Dear friends,
I am more concerned than ever about the safety of Alabama’s water. The news of contaminated drinking water, industrial pollution spills, and fish kills is becoming too commonplace these days. As government becomes increasingly divided in determining its role and budgets continue to tighten, essential government duties — like protecting water and public health –begin to weaken and become less reliable.
It is times like these that citizens must take an even greater active role in 
watchdogging our rivers and holding polluters and government leaders accountable!
It seems to take a major crisis these days to garner attention for any number of important issues that are facing our nation. Be it health care, gun sense, infrastructure needs, or drinking water, we don’t seem to be able to have a meaningful conversation until people die and even that isn’t usually enough to breakthrough the political gridlock to solve our problems.
Waiting until there are lives lost to figure out what to do to create a safer, healthier, higher quality of life for all citizens is no way to govern.
There are people suffering all across the nation from poor health conditions, over burden of exposure to pollution, lack of basic needs such as food and shelter, and from many other issues. These crises do not present themselves in the form of acute deaths. These are slow, chronic problems that are plaguing our communities and our nation and they are not uncontrollable acts of nature or God. They are situations created by the choices we make, the society we have all been a part of creating, and the laws we allow to be passed (or not enforced).
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL LETTER.
As a supporter of the Alabama Rivers Alliance, you already know the importance of getting involved in what’s happening to your rivers and your water sources. You know that having a strong statewide network of local river watchdog groups helps identify problems when they happen to our waterways. You understand that bringing those local problems to light helps open up opportunities to solve systemic problems at the state and federal level. You also understand that someone must be ready to capitalize on that momentum when it happens and that’s where the Alabama Rivers Alliance comes in.
When the Water Wars between Georgia, Florida and Alabama flared up again and forced Governor Bentley to pay attention to Alabama’s lack of water planning, the Alabama Rivers Alliance was there. We had built and nurtured those relationships and we laid the groundwork to have a seat at the table with other powerful influencers to develop a comprehensive, sustainable water plan for Alabama.
Please show your support for our unique model of leveraging both state and local advocacy to #DefendRivers across Alabama!
CLICK HERE TO READ THE FULL LETTER.
Most importantly, we must recognize the crucial role we play in solving these problems. Here are three things you can do to help ensure that our water remains safe and that the people making decisions that impact our lives in such a vital way are informed and held accountable:
Talk to your local water utility and find out where your water comes from. Ask them what plans they have in place in case of an emergency, such as the one that happened in North Alabama.
Talk to your elected officials at all levels and let them know you care about water. Find out what their positions are on protecting our water resources and tell them that creating jobs should not mean sacrificing the health of our water.
Give as generously as you can to the Alabama Rivers Alliance today to help support not only our organization, but the statewide network of watchdogs working to protect your local waterways.
It should not take people dying, either immediately or slowly, for us to create a society that values something as essential to life as our water. Planning for and investing in the future health of our water resources should be at the top of our list of priorities. Let’s stop taking it for granted and waiting for the next crisis to hit to make that shift.
Let’s start the work to #DefendRivers together today!
