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French Broad Riverkeeper Releases New Report on River’s Health

Asheville, NC – The French Broad Riverkeeper has released the State of the French Broad River Watershed 2018, the first published report that grades the cleanliness and water quality of 62 creeks and streams throughout the French Broad Watershed.

“Right before jumping into the river, the number one question people ask me is ‘Is it clean?’” says French Broad Riverkeeper Hartwell Carson. “This report is an answer to that question.”

The report combines testing results from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, the Volunteer Water Information Network, the Stream Monitoring Information Exchange, and MountainTrue’s volunteer water quality monitoring programs, weights the data and gives each stream a grade from A through F.

An A grade is given to streams that have excellent water quality and low pollution levels, and Fs are given to streams that have poor water quality. Sixty-six percent of streams scored A or B, a vast improvement from decades past. However improvements are still needed, as 34 percent of the rivers in the report were rated a C or a D.

Four Cleanest Streams:

Middle Fork French Broad River – 100 points

Cathey’s Creek – 100 points

Cataloochee Creek – 100 points

Pigeon, upstream of Canton – 100 points

Four Dirtiest Streams:

Turkey Creek – 60 points

Newfound Creek – 62.5 points

Boylston Creek – 65 points

Fines Creek – 65 points

The report is averaging data sets from various sources collected over the last few years. “The report serves as a good, useful guideline,” explains Hartwell Carson. “But it’s important to remember water quality will vary a bit depending on weather conditions. Water is usually dirtier right after a big rainstorm, so be more cautious when the water is cloudy.”

The cleanest waterways are well protected from pollution, and most of their watersheds are located in protected public lands that lack a lot of agriculture, development or industrial pollution sources. The dirtiest streams lack land-use protections and are heavily impacted by bad agricultural practices and development.

Sediment and bacteria pollution are the most common sources of pollution to our waters. Sediment pollution is caused by runoff from construction sites and agricultural operations as well as eroding stream banks. Bacteria pollution comes from agricultural runoff, sewage leaks and faulty wastewater treatment plants.

If you’re interested in helping to make the French Broad River cleaner and healthier, you can take part in the French Broad Riverkeeper’s water quality volunteer programs. The French Broad Riverkeeper also spearheaded the development of the Muddy Water Watch smartphone app, which allows the public to easily document and report erosion incidents to the appropriate authorities on-the-go. To learn more and download the app, visit: http://www.muddywaterwatch.com/ or get it from the Apple App Store (https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/muddy-waters-watch/id1092256794) or Google Play (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.statcrew.muddywaterwatch).

Methodology

The State of the French Broad River Watershed, 2018 report report is an average of all the data available in the French Broad Watershed over the last several years. The report combines chemical data from the Environmental Quality Institute (EQI), benthic macroinvertebrate data from EQI and MountainTrue, E. coli data from MountainTrue’s Swim Guide, and a variety of data sources from the North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality (NCDEQ). The chemical and benthic data was converted into a number so it could be averaged into an overall rating for each stream.

Chemical data from EQI is made available through their Volunteer Water Information Network (VWIN) program. That data is rated as excellent, good, average, below average and poor. Those were assigned the following rating: excellent – 100, good – 90, average – 80, below average – 70, and poor – 60. Benthic macroinvertebrate data is provided through the Stream Monitoring Information Exchange, which lists its stream ratings as excellent, good, good-fair, fair and poor. Those rating were assigned the same ratings as the VWIN data with excellent – 100, good – 90, good-fair – 80, fair – 70 and poor – 60. Swim Guide data was assigned an average of the number of times the data passed the US Environmental Protection Agency’s safe swimming benchmark of 235 E. coli units per 100/ml. If the site passed 75% of the time, then a rating of 75 was assigned that location.

The NCDEQ data was taken from the 303(d) list of water quality data taken by the state. This data is more complicated to average than the previous data sets because it is a mix of testing results for chemical, benthic, bacteria, fish, chemical and specific pollutants . Some locations had multiple parameters measured, such as fish, bacteria and benthic. Each combination of data was assigned an average listed below.

