‘Everybody needs clean water ... It’s not a hard sell’
Coosa River Basin Initiative is protecting local waterways.
It’s a fact of life — water is essential to life, clean water even more so.
“Everybody needs clean water,” said Jesse Demonbreun-Chapman, Executive Director and Riverkeeper at Coosa River Basin Initiative. “It’s not a hard sell.”
Demonbreun-Chapman is one of those people that you can tell is passionate about what they do — he can talk about CRBI all day without it feeling like a lecture. And considering just how busy CRBI is, that’s probably a good thing.
CRBI, a Rome-based 501c3, is a tiny organization — just Demonbreun-Chapman, Communications Manager Courtney Altice, and Outreach Programs Manager Courtnee Davenport. The scale of what CRBI is capable of versus the number of staff they have is mind boggling.
As Demonbreun-Chapman put it: “A small, local nonprofit in Rome, Georgia has no business amending Georgia’s constitution.”
But CRBI did, actually, do just that.
In November 2020, a statewide referendum passed Georgia Amendment 1, the Dedicating Tax and Fee Revenue Amendment. This was a major success for CRBI, who had fought for years to get that kind of amendment passed.
According to DemonbreunChapman, there were several fees enacted by the state — tipping fees at landfills, fees on car tires, and other miscellaneous environmental fees — that were supposed to be earmarked to go towards cleaning up illegal tire dumps and abandoned hazard sites, towards helping municipalities fix issues at landfills, and other far reaching things that would improve property values and reduce exposure to environmental contaminants.
“The state would collect all of these fines and then only give a small portion of what they collected back to those programs. The overwhelming majority of the money they collected vanished into the general fund,” he said.
In doing this, the state was ignoring hazardous sites for decades as they languished, waiting to be cleaned up.
“We took issue with that practice,” DemonbreunChapman said.
And so for seven years, CRBI fought to get the law changed, to make sure that those funds were earmarked for environmental cleanup. Demonbreun-Chapman was present for six years of the fight, spearheading the effort.
“I thought of almost nothing else for five legislative sessions,” he said.
As of May 2023, the fight was finally over. Governor Brian Kemp signed House Bill 31, which used the new amendment to dedicate those fees to their intended purpose.
It’s almost unimaginable — a small team in Rome, Georgia made enough noise to change the state constitution, an effort requiring two-thirds majority in both chambers of the legislature and approval via referendum. And it passed by a wide margin, with nearly 82% of voters okaying the amendment and more than 90% of each chamber approving.
Demonbreun-Chapman credits the strength of their partnerships with their success. For example, Amendment 1 was passed through a partnership with Georgia Water Coalition as well as with state politicians. But it’s not just amending the state constitution that requires strong partnerships.
“Nearly every one of our projects involves some kind of partnership with somebody else,” he said.
They receive help from a large number of different people and organizations — academia, nonprofits, local governments, you name it.
“We are just very intentional about pulling people in and helping move the vision behind some of these projects forward collectively,” Demonbreun-Chapman said.
In fact, working collectively seems to be deeply-knit in the organization. It started off with a group of people in a living room in downtown Rome, concerned about the effect of failing septic systems on Lake Weiss. Then, later, the organization worked to get people interested in recreating on the waterways.
The belief was, as Demonbreun-Chapman put it, “The more people fall in love with the adventure of these rivers, the more advocates we’ll have for protecting it and cleaning it up.”
That phase of the organization’s life created the Etowah Water Trail, which features a dozen boat ramps across its 163 miles. When CRBI started its efforts, there were only two.
“That was a huge success for the organization and the partners that worked on it,” he said.
Recreational use of the waterways is still a big thing at CRBI — which is why they are an affiliate with Swim Guide, an interactive map of bacteria levels in recreation areas, including on the Coosawattee and the Oostanaula, which run through Gordon County.
Each Thursday from Memorial Day through Labor Day, staff from CRBI go out and collect samples from the waterways and bring it back to the office, where it’s
analyzed for the level of E. coli present. Those results are published each Friday by noon at theswimguide. org and coosa.org.
Not only does the Swim Guide allow people to make an informed decision about using waterways for recreation, it also serves as a good opportunity for young people to get involved with the organization. The Swim Guide data CRBI publishes is largely thanks to a team of interns, both paid and unpaid, and students who help out by doing both field work and lab work for the project.
Demonbreun-Chapman said that anyone looking to
get involved in Swim Guide testing can check out CRBI’s website for more information and to apply.
That’s not the only way that students can get involved with CRBI. DemonbreunChapman said that while COVID was difficult on their efforts to get involved in education, the organization is trying something new to get young people interested in the waterways.
One of CRBI’s next big projects is going to be what Demonbreun-Chapman described as a competitive youth symposium open to youth across the Coosa River Basin. The intent is to introduce students to what careers exist within waterway conservation.
