Alliance appoints Green water keeper

Jessie J. Green has been named White River Waterkeeper by the Waterkeeper Alliance (WA), a global network of grassroots leaders and largest nonprofit focused solely on clean water. This is the first time the organization has had a Waterkeeper based in Arkansas.

WA said Green’s previous experience as a senior ecologist in the Office of Water at the Arkansas Department of Environmental Quality makes her well equipped to address water quality, particularly to protect and preserve the White River and its tributaries, including the Buffalo, by combining firsthand knowledge of aquatic ecology with an unwavering commitment to the rights of the community and rule of law.

Green said she will be working to protect the entire White River Watershed that stretches from northwest to southeast Arkansas where the White flows into the Mississippi.

“The Buffalo River is my main focus,” Green said. “The Buffalo was the country’s first national river. If we can’t convince resource managers to do a better job protecting the Buffalo, we probably don’t stand a high chance of being successful elsewhere.”

Green said it’s no surprise that as a leading agricultural state we have an issue with nutrient impairment. Rather than assessing impacts and addressing causes, special interest groups deflect blame and spend enormous amounts of money trying to convince the public and politicians that environmental regulations would result in negative economic ramifications.

“Arkansas Farm Bureau has been extremely quick to deflect blame when it comes to environmental concerns facing the Buffalo River and the public health risks posed by C&H,” Green said “The Buffalo River Watershed Alliance has been working diligently to increase public awareness about the effects of large industrial confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) and working to secure resources to combat the recent C&H permit if necessary. Managing animal waste from a large hog factory is difficult enough, but adding the issues affronted by attempting to do so on karst topography is a recipe for disaster.”

Because of pollution from the huge CAFO, American Rivers has named the Buffalo as one of the 10 most endangered rivers for 2017. Nutrient pollution from the hog factory is a top concern.

Initial projects and fundraising priorities for White River Waterkeeper will focus on monitoring and providing public education of bacteria concentrations at frequented swimming holes. Green said that utilizing infrastructure in place by Waterkeeper Alliance would make information more readily accessible to the public by providing interactive online maps and smartphone apps. In addition, she agrees with Arkansas Farm Bureau that C&H is not the only source of nutrient enrichment to the Buffalo River.

“To address this, we’re working to develop septic tank education and remediation programs to assist landowner repair and replace failing infrastructure,” she said.

The Ozark River Stewards are hosting a riverside reception for Green at Grinders Ferry beside the Hwy. 65 bridge over the Buffalo River from 2 – 4 p.m. Saturday, May 27, following a float of the Buffalo. Green will be available to answer questions from the public.

“I’m just so excited and thankful to have found Waterkeeper Alliance and join in their work protecting clean water, which is a fundamental right,” Green said. “It has been a huge blessing to be able to start working with like-minded people who think clean water is worth fighting for.”

Green has a bachelor’s degree in biology, emphasis in environmental biology, from Arkansas State University in Jonesboro and a master’s degree from the University of Central Arkansas in biology with an emphasis in aquatic ecology. Her master’s thesis was on the effects of natural gas development on fish of the Fayetteville shale.

There are nearly 300 Waterkeeper organizations around the world focused on citizen advocacy on issues that affect waterways from pollution to climate change. Waterkeepers patrol and protect more than 2.4 million square miles of rivers, streams, and coastlines in the Americas, Europe, Australia, Asia, and Africa. For more information, visit www.waterkeeper.org and www.whiteriverwaterkeeper.org.