Efforts in place to keep scenic areas pollution-free

By Brian Livingston

As you slowly and silently dip and then lift the paddle into the mirror smooth water, ripples move out away from the canoe.

When the ripples hit a shaft of sunlight piercing through the overhead canopy of pines and hardwoods, they glisten like stars in a nighttime sky. Leaves float alongside in the blue-green water spinning lazily as a breath of wind skips across the river like a stone. Fish peer up from their hiding spots wondering who it is who is passing over their domain.

Birds of all types flitter here and there. Their calls bounce off the water and trees reaching your ears in the form of a musical wildlife soundtrack. A deer lifts its head from the bank while taking a sip of the cool liquid, water dripping from its mouth.

The ever increasing sound of rushing water begins to drown out the bird calls.

Is it a set of rapids? Is there foaming white water that needs to be navigated? Should you fall to your knees in the bottom of the canoe to better stabilize yourself? You strain to pick up the narrow confluence in which the water grabs the bottom of the canoe as if an invisible hand were preparing to launch it into an abyss.

Just as your pulse quickens the canoe emerges from underneath the leafy ceiling of the forest to reveal a 65-foot waterfall off to the left. The suddenness of the spectacle makes your eyes widen and your breath to catch as the panoramic view comes into full sight. You don't even realize you are smiling at the massive amount of water cascading down Dunn's Falls.

Want to get away? Then take a canoe trip down the Chunky River.

This hypothetical trip down one of many waterways in Mississippi designated as a "Scenic Stream" is brought to you courtesy of the East Mississippi Foothills Land Trust (EMFLT). Tommy Vincent, president of the EMFLT, is intimately familiar with the scenario because he has experienced this same glide down the Chunky River many times. He never gets tired of it.

The East Mississippi Foothills Land Trust is a local conservation land trust established to provide a way for landowners who have land with scenic, historic, or cultural value to set aside the property for prosperity. More specifically, land trusts are private non-profit conservation organizations that are qualified to accept voluntary "conservation easements" and hold land in trust at the landowner's request.

Specifically, Vincent, the EMFLT and officials with the Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS) in Meridian, the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, The Mississippi Soil and Water Conservation Commission and the Lauderdale County Soil and Conservation District gathered Thursday to trumpet yet another victory in preserving the Chunky-Okatibbee Watershed Project, a project the EMFLT has taken on.

"Our mission is to conserve, promote and protect the open spaces and green places of ecological, cultural or scenic significance in East Mississippi," Vincent said. "Our organization, established in November 2003, adopted the Chunky River as our first project. We have been working very hard ever since and this latest addition to the project will continue to help further improve the Chunky River and the rest of the watershed all the way down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast."

The installation of four dry storage shacks in Lauderdale County and two in Kemper County will aid in preventing the contamination of creeks and rivers in the watershed by providing places for poultry farmers to dump chicken house waste. Vincent said by letting the waste dry out the harmful chemicals embedded inside the mounds of litter will have time to evaporate into the atmosphere.

"Rain normally carries these chemicals into the creeks and rivers thereby creating harmful levels in our water," Vincent pointed out. "The poultry farmers, after the waste has had time to dry out, can spread it out in their fields without causing damage to the environment. It is a win, win situation."

Kelvin Jackson, supervising district conservationist for the NRCS headquartered at the Department of Agriculture Center on Highway 19 South, said Vincent and the EMFLT were able to install the dry storage shacks with funding left over from the initial grant. The funding was presented through the MDEQ from the Department of Environmental Quality. Eco Systems of Meridian also helped in acquiring the funding.

"The EMFLT does a great job of bringing the message of environmental preservation to the schools so the generation we are trying to save this for will know what to do with it when they are old enough," Jackson said. "The volunteers of the EMFLT are trying very hard to be good stewards of our environment."

A watershed is land that drains rain or stormwater to a stream, lake, wetland, bay, gulf, or ocean. The Chunky-Okatibbee Watershed is a unique and critical component of Mississippi's natural environment. The Chunky-Okatibbee watershed flows into the Chickasawhay River which in turn carries the water into the Pascagoula River Basin. From there the water drains into the Gulf of Mexico. The watershed encompasses hundreds of small feeder creeks that cover large areas of Newton and Lauderdale County and smaller sections of Kemper, Neshoba and Clarke counties. In all, the Chunky-Okatibbee Watershed contains about 912 square miles or approximately 586,240 acres.

Waste products such as chicken house litter is referred to as a non-point pollution source. Other examples of this include oil, grease, excess fertilizers, herbicides, insecticides and toxic chemicals from nearby urban runoff and construction. Volunteers with the EMFLT set aside cleanup days and spend long hours of investigation to pinpoint areas of suspected pollution sources. They also doggedly take water samples of surrounding water sources to monitor water quality.

The dry storage shacks should all be installed in a couple of weeks. As soon as they are in place, the surrounding countryside will immediately benefit. Vincent is convinced this step will further ensure the watershed will be ever improving.

"The overall health of the watershed is good right now," said Vincent. "We think we can make it even better but we can't do it alone. Everyone should take responsibility and do everything they can to limit or eliminate altogether pollution to the environment."

At this moment in time, the aforementioned trip down the Chunky River can easily be experienced in real life. But Vincent warns if pollution is not checked at the launching ramp then those scenes he has witnessed first hand will not be around for our grandchildren to enjoy.





Volunteer:

Have time volunteer? Contact East Mississippi Foothills Land Trust to help with river cleanup and other conservation practices in the Chunky\Okatibbee basin area. There is currently a membership and sponsorship drive in progress. For more information you can contact:

East Mississippi

Foothills Land Trust

Post Office Box 1608

Meridian, MS 39302

Call Tommy Vincent (601) 484-2564 or email: trvincen@southernco.com

for more information, or go to the EMFLT Web site at, www.emflt.org

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