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Summer/Fall 1999 |
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First, I want to apologize for the late Chattooga Quarterly. Our goal is to publish another Quarterly soon, this fall. The reasons for our tardiness will be evident as you read this Summer/Fall edition. The subject of my editorial is specific to the three major issues that came unexpectedly through our door this summer like successive tidal waves. All three issues, which were the body recovery at Raven Chute, the lack of enforcement of erosion and sedimentation laws at the Kingwood golf course development, and the loss of the option to purchase the West Fork property, sapped our time and resources this summer. These problems are all symptoms of the same disease of apathy toward conservation issues. Until we treat this disease, we are destined to fight the same battles over and over again. When we lost the West Fork (see Watershed Update, Chattahooche National Forest), the reasons were the lack of political priority and an inept bureaucracy. Purchase of the West Fork property by the Forest Service would have essentially completed the acquisition of the designated Chattooga Wild and Scenic Rivers Corridor, thus protecting a national treasure for posterity. But with the fight over the budget raging in Washington, the Forest Service saw the handwriting on the wall and sacrificed the West Fork for other priorities. This triage in high priority land acquisition is related to the ongoing raid of the 900 million dollars in federal Land and Water Conservation Fund to fund the federal deficit, and help pay for a proposed tax cut that would mainly benefit the wealthy. Evidence of this was the Forest Service’s low appraisal of the property. Consequently, the land trust holding an option on the West Fork property with the intent to sell it to the Forest Service dropped the option, unable to absorb the difference in the asking price. Unless we work a miracle, this dwindling vestige of wild America will be subdivided, developed and lost forever. In the case of the lack of enforcement of erosion and sedimentation laws at the Kingwood golf course (see p. 16), the problem was already weak law, unenforced for lack of political will and appropriations. Our monitoring of the sediment that was washed by rain into Chechero Creek, a tributary to the Chattooga River, totaled over 11,000 milligrams per liter of suspended solids. This data was obtained through professional monitoring work done for us by Brewer and Associates, verified by a certified laboratory. When the state and federal bureaucrats were notified they were "alarmed," but took no action. As a result of numerous complaints by the CRWC the developer repaired the silt fences and rolled out buffer strips of sod; yet, the damage had been done. Chechero Creek, by the way, has been identified by the Environmental Protection Agency as an "impaired waterway" due to its excessive sedimentation. Scientists tell us that the additional sediment added to Chechero Creek will take hundreds of years to clear, and for all this time will be flushing down the Chattooga River. Meanwhile, the plan is to be playing golf by November. When Senator Strom Thurmond and his staff charged in to "help" with the recovery of Rachel Trois’ body from the Chattooga River (see p. 7), their political bravado and total disregard for appropriate conservation measures caused a "false" controversy, which was polarized by the media and hindered rescue workers, communications, and jeopardized safety. Worse yet, the policy of "no holes barred" rescue techniques has set a dangerous precedent for future search and rescue operations. Yet through the human spirit, rescuers pulled together through it all to the finish, even though nearly all resources had been exhausted. In my opinion, all three events were a product of one thing: political corruption perpetuated through a perverse system of campaign financing. An 82 year old woman who recently completed a walk across America to promote campaign finance reform said, "While wealth has always influenced our politics, what is new is the increasing concentration of wealth and the widening divide between the political interest of the common people and the political interest of the very wealthy who are now able to buy our willing leaders wholesale." If we want protection for our streams’ water quality, if we want congress to place a priority on conservation, if we want bureaucracies to do their jobs with the funding and incentive to perform, we need a "new" congress, one that responds to everyday people, not to special interest big money that sends them to Washington. We need campaign finance reform. |