Other Resources

American Rivers released the Blue Trails Guide, to help promote river recreation and conservation in local communities.  Blue trails, the water equivalent to hiking trails, have the potential to stimulate local economies, encourage physical fitness, improve community pride, and make rivers and communities healthier.  The guide provides step-by-step instructions for developing a thriving blue trail.  Because a healthy river is necessary for a successful blue trail, the guide includes tips and goals for river conservation.  Visit www.bluetrailsguide.org.

The Big Necessity:  The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters.  Rose George.  Metropolitan Books, 2008.  Human waste is a major public health threat:  population growth is taxing even the most advanced sewage systems, and the disease spread by waste kills more people worldwide every year than any other single cause of death. Even in America, 1.95 million people have no access to an indoor toilet.  Yet the subject remains unmentionable. The Big Necessity takes aim at the taboo, revealing everything that matters about how people do--and don't--deal with their own waste.…

 Flow (movie) – http://flowthefilm.com.  Directed by Irena Salina.  Running time: 1 hour 24 minutes.  This astonishingly wide-ranging film is less depressing than galvanizing, an informed and heartfelt examination of the tug of war between public health and private interests.  From the dubious quality of our tap water (possibly laced with rocket fuel) to the terrifyingly unpoliced contents of bottled brands (one company pumped from the vicinity of a Superfund site), the movie ruthlessly dismantles our assumptions about water safety and government oversight. -The New York Times

American Rivers releases “Hidden Reservoir: why water efficiency is the best solution for the Southeast” to help protect water supply and save money in your community.  Water efficiency is the proven, timely, and cost-effective solution to water supply in the Southeast.  Scientists predict that global warming is bringing longer and more intense drought to the Southeast.  That, along with increasing populations, will place unprecedented strain on the region’s water supplies.   Fortunately there are available solutions to this increasing problem.  “Hidden Reservoir” outlines nine key policies and practices that local governments and utilities should adopt.  Report available at www.americanrivers.org/waterefficiencyreport. 

Liquid Assets, a ninety-minute documentary, tells the story of essential infrastructure systems:  water, wastewater, and stormwater. These systems — some in the ground for more than 100 years — provide a critical public health function and are essential for economic development and growth. Largely out of sight and out of mind, these aging systems have not been maintained, and some estimates suggest this is the single largest public works endeavor in our nation’s history.   Visit http://liquidassets.psu.edu/index.html for more information.

Published in 1941, Paddle to the Sea, (Holling Clancy Holling, Houghton Mifflin) is an fascinating picture book describing the journey of a hand-carved toy canoe from the wilds of central Canada to the Atlantic Ocean.  Rivers, watersheds, geography and history are all wrapped together.  Grade 3 through adult. 

Poisoned Waters is a Frontline documentary by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Hedrick Smith.  It examines the growing hazards to our drinking water, human health and the ecosystem.  Through interviews with scientists, environmental activists, corporate executives and average citizens impacted by the burgeoning pollution problem, Smith reveals startling new evidence that today's growing environmental threat comes not from the giant industrial polluters of old, but from chemicals in consumers' face creams, deodorants, prescription medicines and household cleaners that find their way into sewers, storm drains and eventually into America's waterways and drinking water.  For more information, visit http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/poisonedwaters/.  Home Video DVDs of Poisoned Waters are available from ShopPBS.  Educational DVDs of Poisoned Waters are available from ShopPBS for Teachers.  A transcript of Poisoned Waters will be available in early May, 2009.

Rising Tide, Simon & Schuster, 1998.   John M. Barry’s book chronicles the Mississippi River flood of 1927 and how it changed our nation.  In the aftermath of what was then our country’s greatest natural disaster—exacerbated by earlier attempts to re-engineer the Mississippi River -the affected political, social and economic forces reshaped the Deep South and beyond. 

River of Words:  Young Poets and Artists on the Nature of Things.  Edited by Pamela Michael.  Milkweed Editions, 2008.  The poems and pictures in this handsomely designed volume have been culled from yearly contests, with 85% of the entries coming from the United States most were submitted by teachers, but others came directly from youths in refugee camps or detention facilities.  The works are startling, many of them dislocating and highly complex.  The opening poem, however, is the beguilingly direct "My Name Is Elijah," by five-year-old Elijah Soza of California:  "Waterfalls told me hello today./ The river also talked./ She wanted me to know/ that my name/ was important./ My name is Elijah./ I am a friend of the river." All ages. -Publishers Weekly

River of Words:  Images and Poetry in Praise of Water.  Edited by Pamela Michael.  Heyday Books, 2003.  "Young minds, in poems and paintings, freely playing creatively, conceptually, physically, with water.  Kids showing us canebrakes, ducks, frogs, clouds, streams and friends, all forms of water, through their fresh eyes.  These selections of the best of the best give us pleasure and hope."  All ages. -Gary Snyder

The Riverkeeper's Guide to the Chattahoochee River, Fred Brown and Sherri M. L. Smith, University of Georgia Press, 1997.  A perfect accompaniment to, or a great companion for, a trip from northeast Georgia to the Gulf of Mexico.

US Blueprint for Clean Water, released by Waterkeeper Alliance, offers remedies to past policy decisions and proposes a new way for the federal government to strengthen environmental protection in all areas related to water.  To download the document, which sets forth suggested federal regulatory and legislative goals for the new presidential admininistration, visit www.waterkeeper.org/mainarticledetails.aspx?articleid=345.