If two parameters either meet the state standard or are good, the score is 100
State data for benthos is good/fair – 85
State data benthos is not impaired – 80
Benthos fair – 65
Benthos poor – 55
Benthos fair and fish poor – 55
Benthos poor, fish fair – 55
Fish good, benthos fair – 77.5
Benthos good/fair, fish good – 90
Fish community excellent, benthos good or vice/versa – 95
Fecal impaired – 60
Meets criteria for a long list of water quality standards – 100
Meets criteria for a long list of water quality standards with some inconclusive – 100
Meets criteria for a long list of water quality standards except one – 90
Two standards are good and one failed – 80

Data points were grouped into subwatersheds and averaged, and this is how we arrived at the final ratings as displayed in the State of the French Broad River Watershed, 2018 report.

Success Story: MountainTrue’s Green Riverkeeper Helps Avoid Shooting Range Next to Green River Game Land

The proposed shooting range brought water quality, public input concerns

We did it! After a week of whirlwind organizing, residents of Saluda and the greater Henderson County area are celebrating victory as Hendersonville County Commissioners have promised to back away from building a proposed shooting range and law enforcement training center. The facility would have been built on a 99-acre lot on Macedonia Road and bordering the Green River Game Land.

“As our region continues to grow, we have to consider what type of development we want to see and how we can strike a balance between the influx of people moving to our beautiful area and the protection of our special places and rural character,” says Gray Jernigan, MountainTrue’s Green Riverkeeper. “That takes careful planning and an engaged citizenry who will put their foot down to stop a bad idea in its tracks when necessary.”

Threat to Community, Public Lands

And why was this an issue MountainTrue cared about? “We ha[d] lots of concerns about lead contamination and water quality, noise impacts on wildlife, sedimentation from land clearing and development, and potential steep slope development and landslide risk,” Gray told MountainTrue members in an email and the Hendersonville Lightning in an interview. The wetlands and streams at the proposed site drain directly to the Green River, which is also a water supply watershed, and lead contamination from bullets posed a water quality threat.

Residents pointed out that they were opposed to the site chosen for the shooting range, and not to shooting itself. Resident Carl McMurray said, “I’m a gun owner. I’m a pretty avid shooter. That’s not the issue. My issue is with the traffic and noise.”

Put On Notice

A small number of Saluda residents unexpectedly received letters from the Sheriff this month informing them that their properties would be affected by the construction of the project. The letters invited them to an information session at the proposed site on Saturday, April 14, but so many people were expected to attend that the Sheriff moved the location of the meeting to the courthouse in Hendersonville late Friday afternoon. Again, only a handful of residents were notified of the change.

Gray became active in opposing the shooting range early on, coordinating with local residents and mobilizing MountainTrue members. He postponed a river cleanup on Saturday to attend the information session and invited paddlers, but the session happening inside was not open to the public or the media. Gray joined other residents in expressing concern about the public input process, telling the Hendersonville Times-News, “It seems strange that a project that implicates public land would be closed to the public.”

“More Emails Than Residents of Saluda”

The community regrouped for a meeting the following Monday, April 16 to keep organizing. A couple hundred people turned out to the Saluda Fire and Rescue Department to share their concerns about the project and plan the next steps for their response. They encouraged their fellow community members to flood the Henderson County Commissioners with emails, and Commissioner Grady Hawkins later said he had received “more emails than there are residents of Saluda” opposing the shooting range.

Two days later, Saluda turned out in force again for a County Commissioners meeting on April 18. The shooting range project was not on the agenda, but when the Commissioners saw the turnout of concerned citizens, they quickly amended the schedule to include discussion. This was the first time that County officials talked publicly about the project, which likely would not have happened without citizens getting involved.

Success, Less Than A Week Later

Over 70 MountainTrue members and citizens submitted public comments to the Commissioners at the meeting, discussing potential impacts on the environment, their communities, local businesses, and quality of life. At the end of several hours of public comment, the Commissioners reiterated their commitment to back away from pursuing this site.

Henderson County is still under contract on the property and has an option to purchase it until the end of May. The County had already signed contracts with inspectors and consultants to prepare a due diligence report on the property, so the Commissioners decided to fulfill those obligations and will wait to receive the report at their May 16 meeting before officially abandoning the project.

Want To Learn More About Our Work in Saluda and Henderson County?

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A Message From the Creation Care Alliance: What Lent Can Teach Us About Uncertainty and Action

Scott Hardin-Nieri is the Director of the Creation Care Alliance of WNC, a network of congregations and people of faith who have united around a moral and spiritual call to preserve creation. Whether or not you observe the Christian season of Lent, Scott offers his thoughts on what Lent can teach us in these changing times.

