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On November 20, 2012, delegations from the United States and Mexico met in San Diego, California to sign a historic binational agreement that will help shape the future of the Colorado River.

Minute 319, an amendment to the 1944 Treaty with Mexico, signifies an important shift in attitude towards water sharing and conservation—a pivotal step in creating a more equitable binational water distribution policy that maintains the integrity of the entire Colorado River watershed while satisfying the needs of the farmers, the fishermen, and the communities that depend on this vital river. By promoting the ecological health of the Colorado River Delta, this agreement provides an avenue for restoring critical base flow to the lower basin so the river may once again reach the sea.

In Blue Legacy’s film, Death of a River: The Colorado River Delta, we explore why it is so important for this iconic river to reach the Gulf of California, and why the prosperity of our communities is intricately tied to the health of our watersheds. In the film, while prowling the waters of La Ciénega de Santa Clara, we are presented with a vision of a restored, vibrant wetland ecosystem. The scene serves as a bittersweet reminder of what we have lost these past several decades—and what we continue to fight for.

Minute 319 marks a turning point in a long and committed effort by environmental advocates and community leaders on both sides of the border to restore the Lower Colorado River and the surrounding delta region. For an ecosystem that has been severely damaged by decades of over allocation and inequitable management, this agreement represents the beginning of a renewed, deepened partnership between the US and Mexico that will take the ecological health of the region into greater consideration when developing water management schemes in the future.

Here at Blue Legacy, we would like to extend heartfelt congratulations to everyone that has worked so hard to make this happen. Together, we are taking back this watershed.

And when water starts to trickle into the gulf once more, the estuary will begin to recover, and a rich web of life will slowly return to what is now mostly a desolate mudflat.

With the passage of this historic agreement, the finish line is nearly in sight. Now is the time to take this momentum—and ride it all the way to the sea.

To learn more about the work being done to reconnect the Colorado River to the sea, check out this recent BLOG POST by National Geographic Freshwater Fellow, Sandra Postel.

Read the PRESS RELEASE from the U.S. Department of Interior.

Federal District Court Rules TVA Negligent

On August 22, federal district court Judge Thomas Varlan ruled that the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) was negligent in its conduct and will be held liable for damages caused by their massive coal ash spill into the Emory River and the surrounding community of Harriman, Tennessee on Dec. 22, 2008.

This ruling is an important victory for the people and the waterway that were devastated by this preventable tragedy when a 70 foot tall dam catastrophically and suddenly failed sending more than 1 billion gallons of toxic coal ash from TVA’s Kingston coal fired power plant into the surrounding community and the Emory River.

Watch Blue Legacy's film CLEAN COAL: WATER POLLUTION AT THE LIGHT SWITCH to see the effect toxic coal ash has on waterways and aquatic life.

I was awoken today by the sound of raindrops on my windowsill. Sitting down at my desk, with the peaceful patter of water helping me to collect my thoughts and prepare for the day, I was stunned to read a report that enumerates a truth I already knew all too well.

Today, American Rivers released its annual America’s Most Endangered Rivers report. On the list, there are rivers under threat from natural gas development, the construction of new dams and reservoirs, mountaintop removal for coal mining, and excessive water withdrawals. Looking over these threats, it is clear that what is fundamentally at risk is the quality and quantity of our freshwater—water that we can swim in, drink, and fish from… water that is there when and where we need it.

And at the top of the list this year is a river that continues to be in serious danger from pollution—a threat that is only heightened as members of Congress zealously crusade to dismantle and rollback key provisions of the Clean Water Act, the single most important piece of environmental legislation designed to protect our freshwater. The Potomac River, which flows through our nation’s capital from the storied depths of our country’s past, is #1 on the list of America’s Most Endangered Rivers of 2012.

In some ways, I am not surprised. In 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson called the Potomac “a national disgrace” because the river was a cesspool of sewage and industrial chemicals. Yet, despite how disheartening this observation may have been, it served as a much-needed wake-up call for our country. In fact, his remark was a major catalyst—among other observations like it concerning rivers across the United States—for the passage of the Clean Water Act of 1972. And with the passage of this groundbreaking legislation, we witnessed an unprecedented resurgence of the Potomac and rivers across the country over the last few decades.

But the fight to restore our rivers clearly wasn’t over. In 2010, rounding out our 17,100 mile journey across North America, I brought my Blue Legacy crew to the Potomac River to reconnect with the watershed many of us call home. Yet, the message we took back from our final expedition stop was not one of hope and optimism—but rather, a message of uncertainty and ongoing threat.

