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Not many know about the 310 acre Preserve owned by the Nature Conservancy on Keel Mountain, purchased in 2003 to protect the Endangered Morefield’s Leatherflower. But so much more is there—Chittamwood or American Smoketree, prickly pear cactus, Limerock arrowwood, and Cumberland Rosinweed. The first and last will not be visible in the winter, but this hike will allow you to see a historically important spring and “lost sinks” that fed them, where water never stops running on Keel’s mountainside above 1100’. One sink is over 100’ deep—and we will go into it if it is not too slippery. The water here all supplies the Flint River.
TNC purchased this land after Soos Weber did several years of grant investigation through the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and pushed for the purchase of the property. The State Champion Chittamwood is also in the area, atop the geologic formation known as Candlestand, and barn owls and the Allegheny woodrat also live in the caves beneath Candlestand.
This is a moderately tough hike, and you will need hiking boots, water and lunch. We will meet in front of Regions Bank in Hampton Cove at 10 a.m. If it rains or is bitter cold, it will be postponed until June, when the Leatherflower is in bloom. Call Soos at 427-5116 or 509-1219 for more information.
Please join us for the next FRCA general meeting on February 16. This month, Jennifer Pinkley, the current president of FRCA, will give a presentation on the Clean Water Act. You’ll learn about the Act’s origins, how it has improved our nation’s water, and the methods Alabama uses to enforce the Clean Water Act. Next, we’ll discuss the Alabama River Alliance’s recent petition with the EPA to withdraw the state’s authority over Alabama’s water pollution permitting program because it does not meet the minimum requirements of the Clean Water Act.
The meeting will be held at 320 Fountain Circle starting at 7:00. Visit our Meetings page for directions. See you there!
On January 15 the Alabama Rivers Alliance and 14 other Alabama environmental groups filed a petition with the Environmental Protection Agency to to withdraw the state’s authority over Alabama’s water pollution permitting program because it does not meet the minimum requirements of the Clean Water Act.
“The water pollution permitting program administered by the Alabama Department of Environmental Management (ADEM) is fundamentally broken and does not meet minimum federal standards,” stated Alabama Rivers Alliance Program Director Mitch Reid. “This failure is a systemic, statewide problem. From funding to implementation to enforcement, the failures of the current system are leaving the citizens and environment of Alabama unprotected.”
The water pollution permitting program, known as the National Pollutant Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) is a part of the federal Clean Water Act. Each state is required to implement at least the minimum standards required in the federal law.
For more than a decade, environmental and citizen organizations have worked with state agency leaders to find ways to improve this program. When that failed, the petitioners sought relief through the Alabama Environmental Management Commission (EMC), a seven-member governing board of ADEM appointed by the Governor of Alabama. Solutions have also been sought, when necessary, in the courts.
While there have been modest gains on a few individual issues, these have not addressed the substantial systemic failures of Alabama’s water pollution permitting program. Intervention by the Environmental Protection Agency is the only relief left available to the environmental community to ensure the proper actions are taken to fix this defective program.
The petition initiates a legal process that is expected to engage EPA, ADEM, and all interested parties in developing concrete solutions to reform ADEM’s water pollution permitting program.
The goal of the petitioners is for Alabama’s water pollution permitting program to meet or exceed minimum federal standards under the Clean Water Act in order to protect human health and the environment for the citizens of Alabama.
Here is the January/December edition of Currents. We hope you enjoy it!
Don’t forget… our upcoming Holiday Meeting will be Tuesday, Dec. 15th, 6:30 pm at the Burritt Museum!
FRCA will provide the turkey, ham, and beverages- please bring your favorite holiday side dish and that serving spoon(!) to share. Friends and family are encouraged to join us for this very special event.
We hope to see you there! If you have any questions, send an email flintriverconservation@gmail.com or call 509-1219.
Mark your calendar now for the FRCA holiday party on Tuesday, December 15 at Burritt Museum’s Trillium Room. We’re planning to get started at 6:00 with a half hour of socializing, and dinner will start at 6:30. FRCA will provide the main dishes (turkey and ham) and drinks. We ask that you bring a dish to share. This event is open to everyone, so bring your friends and family!
UPDATE: Our speaker for the evening is Sandy Kirkindall. Sandy is the former Mayor of Madison, AL and has a long history in conservation. The Nature Conservancy is busy saving many of the most significant areas of Alabama, and Sandy is one of the board members making those decisions. As a regular member of TNC since 1981and a board member for 12 years, he and his wife Melissa are also avid birders. He has worked for the US Army Defense much of his adult life, and with NASA for 24 years until taking on the role of Madison Mayor. The program will enlighten us about the Nature Conservancy’s conservation programs (over 150,000 acres protected), in Alabama, with emphasis on the Paint Rock Valley whose headwaters include the Walls of Jericho, and the Keel Mountain Preserve in the Flint River Watershed. Both of these projects were spearheaded and purchased by TNC.
According to a story on NPR’s Morning Edition, water use has gone down over the past 30 years, mostly in industrial in agricultural applications.
Here are a few recent newspaper articles from around the state about ADEM, EPA enforcement actions, and water quality issues around the state.
