Teachers tend to have interesting conversations with their next door school neighbors. In high school we have a few minutes between classes as students exit and enter the classroom. During that time, we supervise the hallway in front of our doors, greet students, answer numerous student questions, and communicate useful, interesting, and sometimes funny information with each other. 

For the past two years my next door school neighbor has been a history teacher who is also a local pastor. I taught one of his daughters. His wife works with one of my good friends. Like me, he has been teaching long enough to see the ebb and flow of change. He and I have made multiple observations about trends among our students and in society in general. 

One topic that has risen to the top is the seemingly lack of outside activity in which our students voluntarily participate. He remarked that he and his childhood friends were outside at every opportunity. They came in to eat, and when that was done, they were back in the yard, on their bikes, or in the woods. They had adventures, and on special occasions they fished. The one rule the children had was that they were to be on their way inside by the time the street lights came on. 

Perhaps parents have more reason to keep children inside now, or perhaps they are overprotective. We both agreed that our students miss out on opportunities for character building, problem solving, and physical benefits that outdoor activity provides. By not allowing children to explore nature, we limit them. We make their world much too small. Children and adults alike crave adventure. It’s hard to have that today, unless it’s in a video game, which probably accounts for that industry’s huge popularity.

However, here locally we have the river. Even now, it is an adventure for me to get on the Sipsey or Mulberry Fork. Mark Twain once compared a river to a book, “it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.” The Black Warrior River is like that. It is never the same river twice.

This description could fit every river in our state. Rivers are constant sources of adventure. They provide opportunities for family and friends to bond, offering physical and mental exercise. The view from the river can help us see things in a way that no video game can. You need only take a friend who has never been on the river to see this in action. The river can restore us, and it gives us the very water we drink.

As incomprehensible as it is to believe, here in Alabama we have people in high positions in our state government that place no value on this resource. On Friday, October 18, 2019, the Alabama Environmental Management Commission unanimously voted to keep Lance LaFleur as the director for the Alabama Department of Environmental Management. This is after multiple complaints of his ineffectiveness from all over our state.

According to ABC 3340’s Cynthia Gould, the commission’s decision “took just three minutes of the meeting with no discussion and no questions.” 

How can it be that we continue to allow this broken system to putter along spewing poison as it goes? If ADEM is accountable to the Alabama Environmental Management Commission, to whom are they accountable? The governor appoints this board, but in the end isn’t she accountable to the people of this state? 

It’s up to us to change this situation. The citizens of Alabama are at a crossroads here. We can continue to allow certain elements of our state government to limit our rights to clean water and safe recreation. We can accept that we have lost not only our sense of adventure but our concern for our health and the health of our children.

Or, we can do the opposite. We demand that the State does right by its people. We demand our right to clean water and clean recreation. We demand our voices be heard. Our adventure is not over.

• Let Governor Kay Ivey Know what must be done. She can be contacted here https://governor.alabama.gov/contact/.

• The general contact for Alabama Environmental Management Commission is aemc@adem.alabama.gov.

• This page lists the members of AEMC. http://www.adem.state.al.us/commission/commissioners.cnt

For those of us who use and drink from the Mulberry Fork of the Black Warrior River, the past few summers have revealed the extent to which our water is being polluted. I would say the summer of 2019 has been life changing for many of us.

Unfortunately, we are not alone. 3M’s illegal chemical release into the Tennessee River was reported on social media and by the press. In South Alabama Union Town’s struggle for clean water has been well documented. On September 13, 2019, Black Warrior Riverkeeper posted that wastewater is being discharged into Freetown Creek which makes its way to the Alabama River. Improper sewage treatment has plagued Union Town in one way or another for years.

This is 2019. How can it be that we still allow the systematic pollution of our water? How can it be that we are not notified when there is a life-threatening “spill” into our waterways? I remember in school learning that there are three basic needs for survival: food, water, and shelter. Water is a basic human need, and yet, we allow companies and municipalities to pour filth into our rivers.

I suppose we all believe that our water treatment facilities can blast the filth coated water with enough chemicals that the bad stuff can be killed, or maybe we think we can filter out the bad chemicals poured in by these companies. Deep down we instinctively know how dangerous it is to ignore the pollution of our life-giving rivers.

Alabama deserves better.