While advancements have been made to partially restore its health and preserve the integrity of its rich natural habitat, the Potomac River is still threatened on a number of fronts. In our film, “Our Nation’s River: A System on the Edge,” we investigate the ongoing challenges the river faces, with experts including: Potomac Riverkeeper, Ed Merrifield; Sandra Postel, founder of the Global Water Policy Project and National Geographic Freshwater Fellow; Chuck Fox, from the EPA; and The Nature Conservancy’s Stephanie Flack. From these interviews, it is clear that the river and its tributaries—and the people and communities that depend on them—are in still in jeopardy, because, today, the Potomac River barely sits on the edge of recovery.

The worst part about the situation is that, in despite of what scientists and water conservationists are telling us about the delicate state of the Potomac, Congress is actively pursuing legislation that will reduce federal environmental oversight of our lakes, rivers, and streams. Here are some specific bills that are meant to undermine the Clean Water Act that has protected our waters for so long: 

H.R. 2018: Clean Water Cooperative Federalism Act of 2011 – This bill wouldamend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to preserve the authority of each State to make determinations relating to the State's water quality standards, and for other purposes.The bill, which has already passed through the House, also calls for a number of limits to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), in terms of its ability to revise or introduce water quality standards for a pollutant (unless the state concurs with the EPA Administrator's opinion), and also would shorten the window during which the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service could comment on dredge and fill permits.

H.R. 872: The Reducing Regulatory Burdens Act – This billwould amend the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act and the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify Congressional intent regarding the regulation of the use of pesticides in or near navigable waters, and for other purposes.The bill, which has also passed the House, would make it so parties are no longer required to seek a permit before using a pesticide, even if that pesticide could enter a waterway, as long as the pesticide is authorized for sale, distribution, or use under FIFRA.

H.R. 4153: Chesapeake Bay Program Reauthorization and Improvement Act – This bill, spearheaded by Congressman Bob Goodlatte, aims to support efforts to reduce pollution of the Chesapeake Bay watershed.But, in reality, the bill would limit what Congressman Goodlatte considers the EPA’s overreaching authority by giving states, rather than the federal government, the ability to set acceptable levels of pollution entering the Chesapeake Bay watershed.

Source: Outside Magazine, “The 10 Most Endangered U.S. Rivers of 2012,” published May 14, 2012.

So, what is there left to do? Should we throw-up our hands in the air in defeat, and let the devastation to our “nation’s river” continue unabated—not to mention the hundreds of lakes, rivers, and tributaries across the country which are still under threat? I am writing today to emphatically say NO! We all have a voice, and together we can make a positive difference.

Help protect America’s #1 Most Endangered River and rivers nationwide—tell your local government official why you care about the Potomac River, and why it is so important that the Clean Water Act is protected. But why stop there? Rivers across America need our support. All of the rivers on this list—and the hundreds that did not make it this year—represent a front line in the struggle against environmental de-regulation. Make no mistake, this water belongs to the people and the communities we live in, and we will not give up our right to protect our water without a fight. We need strong federal oversight to make sure these laws are followed.

Listening to the sound of raindrops outside my window, I am reminded of a simple, yet powerful truth. Each one of those drops has begun an incredible journey. Sliding off a leaf, it lands in a puddle on the street, and flows into the storm drain. And at the end of the pipe, it will become one with the Potomac River and eventually, as it re-enters the water cycle once again, part of each one of us. The waters of our rivers course through our veins. So, for the sake of our health, and the health of our children, it’s time we did something to stop the degradation of our rivers—of the Potomac—because we never want to see our nation’s river—or any of the rivers that run through our communities—on the most endangered list ever again.

© Blue Legacy/Oscar Durand

We are as close to the salmon cages as we can get, telephoto lenses out, video rolling. From our vantage point, fisherman Reid Brown’s 45-foot boat the Rebecca and Shelley, we don’t see any salmon but the seabirds clamoring around the raised salmon cages are excited about something here in Passamaquoddy Bay on the Bay of Fundy.

This region is throne to a wealth of wild marine diversity and biomass, a bounty that is augmented (and unseated in the opinion of some) by booming salmon farms. There are 95 salmon farms in New Brunswick’s waters that produce 26,000 metric tones of salmon each year. Together they stock enough smolt, roughly 12 million, to outnumber people in New Brunswick 16 to one.

The waters that Brown has fished for 47 years show signs of malcontent. “The microorganisms seem to be disappearing, zooplankton and so on,” says Brown. “Means no food for the fish.” It’s unclear whether the drop in zooplankton is linked to salmon farming but other connections are more obvious, such as the lobster kill last year traced to an illegal chemical that kills sea lice, the bane of salmon farmers.

