Our nation has just come through a very heated and divisive presidential and congressional election. At the Alabama Rivers Alliance, we have been busy with phone calls, Zooms, meetings and other ways of assessing as it relates to our work protecting Alabama’s 132,000 miles of rivers and streams. There will most certainly be impacts and changes to the work we do to protect rivers and clean water – there always are when it comes to changes in administrations – but this one could be pretty big if history is any indication. What I can promise you is that we are not new to this fight. In Alabama, we have been standing up and speaking out for clean water and healthy rivers against challenging odds for almost thirty years and we will not back down now.
Regardless of how you feel about the results of the election, there are some key takeaways and some enduring truths that we cannot ignore as we carry on with our work to protect all of Alabama’s rivers and streams – and the people and wildlife who depend on clean water.
WHERE WAS THE ENVIRONMENT?
The environment once again took a backseat in this election. Voters consistently leave out very important issues like protecting our environment when asked what is most important to them. We can speculate about why this is true, but the message we must take away as advocates is that we have a lot of work to do to remind people of this critical issue when they are choosing their elected officials. If people do not make clean water, healthy air, climate change response and other environmental protections a priority when voting, we will never convince our elected officials to make it a priority either.
The Alabama Rivers Alliance is working with partners and members all across the state to continue building relationships with elected officials to let them know how important clean water and healthy river ecosystems are to their constituents. Our newly launched ALSTARs (Alabama Special Trained Advocates for Rivers) program is training more than 50 Alabamians annually to actively engage with their elected officials throughout the year and to raise their level of awareness and knowledge of the importance of water when making their decisions.
KNOW YOUR NEIGHBORS AND COMMUNITY
We live in an increasingly divided country where understanding our neighbors is essential, but how we do that is becoming more and more difficult. The baseline information from which we all begin is no longer the same. We must have non-partisan opportunities to come together around common values to learn and discuss the challenges we face. When asked specifically, an overwhelming majority of Alabamians care deeply about clean water and many have personal connections to and deeply held fond memories of specific rivers and watersheds.
As you know, the Alabama Rivers Alliance has developed and nurtured a network of more than 100 partner organizations and we provide meaningful opportunities, such as our annual Alabama Water Rally conference, for these diverse community-based organizations and individuals to come together to learn through expert led sessions, to get to know each other over shared meals, and to build common ground around protecting water and our environment. In its 23rd year, Alabama Water Rally 2024 had 150+ attendees, representing more than 50 partner organizations.
CLIMATE CHANGE IS HERE
Climate change is not coming at some distant time in the future. It is here – now – and the impacts on our communities are being felt most profoundly by communities of color and/or low-wealth. From failing infrastructure to flash flooding to disaster recovery challenges, the impacts are real and they are expensive. Unfortunately, the tensions around how to address both the long-term policy changes that must happen to lower carbon emissions and shift to a cleaner, more efficient economy and the short-term funding for disaster response and building more resilient infrastructure in our communities is straining our ability to move forward. We must simultaneously plan and advocate for the big changes, while helping people who are impacted now.
The Alabama Rivers Alliance is working with a national cohort of organizations and communities to ensure that the federal funding provided for drinking water and wastewater infrastructure is accessible to all the of the communities who need it and that the state agencies that are distributing this funding and the local utilities who are receiving it are hearing from community members and advocates as they roll out this important and unprecedented level of funding. Through this work, we created the Alabama Water Hub website where we have compiled comprehensive educational and informational resources for communities about federal funding and contacts for technical assistance.
While we are working with government agencies, academic institutions and partners to solve immediate infrastructure problems, we are also continuing to advocate for big picture policy changes that will help Alabama move forward toward a more sustainable future for our river ecosystems and the people and industries that rely on our water resources. We recently had an op-ed published in the Montgomery Advertiser , “Alabama Tiptoes Towards Clean Energy” explaining the importance of an Alabama Water Plan as it relates to a clean energy transition in Alabama. We continue to advocate for our state leaders to revive the conversation toward an Alabama Water Plan.
WE NEED A BIGGER TENT
We cannot do this work with a small group of people. If you have received these letters for a while, you know I have always been a huge fan of Margaret Mead’s beautiful quote “Never Doubt that a Small Group of Committed People Can Change the World…”, I, unfortunately, think it is less and less true. We need a HUGE movement. We need a bigger tent!
The Alabama Rivers Alliance leads the celebrated, award-winning Southern Exposure Film program. Our film fellowship program brings incredibly talented filmmakers from all across the country to
Alabama each summer to produce short documentaries about Alabama’s environment, its beauty, its challenges and they spotlight the amazing people fighting for its protection. Through these films, we are able to amplify the voices of communities all across the state and to discuss and engage thousands of people across Alabama and beyond in the complex challenges facing our environment and the real world solutions we are advocating to address those challenges. Since its inception, Southern Exposure has created 65 short films, and we have screened in communities, cities and towns all across Alabama and the globe. The films have been recognized and awarded in dozens of film festivals and they help to bring many more Alabamians into the work of protecting our air, water, land and ecosystems. You can learn more and view films at www.SouthernExposureFilms.org.
The work highlighted in this letter is only a small fraction of the work that the Alabama Rivers Alliance is doing each and every day to meet the challenges facing our waterways and our communities. Elections do matter for our work and for our environment. They matter in huge ways and we will see how this one plays out over the coming months and years. What we know right now is that our work is the right work for this moment and we must continue to build on it.
We absolutely cannot do this work without your support! As grants become increasingly restricted toward specific programming, we desperately need your financial support to remain flexible enough to advocate for what our communities and our waterways need. Your support of ALL of our important work is essential and we must continue to grow this funding and our organization to be effective in these challenging times.
One of our generous grant funders who does understand the need for non-restricted funds, the Curtis and Edith Munson Foundation, has given us a challenge grant this year of $40,000. That means for every dollar you give us, that dollar is doubled up to $40,000!
Please give as generously as you are able by clickig here, to help us meet this challenge and to support our work to bring people of all walks of life and political affiliations together, to meet the short-term and long-term challenges facing our waterways and communities and to build an even bigger more diverse movement across Alabama to protect clean water and healthy rivers!