1968 to preserve certain rivers in a free-flowing condition for the enjoyment of present and future generations.

The NWSRS protects 13,413 miles of 226 rivers in 41 states and Puerto Rico, according to its 2019 statistics. Yet this is less than one half of one percent of our nation's rivers. Arkansas currently has six wild and scenic river segments that are protected at this national level, while Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi have only one each. Even in Arkansas, only about one-fourth of one percent (210 miles) of the state's total river miles have this federally protected status. Saline Bayou, as it runs 19 miles from Saline Lake upstream to the Kisatchie National Forest, is our sole NWSRS Louisiana scenic river corridor. Congressional efforts in 2022 pursued the addition of more wild and scenic rivers to the NWSRS in the states of Maine, Florida, New Mexico, Montana, Washington, Oregon, and California.

 

On a state level, the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries administers its own scenic rivers program. This program seeks to preserve, protect, develop, reclaim, and enhance designated free-flowing Louisiana waterways. The Scenic Rivers Program prohibits or restricts certain activities having detrimental ecological impacts on 3,100 miles of about 80 Louisiana streams and rivers.

Waterway activism and controversies seem strongest in the West, but groups such as the Ozark Society remain committed to their goals in our part of the country. Nationwide advocacy groups include the Wild and Scenic Rivers Coalition (https://wildriverscoalition.org/) and the River Network (https://www.rivernetwork.org/ ). Both organizations are trying to protect our national waterways and to engage the public to take a stronger stance in this regard. 

A related trend, according to Tara Lohan reporting in November 2022 for The Relevator, has been the removal of about 1,200 dams in the USA since 2000. These removals have occurred to help restore river and aquatic life, improve water quality, and boost public safety. In contrast and over roughly the same twenty years, researchers have reported that 4,000 European river barriers have been removed. These include large and smaller dams and obstructions such as weirs and sluices that can block the movement of some fish, invertebrates, sediment, and nutrients. Many of these dams and obstructions became obsolete and/or were viewed as no longer providing beneficial functions.

 

For those interested in staying up to date on biodiversity losses and a wide range of initiatives to combat these, you might check out The Revelator online (https://therevelator.org/). The magazine funded by Center for Biological Diversity offers reporting and analysis at the intersection of politics, art/culture, conservation, climate change, economics and the future.