Thirty years into the relatively new practice of fish farming the debate continues: what ecological toll does salmon farming exact on the greater marine environment and how can salmon aquaculture proceed sustainably?

What began as chemical warfare to quell sea lice numbers in salmon farms has turned into an arms race as the parasitic crustaceans, which attach to salmon and increase their susceptibility to disease, have developed resistance to treatments. As the chemical ante is upped, so too are concerns about their ecological side-effects.

“The kinds of chemicals you need to kill sea lice are not specific only to sea lice. They also affect crabs and lobsters and also copepods, so there’s great concern about that,” says Fred Whoriskey, executive director of the Ocean Tracking Network at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Go to the bottom of any marine food chain and you’ll find the likes of crustaceans, such as krill and zooplankton, for which deltamethrin is highly toxic.

“If the status quo remains it’s going to harm and kill marine ecosystems,” says Matt Abbott, Fundy Baykeeper coordinator in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick.

II. AlphaMax emergency pesticide treatments halted after lobsters turn up dead

Recent deltamethrin (marketed as AlphaMax) sea lice pesticide trials in the Bay of Fundy were halted after preliminary experiments by Environment Canada resulted in dead lobsters in and round the plume of pesticide.

Environment Canada Media Relations Advisor Henry Lau emailed this statement: “Testing was conducted to monitor the application of Alphamax using a tarp system to confirm that this application is in compliance with the Fisheries Act. Preliminary results have raised some questions about the currently-proposed tarp application system, and these results are being reviewed by all parties.”

“I did hear that these lobsters died and I am frankly not surprised because we know that deltamethrin can be harmful to lobster, which is why we have designed these systems so that the lobster will not come into contact with the product,” says Pamela Parker, Executive Director Atlantic Canada Fish Farmers Association.

Salmon farmers raise their nets to apply the pesticides. The fish then soak in the pesticide solution, which is later released into the estuarine or near shore habitat. While it is true that grown lobsters live on the ocean floor, critics point out that lobster larvae concentrate near the water surface where the pesticides are, and are far more sensitive to lower concentrations of the pesticide. Furthermore, sediments are a major sink for deltamethrin in freshwater ponds, which suggests that it may incorporate into ocean sediment as well .   

The recommended dosage of deltamethrin to rid farmed salmon of sea lice is three parts per billion for 40 minutes . Even if this concentration were diluted by a factor of 82 it would still kill 50% of stage III lobster larvae exposed for one hour, according to a 2009 Department of Fisheries and Oceans (DFO) report published by the Oceans and Science Branch in Moncton, New Brunswick. If the recommended dosage were diluted by a factor of 230 it would still be deadly to half of the amphipods, tiny crustaceans critical to marine food webs, exposed for one hour.

“It will dissipate very quickly in the marine environment,” says Parker, based on unpublished experiments that the salmon growers association conducted last year. “The active ingredient deltamethrin was undetectable outside the net pen skirting during the trial and within ten minutes following the release of the skirting.”

Counter to this, the study authors conclude that the recommended dosage of deltamethrin will impact crustaceans over 100 meters away from the net pens for 2-4 hours following treatment based on their findings. Furthermore they report that the amphipods were so sensitive to the pesticide that they couldn’t establish the threshold toxicity value for immobility.

“I find it very disturbing that the federal and provincial government will pass these chemicals because they are against [articles in] the Oceans Act… to dump lethal chemicals in the water,” says traditional fisherman Reid Brown. “If I dumped them in the water I’d be in jail.”

III. Do salmon farms come at the expense of lobster nurseries?

One of cameraman Christoph Schwaiger’s best birthday presents was a fresh lobster proffered by our hosts for the night, the Ross family in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick. His birthday lobster (briefly named Lisa) was black and shiny, speckled with carmen red and the lobster meat was absolutely delicious, equal parts succulent, sweet and briny.

It wasn’t until later, after we spoke with local fishermen and scientists alike, that we learned about the deleterious effect of salmon farms on lobster fisheries.

“You see the salmon cages over top of known lobster nurseries or scallop beds,” says Sheena Young, program coordinator for the Fundy North Fisherman’s Association from the deck of the Rebecca and Shelley. “It’s just devastating.”

“It’s suicide to the lobster fishery to be dunking those chemicals in,” says Mike Strong, a retired surveys biologist for the Department of Fisheries and Oceans in Saint Andrews, New Brunswick. “The lobster fishery is worth about as much as the salmon growing industry and to displace a perfectly healthy good fishery by growing salmon, to me it’s wrong.”

