Advocates fail to raise enough money for Ocmulgee riverkeeper

<p>A regional river advocacy group has been unable to raise enough money to hire a new Ocmulgee riverkeeper.</p><p>The Altamaha Riverkeeper organization, based in Darien, Ga., first established the position in 2003 by creating a satellite office in Macon, Ga. Riverkeepers are watchdogs who monitor for river polluters and pollutants.</p><p>But John Wilson, the first Ocmulgee riverkeeper, left in February. The organization pledged that Wilson would be replaced by the end of the year and that it would raise funds for the position.</p><p>"I'd forgotten that we were this long without our riverkeeper. I hate that," said Lindsay Holliday, a local Sierra Club leader. "As important as this river is to us, I think it's horrible we don't have somebody looking at it realistically."</p><p>But the group has been busy focusing its energies elsewhere this year, including fighting new stream buffer rules approved this month in Georgia, said Deborah Sheppard, the group's president. Those rules allow developers to route wet-weather streams through pipes.</p><p>"I'm not raising money because I'm keeping a knife from being jabbed into the heart of water regulation," she said. "But the need, plan and commitment is still there" to have an Ocmulgee Riverkeeper.</p><p>Sheppard declined to say how much more money needs to be raised.</p><p>The group is talking with other riverkeepers about jointly applying for a federal Environmental Protection Agency grant to pay for part-time water testing in the Ocmulgee River and other rivers.</p><p>In the meantime, Altamaha Riverkeeper James Holland has tended to the concerns of residents along the entire Altamaha river system, the third-largest river system on the East Coast. That includes the Ocmulgee and Oconee rivers.</p><p>___</p><p>HASH(0x285af1c)</p>

http://accesswdun.com/article/2004/12/154683