Jean Shifrin / AJC
The Etowah River in North Georgia remains one of Georgia's cleanest, but development and an influx of people threaten to foul its waters.
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Sunday, July 13, 2003
Jean Shifrin / AJC
The Etowah River in North Georgia remains one of Georgia's cleanest, but development
and an influx of people threaten to foul its waters.
Endangered Etowah: Growth troubles it waters
Development, tourism could imperil North Georgia river
Christopher Quinn - Staff
Dana LaChance noticed a new cabin going up in 1987 along a stretch of the upper Etowah River she likes to canoe.
It was the first building to split the unbroken wall of hemlock and mountain laurel shading that part of the narrow, cool river near Dahlonega.
"I remember that's the year after my son was born," she said. "And I said, 'He's never going to see this the way I saw it.' "
Since then, LaChance has watched the natural riverside get whittled away. Threats to the river from tourism and development are growing so rapidly that scientists, residents and government officials are trying to chart a new course to protect it.
Atlantans who once drifted down the increasingly polluted Chattahoochee River now escape to the Etowah for weekends. About 2,000 a year rent canoes or kayaks from Appalachian Outfitters in Dahlonega, run by LaChance's husband, Ben. Thousands more bring their own boats or inner tubes, pumping up the tourist trade, which generates more than $75 million annually for the area.
Once the Etowah pours out of the mountains, it winds through north metro Atlanta, which relies on it for water. Six counties have permits to pull drinking water from the Etowah, one of the cleanest rivers in Georgia.
Without the river, the region wouldn't be able to quench the thirst of the 2 million people expected to move here by 2030 --- pushing the region's population to 6 million. Water supplied by the Chattahoochee River won't be enough.
Population in six of the once rural counties along the Etowah --- among the fastest-growing counties in the nation --- has doubled since 1990 to nearly 500,000.
Development along the Etowah is beginning to bring the same problems that plague the Chattahoochee. Sediment runs from newly scraped lots. Automotive fluids seep from new driveways. Bacteria and chemicals leak from septic systems. More and more treated wastewater gets dumped into the river.
Fertilizers and pesticides from lawns and golf courses leech into the river. Rain rushes across new roads and parking lots, causing little flash floods that scour endangered fish and mussels from the river and its feeder streams.
Despite the growth, stretches of the river still seem untouched, said Susan Hunt, a Florida native who moved to Dahlonega 13 years ago.
She took her visiting brother and nephew down the Etowah one weekend in June.
Recent heavy rains had roiled the water, but its green tint still matched the heavy forest canopy where they launched their red kayaks. They disappeared around a bend where mountain laurel draped over a rocky shoulder and headed toward the white water at Chuck Shoals.
"It was beautiful," Hunt said. "Lots of tall pines. It still felt very virgin."
The cabins beginning to appear along this part of the river in Lumpkin County aren't nearly as invasive as the subdivisions creeping north along the lower Etowah. One golf course subdivision recently approved for 800 acres in Dawson County will have 415 homes and a resort hotel.
Last year in Forsyth County, plans for three subdivisions containing 5,300 houses were approved on undeveloped land near the river.
LaChance wants to find a balance between growth and preservation that will let her son, Chapin, grow up to know the river as she does and still let her family --- which has lived along Lumpkin County's creeks and rivers for seven generations --- make money. The LaChances have built a small subdivision on some of their five miles of property fronting the Etowah and nearby streams.
A river management plan being discussed by representatives of state and federal agencies and officials in eight river basin counties has given LaChance some hope the Etowah won't become like the Chattahoochee.
The Etowah River plan would aim to regulate new growth. But when public discussions start in August, it might not go over well with people who live in the independent, rural riverside counties. They have fought for decades against land use plans and zoning regulations.
James Kelly, who owns 175 acres --- a horse farm and forest --- along the Etowah in Dawson County, said he wanted to protect the river. But he doesn't want a bureaucrat from Atlanta telling him how to do it.
"That's one of my concerns. The other concern is that they'll take my land because it's on a water source for Atlanta," he said.
Yet rapid development is changing locals' minds about restrictions, said Stephen Gooch, Lumpkin County's sole commissioner. They just need to look south to the Chattahoochee and ask themselves if that is what they want for their future, he said.
"It scares the hell out of a lot of them to know we have no land use controls in place," he said, "and all that growth is coming this way."
Six types of fish gone
The Etowah River basin lost nearly 40,000 acres of forest --- which filters pollutants flowing toward the river --- between 1982 and 1997, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
Increasing pollutants and the loss of natural cover affect headwaters that are home to the river's nine fish and three mussel species considered endangered or threatened. Six species of fish that once were common have already disappeared from the Etowah.
The river has lost 43 species of mussels and freshwater snails since the early 1900s. Many turtles and birds that depended on the snails for part of their diet also are disappearing.
"It's the biggest extinction event in the whole country, and no one knows about it," said Paul Johnson, a research scientist with the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga.
Despite the losses, the upper Etowah still remains one of the most ecologically diverse rivers in the country. It contains 76 native species of fish, more than the entire Columbia River system, which drains seven Western states.
On a river excursion in June, University of Georgia scientists netted more than a dozen species of fish, minnows and crayfish from a heavily silted 50-yard stretch of Camp Creek, an Etowah feeder stream. They were looking for the threatened Cherokee darter and caught close to 20 of the fish.
