Flagpole Editorial Praises Ben Emanuel's Work on Oconee/Response to Trail Creek Spill

Friend of the River

August 10, 2010
By Pete McCommons | Flagpole

If Ben Emanuel didn’t exist, it would be necessary to invent him. Ben, as our readers know, is the former Flagpole City Editor who is now heading up the Oconee River Project of the Altamaha Riverkeeper.

The first thing Ben ever wrote for Flagpole was an account of one of his trips paddling Georgia rivers. By then he and some friends had floated most of Georgia’s major rivers for the Georgia River Survey, testing the water and recording results as they went. So, by the time Ben found Flagpole—where he started out working on the music calendar and running a delivery route—he already had a canoe-level knowledge of our river system.

During his tenure here, Ben spent some time down on the coast with James Holland, the legendary keeper of the Altamaha River, the former crab-boat owner who got interested in the health of the river when the crab catch began the drastic decline that eventually put him and most of the Georgia crab industry out of business.

Holland found out that river pollution destroyed the crabs and their habitat in theGeorgia marshes, and he helped organize Altamaha Riverkeeper.

Ben came back from his visit with Holland convinced that the Oconee River needs friends just as much as the Altamaha. In fact, the Oconee is the Altamaha, since it joins with the Ocmulgee River to form the Altamaha in a dramatic head-on collision near Lumber City.

Highways avoid streams as much as possible, so Georgia’s rivers are largely out of the automobile traveler’s view. The average Georgian just doesn’t think much of our rivers or all our other streams. It never occurs to us that our streams and rivers are used as sewers and industrial dumps. Cities and towns release their (treated) wastewater into our rivers; industries dump waste into them; fertilizer from farm lands, golf courses and suburban yards runs into our rivers with devastating effect on oxygen levels. Construction sites and farms siphon silt that strangles streams.

Ben had floated through that pollution: tested it, camped by it, seen it, smelled it; and this city guy from Decatur had become convinced that his mission in life was to protect the Oconee River, that long ecosystem that forms one of the main watersheds feeding Georgia’s largest river. A cool idea but not one that could be accomplished after-hours as a hobby. In order to work effectively on behalf of the Oconee, Ben had to figure out how to do it in the fulltime capacity demanded by the work of raising public awareness about the importance of our river.

Ben’s departure from Flagpole kept getting pushed back, frustrating him as much as it delighted us. He was faced with the familiar dilemma of how to create a job for yourself so that you can do what you want to do. Eventually, with the help of the Georgia River Network and the Altamaha Riverkeeper, Ben was able to cobble together enough river-related work that he could get started building a network of protection for the Oconee.

Even when he left to pursue his dream, we wondered what, exactly, a riverkeeper does, and maybe Ben wondered a little bit, too, but now we know. In our recent disaster on Trail Creek—which empties directly into the North Oconee—Ben Emanuel, more than any state or local official, was the man on the scene. As soon as it happened, Ben was out in the creek testing the water, monitoring it throughout the week, coordinating with UOWN, Grow Green and concerned citizens, communicating with government agencies and the press and pushing for more information, holding a public meeting to discuss concerns, requesting a meeting with the governments and the chemical company to consider further remediation. All of a sudden we understood what it means to have an experienced, dogged defender of the river on the job.

Ben’s Oconee Project is a subsidiary of the Altamaha Riverkeeper. We all can assist this work by joining up with a donation at www.altamahariverkeeper.org or sending a check to Altamaha Riverkeeper at P.O. Box 2642, Darien, GA 31305, mentioning the Oconee River Project on the memo line.

Our streams need more friends: let’s all be riverkeepers.

Oconee River Chemical Spill more details >>