Pictured above: A trio of sisters – Anne Mitchell, Maggie Oliver, & Grace Howard – are the 2026 recipients of the Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award.
The Oliver sisters don’t remember a time when Lake Chatuge wasn’t part of their lives. They spent summers in Towns County with their grandparents, whose ancestors date back to the mid-1800s there. Anne Mitchell recalled their grandfather putting in a boat at the highway culvert before there was a boat ramp at what’s now Lloyd’s Landing. They would go fishing and he would also scope out berry bushes on different parts of the shoreline. When the time was right, they would “pick buckets and buckets of dewberries,” Anne said fondly. Anne was also baptized in the lake.
As adults, the three made their way back to Towns County to become permanent residents and by the early 2000s, they were already making their mark in this community! Before there was an annual Lake Chatuge Shoreline Cleanup event, Grace Howard was organizing cleanups under the auspices of Towns County Clean Sweep. She, Maggie Oliver, and Anne have picked up more litter over their 20-40 years in Towns County than most will pick up in a lifetime – and they have the t-shirts to prove it!
Anne was a member of the original volunteer water quality monitoring team for Lake Chatuge, which started collecting water quality data on streams flowing into the lake in 1999. The site she sampled for about a decade on Upper Bell Creek has been nearly continuously monitored every month for more than 25 years by the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, now MountainTrue. And all three sisters helped with Watershed Coalition fundraisers at Crane Creek Vineyards, with Anne making all the lovely hors d’oeuvres for the events over several years.
After their efforts at litter control turned into a strong annual event, Grace & Maggie turned their attention to another environmental nuisance – nonnative invasive plants! For several years, they worked in partnership with MountainTrue to eradicate kudzu, Japanese honeysuckle, English ivy, and other invasives at Hamilton Gardens on the Georgia Mountain Fairgrounds. Both are Master Gardeners and, more recently, they have worked to establish a pollinator garden at Lloyd’s Landing, in addition to being a part of the International Daffodil project.
All three sisters are Master Naturalists and, as such, helped keep watch on invasive aquatic weeds in the lake during the recent parrotfeather infestation. Anne was also one of the first people to try to educate the community about the water quality problems associated with domesticated Canada goose populations around the lake. She went to a lot of meetings over the years to learn about various threats to the lake and what might be done about them.
Anne also served on the Hiawassee City Council for about 8 years. During her tenure, she was actively involved in downtown revitalization and zoning discussions. Upon being elected to serve as Mayor Pro Tem for a short period, fellow Councilperson, Rayette Ross said, “Anne has never missed a meeting, and she’s shown a lot of dedication to the City.”
All three Oliver sisters have been huge supporters of protecting the environment in and around Lake Chatuge and Towns County, Georgia, in these and probably many other ways yet unrecorded. This honor is only a token of our gratitude.
Each year, we present the Holman Water Quality Stewardship Award to the person or group who has done the most to sustain good water quality in rivers, lakes, and streams in the upper Hiwassee River watershed of Towns and Union counties in North Georgia and Cherokee and Clay counties in North Carolina. The award is named for Bill Holman, a lifelong conservation advocate currently serving as Senior Advisor to the Conservation Fund in NC. The Holman Award is sculpted by David Goldhagen of Goldhagen Blown Art Glass, whose studio is located on the shores of Lake Chatuge near Hayesville, NC.