Brady Porter, who studies fish genetics, noted that the silt may have come from an upstream subdivision development. Silt still was washing off the property months after Lumpkin County and state regulators ordered work stopped. Silt can smother the tiny darter's eggs, pushing the threatened fish one step closer to extinction.
Development trade-offs
The Etowah is gaining the attention of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, which is responsible for enforcing the Endangered Species Act. The service can issue stop-work orders, file civil lawsuits or press criminal charges against developers or homeowners accused of killing endangered fishes.
It also can enact habitat conservation plans like the Etowah river basin management plan. The plans are compromises between enforcing the Endangered Species Act and allowing development.
Builders agree to more regulation in return for a guarantee that the Fish and Wildlife Service will not prosecute them even if their developments kill a limited number of endangered species.
The plans were designed to reduce lawsuits and allow local governments more say in protecting both species and private property rights.
Laurie Fowler, director of public service and outreach at the University of Georgia's Institute of Ecology, is helping coordinate studies on which a plan for the Etowah River would be based. She said it would pull together local and state regulations, such as requiring silt barriers on new development, standardizing undisturbed buffers along streams, and instituting green space ordinances for subdivisions.
The habitat conservation plan could make developers limit construction or cluster buildings to leave more land undisturbed. It could make them build bridges rather than culverts, which can block fish from moving upstream to breed or feed.
The plan could reduce the time it takes developers to get permission to build in sensitive areas. Those who leave green space or give up development rights near creeks could get tax breaks.
If the Fish and Wildlife Service approves the plan, the agency would agree not to stop developers operating under the regulations --- even if they kill some endangered fish.
Some area developers say they would welcome clearer guidelines and more flexibility.
Developer Ken Horton had to make five revisions to plans for Governors Towne Club, a golf course subdivision near Pumpkinvine Creek on the Paulding-Cobb county line. The creek feeds into the Etowah. Horton spent an unexpected $350,000 to dig a lake on high ground rather than in a creek bottom where threatened Cherokee darters were found.
The darter has moved "way up on the list" of what developers check for when buying land, he said.
"We actually look to see how many streams are on the properties and how it would affect our road crossings and sewer crossings. It can become a very major expense," Horton said. "If it's too major, we would pass on the land."
If it comes together, the habitat conservation plan would be the first for a river system in the Southeast. A steering committee made up of 19 voting representatives, one appointed from each county and city in the basin, has met three times.
Nonvoting committee members representing development, environmental and community interests will be appointed to the committee later this summer.
Fowler said the series of public meetings that begin next month will explain how such plans work. It could take three years or more and hundreds of meetings to put a plan in place. It's impossible to say how much implementing and enforcing a plan would cost until a final one is in place, she said.
Ultimately local governments would decide whether to participate. Those that don't would continue to have developments monitored by Fish and Wildlife agents enforcing the Endangered Species Act.
Those that do would use building and zoning officials to enforce the plan's rules and regulations. They would get some help from the Fish and Wildlife Service, but counties also might have to add workers to monitor the regulations.
Plans controversial
A habitat conservation plan in Las Vegas, put in place to save an endangered tortoise, charges developers a $550-an-acre fee. Once they've paid, their bulldozers can roll over tortoises and all. The money is used to buy land outside the city for tortoise preserves.
A Tucson, Ariz., plan designed to protect the endangered pygmy owl and other animals is in the final stages. More than 70 committee members argued for more than five years over what it ought to include.
"If you had picked up a [news]paper in the last four years, you would have said, 'Oh my God, this looks like a war zone,' " said Maeveen Behan, the Pima County project director for the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan.
Some Arizona environmentalists criticize the habitat conservation plan because it would allow developers to remove some trees and cacti where pygmy owls nest. It sells out the Endangered Species Act by letting developers do what they couldn't otherwise --- kill endangered animals, said Kieran Suckling, director of the Center for Biological Diversity in Tucson.
Some advocates of property rights are also unhappy. Alan Lurie, executive vice president of the Southern Arizona Home Builders Association, predicted that businesses and landowners would lose rights and home buyers end up paying more because of the plan.
The association is suing the federal government, trying to get the owl taken off the endangered species list.
Mark Hutcheson, who will represent Woodstock in discussions about the Etowah plan, said putting it in place wouldn't be easy.
"We have different counties with different interests," said Hutcheson, who runs a landscaping and erosion control business. "This is going to be a challenge."
The endangered species "are important, but just as important is . . . good-quality water," he said. "If we can make it cost effective for builders and can get them to buy into it, it is in everybody's best interest."
Thoughts on the future
LaChance built her family's first subdivision, the 31-lot, 81-acre Fern Park, last summer. It has an undisturbed buffer along the river, which is permanently protected by deed restrictions. It has large swaths of green space around the homes.
She could have crammed more lots on the tract and probably made more money. But such a strategy eventually backfires and causes property values to fall, she said.
"The folks whose bottom line is the short term are going to compromise the economic viability of this area," she said. "And they are not thinking of my grandchildren, of the eighth and ninth and 10th generation of my family who will live here."
LaChance recites the golden rule of river life: Treat your land as you want others to treat theirs, because there's always someone above you.
"It all runs downstream," she said.
Staff writer Stacy Shelton contributed to this article.
Copyright 2003 Atlanta Journal-Constitution