A special summit last week in Louisville, the Ohio River Basin Confluence, brought together people working to support healthy waters, communities and economies that are tied to the historic river that flows from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania down to Cairo, Illinois.
The conference was held at an important juncture for the river. This summer, a 308-mile stretch of the Ohio that runs past Louisville and Southern Indiana was named a National Water Trail. Meanwhile, the alliance and other groups are finalizing an ambitious ecological restoration plan for the Ohio River Basin, with a bipartisan effort underway to win federal support for it.
The Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting has been covering these developments and recently hosted a community conversation about the river.
Chris Lorentz, chair of the Ohio River Basin Alliance, told conference-goers their collaboration exemplifies the “movement” to protect and restore the Ohio River and its surrounding basin.
Lorentz told KyCIR the alliance, which includes members from 200-plus organizations, wants Congress to pass legislation – sponsored by Democratic U.S. Rep. Morgan McGarvey of Louisville and Republican U.S. Rep. Erin Houchin of Salem, Indiana – to create a federal office to guide the restoration plan, paired with an initial investment of $350 million annually for five years.
“This is a game changer, once-in-a-lifetime, once-in-a-generation, opportunity,” he said. “We're asking for this now, and we're going to show that it's worth the investment.”
If they can get the restoration program rolling and then demonstrate its early effectiveness through measurable impacts and outcomes, he said they hope the U.S. government will keep investing in it indefinitely.
With the new national trail and the restoration plan, many people at the summit talked about the Ohio River Basin’s environmental future with a positive sense of possibility.
But they also discussed the challenges that lie ahead, from persistent pollution to a new president who has slashed funding for many environmental initiatives, such as an air pollution study in west Louisville.
The Ohio River Basin Restoration and Protection Plan focuses on how to improve the health of the networks of streams, rivers and wetlands that fill the basin that fans out across 14 states. The waterways are affected by many of the same issues, from invasive species to floods.
However, many Kentucky waters will be affected by a unique challenge: A new state law that greatly reduced restrictions on pollution.
For 50-plus years, Kentucky afforded state-level protections against pollution to basically all its surface waters and groundwater by defining them as “waters of the commonwealth.”
Earlier this year, however, the state’s Republican-run legislature passed Senate Bill 89, which reduced the scope of that definition to apply to fewer types of waters. That removed key pollution protections for much of the state’s groundwater, plus many headwater and ephemeral streams.
That cuts the Kentucky Energy and Environment Cabinet’s authority to step in and take action if, for example, someone is fouling up a stream that is no longer subject to government restrictions on pollution, said Audrey Ernstberger, associate attorney for the Kentucky Resources Council. This leaves Kentuckians affected by such pollution with fewer remedies.
At a panel on SB 89, Ernstberger and representatives of other environmental groups noted that they worked together to mobilize thousands of Kentuckians against Senate Bill 89.
The vocal opposition didn’t stop the Republican-run legislature from passing the law, but panelists said lawmakers did take notice of the grassroots energy. Now, they’re working to keep people who participated in that legislative fight engaged in other efforts to protect Kentucky’s waters.
“We can tap them into Watershed Watch. We can tap them into permit watching – teaching people how to look at permits,” said Julia Finch, director of the Sierra Club’s Kentucky chapter. “We're all doing a little bit of democracy work here, because each time we do this and each time we go to the legislature, we're showing people how to be involved in the process.”
They also expressed hope that lawmakers will consider amending the new law and restore state protections for groundwater when the General Assembly reconvenes next year.
