Earth Day is Com­ing!

Sed­i­ment pol­lu­tion in a muddy river _ USGS Photo

April 22nd, 2010 is Earth Day.

This has turned out to be a greater than one day event.  Earth Day has takenon  a global aware­ness month sta­tus with events and cam­paigns to high­light ser­vice to the environment.

As an homage to that I am going to be writ­ing a series of arti­cles high­light­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties to give back to Mother Earth for this Earth Day Month of April.

My per­sonal vol­un­teer efforts will be in the area of water resources.  I’m join­ing a River Cleanup of the Neuse River, because water resources are near and dear to my heart.

Shortly after my 2^nd year at  UGA’s School of the Envi­ron­ment and Design, water resources loomed large on my hori­zon and every project I did some­how included ways to con­serve or pre­serve water resources.

Stormwa­ter, runoff, con­structed stormwa­ter wet­lands, con­structed waste­water wet­lands, soil and water con­ser­va­tion, low impact devel­op­ment, stream restora­tion, rain gar­dens, ero­sion con­trol, non-point source pollution.

You name it and I wanted to tackle it with all the zeal of an awak­ened neo­phyte in the world of envi­ron­men­tal design.  All it took to get me started was see­ing the dev­as­ta­tion that sub­ur­ban devel­op­ment was caus­ing in local water­sheds when I was trot­ting around doing site analysis.

Then, I had a cou­ple intern­ships and got an even closer look at what is going on to our drink­ing water sup­plies, and how the prob­lems might be effec­tively mit­i­gated.  After that, every­where I went, all I could see was bad land­scape design con­tribut­ing to water resource prob­lems.  It was enough to turn any sane per­son into a water activist, not say­ing I’m sane or anything.

No, sane is not defined by want­ing to stand up and yell at some­one for mak­ing such a mess and call­ing it design.

Water became my rai­son d’être.  All I wanted to do was to work in the field of water resources.  And I did, for a while, but all good things come to an end.  Now I get to write about water in the land­scape instead of design for it. Not a bad trade-off in my book.

So, I am going to kick off this great month of envi­ron­men­tal aware­ness with water resources as my first theme.

You may be ask­ing, “What does this have to do with my gar­den or land­scape?”  Every­thing, dear friends.  If you have a home, and water falls on that prop­erty, that water even­tu­ally ends up in the water sup­ply, no mat­ter what.

What this water takes with it on its jour­ney to the sea makes or breaks an ecosys­tem, and the safety and purity of your drink­ing water supply.

• Rain from your roof and dri­ve­way flushes toxic waste into stormwater.
• Water drain­ing from your yard car­ries any fer­til­izer, insec­ti­cides and her­bi­cides you have used directly to streams and wells.
• Stormwa­ter sends seeds and sprouts from inva­sive exotic plants float­ing away from your yard and deposits them in the stream and all along the way.  Just take a look at the pur­ple looses­trife infes­ta­tion for a lit­tle case study on this kind of pollution.
• New con­struc­tion sites and improp­erly graded land loses soil to ero­sion and the sed­i­ment is deposited into streams and rivers.  Yes, indeed, those “ero­sion con­trol” mea­sures are usu­ally half mea­sures that break down before the project is fin­ished… but,  “So what if the silt fence is down?  No one’s look­ing, right?”  Egad, what irresponsibility.
• Pet waste left in the yard, or park, or street gut­ter con­tributes bac­te­r­ial and nutri­ent waste to our water supplies.
• Trash that breaks loose dur­ing storm events fre­quently gets washed along and ends up in the stream or river.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

My chil­dren used to come home on Earth Day all pumped up about environmentalism…that is until I said,  “Okay, then you are in charge of recy­cling here at home.”  Well that was the end of their enthu­si­asm, but not the end of their con­tin­u­ing edu­ca­tion about doing, not talking.

Well after this dis­course, I have to ask, “Are you doing, or just talk­ing about going green this Earth Day?”    We don’t have to tackle the world’s prob­lems, just address a cou­ple in our backyard.

I want to chal­lenge you this Earth Day to do some­thing for you, your fam­ily, your com­mu­nity and your earth by join­ing a river cleanup this year.  Many water­shed pro­tec­tion orga­ni­za­tions are spon­sor­ing cleanups in lit­er­ally hun­dreds of areas around the country.

You can look on the web­site for Amer­i­can Rivers to see if there is already one orga­nized for your local water­shed.  If you don’t see one for your area, get a bunch of friends together this month and orga­nize one.  Amer­i­can Rivers has all the infor­ma­tion you need to suc­cess­fully stage a cleanup for your local needy water source.

If you have never taken part in some­thing like this, it will make a believer out of you.  You will never for­get how we affect our water sup­plies by what we do at home.

Every lit­tle bit helps, so just do some­thing.   It does not mat­ter what we intend to do, just what we actu­ally accom­plish. Yep, just do it.

Vol­un­teer your ser­vices to cel­e­brate Earth Day this month and  this year  for a more sus­tain­able and  greener tomorrow.

Please let us know about your green up, cleanup efforts.  You can send pic­tures, post events, tell your story.  You’ll make us smile.  We all want to know what’s hap­pen­ing on the green water resource scene.