Strong’s research revealed that lobsters are in fact very picky about the type of ocean floor they inhabit. “But the problem is that exactly matches what the fish farmers are looking for in terms of establishing cages,” he says. “As soon as you put in a fish farm that bottom is no longer suitable for settlement of lobster larvae because all the feces from the fish and the unused food goes down and clots up the bottom.”

IV. The relationship between wild and farmed salmon

Salmon farming is still a relatively new practice, having started 30 years ago but already about 60% of salmon consumed worldwide are farmed , with annual production exceeding one million metric tons.

For Abbott, to call salmon aquaculture “farming” is a misnomer. “Aquaculture isn’t just like any other farming,” he says. “It’s farming carnivores in the water. It’s a totally different equation.”

To grow one pound of farmed salmon requires roughly three pounds of wild caught fish. “It takes wild fish to grow farmed fish. That’s the key rub,” Abbott says. In short, these farms use up much more fish flesh than they produce and therefore cannot replace capture fisheries .

The truth is that wild Atlantic salmon stocks have plummeted in North America – all the way down to 4% of what the original production capacity was, says Whoriskey. And in the Bay of Fundy wild salmon stocks have been especially hard hit, plunging from 40,000 returning fish down to a couple hundred in the span of two decades.

No direct causal link between the reduction in wild salmon stocks in the Bay of Fundy and the boom in salmon farms has emerged yet but a study of wild salmon stocks worldwide reports a 50% reduction in the survival of wild salmon associated with salmon farming.

Here in the tightknit communities of New Brunswick however, different fisheries that all draw upon and affect the marine ecosystem – whether they’re for wild salmon, lobster or farmed salmon – don’t function as zero sum competitors because the larger community remains the strongest common denominator.

“We have met the salmon farmers and they are us. This is not an evil group, they are local people, they are part of the working waterfront,” says Whoriskey. “In my opinion again in an ideal world, an industry that’s dependent on growing Atlantic salmon is dependent on pristine conditions.”  

The natural flow of most US rivers is altered by human land and water management practices, according to a recent study by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

“The USGS has been monitoring river flows at thousands of streams across the country for decades,” explains Daren Carlisle, a USGS aquatic ecologist with the National Water Quality Assessment program in Reston, Virginia.  “We said let's use this wealth of data that's out there and try to see what it tells us about how much the natural flows of rivers have changed around the country.”

“Our first surprise was that altered river flows are not a local or regional problem, we see them everywhere,” says Carlisle.

“The fact that we can, at a large geographic scale, detect ecological impairment in streams with altered flows, implies that a national goal of restoring more natural streamflows would go a long ways.”

Carlisle and his colleagues found that 86% of 2,888 river and streams across the United States had seen changes in their natural stream flow due to interventions like reservoirs, diversions, wastewater input, and that hallmark of urbanization, impervious paved surfaces. The study was published in the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment last week.

The Rhythm of the River

“The very essence of a river and a stream is dynamically changing flows,” he says. “Think of it as the master conductor in this ecological symphony of rivers and streams.”

An unfettered river’s flow changes through the seasons and years but us humans are like Goldilocks when it comes to rivers. Floods are bad but so is drought. We want even controlled river flows so we dam our rivers and mete out their water resources as we see fit.

The problem is that virtually every species that depends upon rivers - sports fish, semi-aquatic birds, amphibians, even the cottonwoods that green small strips of the arid southwest – relies on the river’s dynamic and changing flow.

Alter the river’s flow and rhythm and you get negative ecosystem consequences, Carlisle explains. The more severely a river’s natural flow is altered, the more degraded the river’s biological communities are, the USGS study found.

Let Her Flow!

“What we don't recognize is that many of the things about rivers and streams that we value - whether its those lush wonderful forests along rivers, whether it's important sports fishing or whether it's white water rafting - cannot be maintained without some semblance of the natural flow dynamics,” he says.

Instead of confounding or correcting a river’s natural flow regime we must embrace it, Carlisle says. “Almost everywhere we look across the country we see the same potential of restoring ecological integrity by managing water in ways that more closely resemble the natural dynamics of stream flow.”

Whether it’s the removal of dams (like the Edwards Dam that was removed from the Kennebec River in Maine in 1999) or the management of river dams to mimic natural flows (such as the Flaming Gorge Dam on the Green River in Utah) the outlook is good, he concludes: “There are a lot of instances where we're finding yes, all we need to do is put some water back in the stream and things get better."

It's a lesson that we've seen time and time again over the past 4.5 months as we've journeyed through North America's watersheds and the timing couldn't be better to have a scientific study affirm and underscore what we've experienced for ourselves: give Nature an inch and she takes a mile.