ADEM wter pollution penalties drop 78 percent; other enforcement measures down:
During 2009 fiscal year, state assessed $286,100 for pollution violations, down from $1.2 million in each of the two previous years. David Ludder, an environmental lawyer and former ADEM employee, analyzed ADEM’s enforcement records for the Reform Coalition. He said other enforcement indicators are off as well, in particular noting that the number of companies filing required paperwork related to their water permits had declined dramatically. Penalties, Ludder said, are the only effective way to enforce the law. “Their inspections are down, their enforcement is down,” Ludder said. “All that will lead to companies that are looking to save money abandoning their compliance activities. We’re already hearing … that ADEM is absent, and the companies are feeling that they can get away with more.”
EPA fines Chelsea, Sheffield operations in water quality enforcement drive
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency announced Tuesday it had fined a local developer $20,000 and a public utility in Sheffield $900 as part of an effort regionally and nationally to warn of tighter enforcement of the national Clean Water Act. Environmental groups say the federal oversight is sorely needed. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management issues storm water pollution permits for construction projects of one acre or more, but Birmingham’s ADEM field office has only four inspectors monitoring those construction sites in 23 central Alabama counties. Three inspectors oversee business, government and industrial dischargers in the same counties.
Our View: With storm water cooperative gutted, Jefferson County cities will find it harder to meet tougher federal clean water requirements
Developers and large industrial landowners won their battle in gutting the cooperative that monitors storm water runoff for area local governments. But examples continue to surface that their Pyrrhic victory could come back to haunt them and the local governments that sided with them… In July, an audit by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency found that Shelby County’s program for detecting and preventing pollution from storm water runoff was deficient, and the county could face possible penalties… More important, the EPA, under a new administration, said its enforcement actions were meant to send “a strong message about the importance of protecting rivers, lakes and streams across the Southeast.” That involves stepping up oversight of state clean water programs, including more aggressive enforcement at smaller pollution sources such as construction and drainage sites.
Check out this excellent editorial in the New York Times: Clean Water, Still Elusive. You may know that the Clean Water Act, signed into law in 1972, has made great strides to make our water safer. Unfortunately, as the editorial points out, the law has gotten a bit old and stale and is falling short of its goals.For example:
“Nearly 20 million Americans fall ill every year from drinking water contaminated with parasites, bacteria or viruses. Polluters — public and private, large and small — treat the law with contempt. Violations have jumped significantly. Penalties for noncompliance are small and rarely assessed.”
 Here in Alabama, the agency responsible for enforcing clean water standards is the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. According to the ADEM Reform Coalition, ADEM only handed out $286,100 in fines for water pollution violations during the 2009 fiscal year, compared to more than $1.2 million in each of the two preceding years. The photo to the right shows just one example of totally inadequate erosion control at a construction site that is letting dirt get into our streams and rivers, hurting the natural beauty of our waterways and harming aquatic life. Hopefully the new EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson will be moving her attention to states and whether or not each state is properly enforcing the Clean Water Act:
“President Obama’s new team seems to be paying attention — chiefly Lisa Jackson, the administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, which oversees the act as well as a related measure, the Safe Drinking Water Act. Ms. Jackson has ordered an assessment of the agency’s shortcomings, promised stronger enforcement, added new chemicals to the long list of contaminants and promised to investigate others. But she agrees that more must be done, by her and by others.
POLICE THE STATES As with most environmental laws, responsibility is shared. Washington sets the health standards; the states write and enforce the permits, which tell polluters what can and cannot be discharged into the water. Some states are tough, others weak, but in all cases the E.P.A. has the authority to intervene and enforce the laws when states fail. Worried about disturbing the federal-state balance, intimidated by industry, the E.P.A. has never used this power the way it should.”
We recently received this message from the EPA’s Assessment and Watershed Protection Division:
EPA’s Nonpoint Source Grants Reporting and Tracking System (GRTS) is the primary tool for management and oversight of state Nonpoint Source (NPS) Management Programs under Section 319 of the Clean Water Act. EPA recently added new tools to the GRTS database to enable the public to search for information about NPS pollution control projects. One way to search the database is to perform a criteria-based query. This method is best for finding 319 projects that meet certain conditions; for example, NPS projects that implement a Total Maximum Daily Load to control mine waste, or projects implementing best management practices for waters polluted by urban runoff.
To search for projects, visit http://iaspub.epa.gov/grts/projects. Another new search tool is the interactive map, which enables browsing for project information by watershed. Simply use the find, pan, and zoom buttons to navigate to the location of interest, and the 319 projects will appear, summarized by watershed. At a regional scale, projects are displayed by subbasins (8-digit hydrologic units), and at a local scale, by subwatersheds (12-digit hydrologic units). Check out the GRTS Map Viewer at: http://iaspub.epa.gov/grts/map. For more information on GRTS, please visit www.epa.gov/nps/grts, or contact Santina Wortman at wortman.santina@epa.gov.
Please join us for a public meeting! Our speaker will be Dr. Steve McKinney and he will discuss “Environmental Economics: The nature of value vs. the value of nature”. He is founder and President of Spatial Information & Computing Systems Consultants, LLC. Dr. McKinney merges Graphic Information System (GIS) information with technology to solve environmental problems, and is working on projects in 3rd world countries.
For the street address and a map, see the Meetings page.
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