As spring emerges around us, some Christians are observing the season of Lent, a 40-day period of sacrifice and preparation prior to Easter Sunday. While Easter is a celebration of new life, forgiveness, and wholeness, Lent takes on a more introspective and somber tone, reflecting the defining moments in the wilderness in the early stories of Jesus. The beginning of this period is marked by Ash Wednesday, when ashes are placed on the foreheads of the gathered to indicate grief, humility and repentance. Ash Wednesday blessings often use the words: “Remember, you are from dust and to dust you return.” Men, women, children, babies, students, executives, coal miners, bartenders, everybody who chooses to receive ashes on their foreheads at this time are reminded of the fragility, gifts and natural cycles of life.

It is humbling to be reminded of the human relationship to dust, as we remember that humans are part of creation and not above or beyond it. In the Hebrew Scriptures of Genesis, the Hebrew word for the first human, Adam, is closely related to Adamah (אדמה), meaning ground or soil. And as Jesus spends 40 days in the wilderness, he comes close to the Adamah around and within him. There, the stories say, he fasted, suffered, and was tested by the forces of pride, brokenness, greed and material wealth. Thus, wilderness is often seen in the Christian world as a place of trial, hardship and temptation.

However wilderness is also a place of becoming, where Jesus lived fully – where he watched the stars, felt the wind and sun, listened to the animals, to the Spirit and to himself. And it is where he practiced living into the name “Beloved,” which was given to him after he emerged from the Jordan River at his baptism. It was this deep connection to land that enabled Jesus to find power in his identity as a peacemaker, a seeker of justice and a friend to the outcast. In other words, Jesus’s time in the wilderness drove him to action.

Aren’t we in a wilderness moment?

We find ourselves in a time of great ecological and social challenge. Congregations that I visit are filled with people who are grieving these challenges and asking difficult questions. I just returned from the State of Appalachia conference in West Virginia, where towns that have been built around the coal industry have had their communities, families, water and land destroyed, and face the task of transitioning to a new source of energy that serves people as well as the earth. We are in an era of unmatched human creativity with new technologies like driverless cars, while also losing some of our planet’s oldest God-given creativity with the extinction of species like the white rhino. We see old power structures flipping, as women and children stand up to march for systemic change in numbers we have never seen before. We are immersed in fear and sadness in this transition, but also offered numerous opportunities to courageously resist despair. How are we caring for our children and grandchildren, and what kind of earth will we pass down to them?

“We are immersed in fear and sadness in this transition, but also offered numerous opportunities to courageously resist despair. How are we caring for our children and grandchildren, and what kind of earth will we pass down to them?”

Scott Hardin-Nieri, Director of the Creation Care Alliance

Like those who observe Ash Wednesday and Lent, we at the Creation Care Alliance are finding a deeper understanding of our relationship to soil, microbes, creatures and people. At a time when dominance over other people and the earth is commended, we believe that finding our place among all things and remembering that we come from and return to dust is a faithful way forward.

So whether you observe Lent or not, we invite you to listen to this wilderness moment and consider how it might transform you if you let it in. If we are able to take the lessons of this time and move forward, I believe this is a moment we will look back on and say, that’s when we figured out who we were.

Want to hear more from the Creation Care Alliance?

“Moving Beyond Coal”: An Overview of MountainTrue’s Recent Energy Advocacy By Katie Breckheimer

Former MountainTrue Campaign Manager Joan Walker at a Carolina Land Coalition rally on the old Henderson County Courthouse steps.

MountainTrue’s Board Chair Katie Breckheimer has another article on Blue Ridge Now. Check it out here to read up on MountainTrue’s recent clean energy victories, and learn how we can all pitch in to delay or avoid the construction of another fossil-fuel power plant through the Blue Horizons Project.

MT Raleigh Report: Outdoor Recreation Gets a Champion in the Dept. of Commerce

In a happy turn of events, we have some good news to share from Raleigh.

It actually happened last summer, when the General Assembly created a new position at the N.C. Department of Commerce to promote North Carolina’s outdoor recreation economy and bring new outdoor industry businesses to the state. Government hiring always takes a long time, so we were pleased to learn that the position was filled in February and the Department is starting to think about how to grow our state’s outdoor recreation sector.