“Our fundamental goal is to expose students to these career paths earlier and go ahead and get them some contacts in the field,” said Demonbreun-Chapman. “We really are excited.”
The youth symposium, headed up by Courtnee Davenport, will allow an educator to register a team of students who want to tackle a project related to water — research, bank stabilization, anything related to water. Teams will be assigned a professional mentor from CRBI’s network of partners who will help plan the project and check in on teams’ progress.
Students will have a full school year to work on that project, then in the spring,
CRBI will host a symposium where students present their findings and work to a panel of experts from across the field.
There will be prizes in both the middle and high school categories awarded for teams’ presentations and work. Those prizes would go back into the schools’ STEM programs.
Not only that, DemonbreunChapman said they’re working to get together need-based seed grants for schools that may not have the resources to do those sort of projects or teachers who may not have the classroom budget for that. Those grants would be used to purchase supplies and equipment.
“Our goal is to help remove barriers for students in every location to participate in this,” said DemonbreunChapman.
CRBI’s education programming doesn’t just extend to students — one thing that Demonbreun-Chapman is excited to talk about is their podcast, “Downstream.” The brainchild of DemonbreunChapman and Courtney Altice, “Downstream” presents Indigenous perspectives on conservation.
“We represent a region that has a rich history of Native American life, specifically Muskogee and Cherokee,” said Demonbreun-Chapman.
He went on to say that forced removal — which began after an agreement signed at New Echota in Calhoun — has removed those voices from the conversation, and that CRBI wants to get insights from Indigenous folks about shaping, informing, and improving conservation.
That podcast features an introductory episode, then episodes featuring longform interviews with different leaders, activists, academics, spiritual practitioners, and conservationists from tribal
groups across the southeast and in Oklahoma. Those interviews will also address CRBI’s work and the work that tribal organizations do, and what perspectives that conservationists need to be reminded of in the future.
“Really the goal is to take these Indigenous Peoples’ groups out of dusty history books and remind people that these tribal groups are very much active today,” said Demonbreun-Chapman.
Whereas there’s a huge focus in CRBI’s programming on education, water monitoring, and advocacy, they also do a lot of restoration work for waterways. That includes habitat restoration and species protection work — stopping banks of rivers from failing, keeping cattle out of waterways, and restoring water quality in headwater streams.
“We do a lot of projects that are really geared towards improving water quality and habitat quality for endangered species,” Demonbreun-Chapman said.
They’ve also been working nonstop on cleaning up PFAS, also known as forever chemicals, which are toxic substances that can cause severe, long-term health problems in those that consume them in the water.
“That is a big, heavy advocacy focus right now,” he said.
PFAS are largely related to the textile and carpet industries that call Northwest Georgia home and its waterways home. CRBI has been working hard to get those cleaned up, and to stop companies from continuing to contaminate the water.
“They have the ability to do it, they just need the willpower,” Demonbreun-Chapman said.
Protecting the waterways has been the main goal throughout the organization’s thirty-year history — and something that Demonbreun-Chapman would like
to see the organization expand on in the future.
“I think that the pie in the sky dream would be more representation across the entire drainage,” he said.
That means more people on the ground, working with local governments to protect drinking water. That means satellite offices, more partnerships, and a larger profile.
“If I could see into the future thirty years, my hope would be that CRBI’s profile has grown and more and more communities see us as an asset and an ally — someone worth partnering with in our efforts to grow our communities sustainably in the future,” said Demonbreun-Chapman.
Clean water isn’t some big ticket issue that the average person can’t do anything about. In fact, Demonbreun-Chapman has some pretty easy ways residents can help out.
“The initial step and buyin is to go online and become a member,” he said.
Becoming a member gets you on their email list to stay up to date on CRBI’s current projects, as well as grows the network of people across the basin that CRBI can call on. That allows them to ask about issues and get help fixing issues they’re working on. That, and the $35 regular membership fee ($50 for a family, $15
for seniors and students) goes back into supporting CRBI’s programming.
Demonbreun-Chapman said the other way people can help is just to be vocal about issues that are going on in their own communities.
“Help be our eyes and ears,” he said. “We need committed people that are willing to let us know when something doesn’t look like, doesn’t smell right — when something needs to be fixed.”
He said that if something is endangering the waterways, CRBI wants to know about it and get involved to protect waterways. And that’s something that’s hard to do with a three-person organization trying to cover a 5,500 square mile basin.
For those wanting to get hands-on, there’s always volunteer opportunities too. Anyone wanting to volunteer can sign up on their website, coosa.org, or sign up to become a member and keep an eye out for newsletters.
“Our goal is always to protect the waterways, to improve water quality, and to protect the people and critters that rely on the waterways,” Demonbreun-Chapman said.
And if that resonates with you — visit coosa.org to sign up, check out Coosa River Basin Initiative on Facebook, or on X (formerly Twitter) and Instagram @coosariverbasin.