That’s especially good news for Western North Carolina, of course, where so many jobs are connected to our mountains, rivers, streams and parks.

Trout fishing is a good example. Nearly 149,000 trout anglers fished approximately 1.6 million days in 2014 – with a total economic benefit of $383 million to the state, according to a study commissioned by the NC Wildlife Resources Commission. The study also found that money spent on trout fishing in 2014 supported approximately 3,593 jobs. And since trout live only in mountain streams, this is largely to the benefit of WNC.

Statewide, outdoor recreation supports 260,000 jobs and accounts for $8.3 billion in wages and salaries.

Creating this position is a small reminder of the basic truth those of us at MountainTrue – as well as many forward-thinking business people – have understood for years: a strong economy depends on a clean environment, including efficient, fair and commonsense rules to protect our water and our air.

Special thanks to the leadership of the North Carolina Senate – particularly Alamance County Republican Rick Gunn, who led the way on creating this position, and Department of Commerce Secretary Tony Copeland, who filled it. Henderson County’s Senator Chuck Edwards and Rep. Chuck McGrady as well as Buncombe County’s Representative Brian Turner also lent a hand.

At a time when North Carolina’s government can seem at war with itself, the bipartisan effort to champion outdoor recreation and economic development is a welcome step in the right direction.

General Assembly to Reconvene in May

The General Assembly is set to return to session on May 16th. A court decision or a veto from Governor Cooper could bring them back into session earlier, but for now, the legislature is closed with no plans to reconvene until the spring.

Celebrate Earth Day All Month Long

Audrey & Frank Peterman are tenacious advocates for breaking the color barrier and making America’s natural treasures accessible to all Americans regardless of race. They will give the keynote address at UNCA’s Spring Greenfest 2018 on March 26.

Action Expired

With great natural beauty come great advocates.

Many organizations have formed over the years to preserve Western North Carolina’s natural places and unique character. That’s why this year, MountainTrue and more than 20 area conservation and environmental organizations are combining forces to celebrate Earth Day throughout the entire month of April.

We’re calling this collective effort WNC For The Planet, and we’re teaming up with local businesses, universities, community groups and individuals like you for a month of environmental service, educational opportunities, and celebrations in Asheville and across Western North Carolina.

Susan Bean, Community Engagement Manager for MountainTrue, worked with an organizing committee that included leaders from RiverLink, Friends of the Smokies, Southern Appalachian Highlands Conservancy, Asheville Greenworks and New Belgium Brewing Company. “Once we had the broad strokes of an idea – that Earth Month is a great opportunity for all of us to come together and make the biggest impact possible – things really picked up steam. The enthusiasm from our partners and the wider community has been amazing.”

As part of the effort, WNC for the Planet launched an online community calendar at wncfortheplanet.org with educational and service opportunities for people of all ages and from all walks of life. Come hear Audrey & Frank Peterman speak on March 26 at UNCA about their book, Legacy on the Land: A Black Couple Discovers Our National Inheritance and Tells Why Every American Should Care. Recycle items that might otherwise end up in the landfill at Asheville GreenWorks’ Hard 2 Recycle event, and catch a screening of the documentary Look and See: A Portrait of Wendell Berry put on by the Organic Growers School. Or, learn how to build a bat box, restore native plant and animal habitats, and weatherize your home to fight climate change.

Keller Williams Realty and Movement Mortgage pitched in for a stream clean up last year.

WNC For The Planet also includes a Business & Community Challenge allowing area businesses, civic organizations and community groups to create teams and compete for prizes and bragging rights. Here’s how it works: Each team earns Planet Points according to how much you accomplish at WNC For the Planet events – how much trash you collect, how many trees you plant, etc. – and at the end of the month we rank your team against other teams. The harder your team works, the more points you earn. The more points you earn, the more you’ve helped keep Western North Carolina beautiful.

WNC for the Planet’s Earth Month culminates with a weekend of celebrations, including Earth Day Kids’ Festival with RiverLink on Saturday, April 21st, and MountainTrue’s annual Earth Day Vigil with faith groups on Sunday, April 22nd. Join us for a final Earth Day party to celebrate our hardworking volunteers and environmental advocates at New Belgium Brewing Company.

Want To See For Yourself?

Check out the WNC For the Planet Events Calendar

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