Black Warrior Riverkeeper

Have you ever wondered where a river starts? You might imagine that it bubbles up from spring surrounded by verdant ferns in some utopian setting. And sometimes that is the case, but not always. When you look at the Black Warrior River, there are several starting points according to Charles Scribner, Executive Director of Black Warrior Riverkeeper, an agency whose mission is to protect and restore this waterway and its tributaries.

“You could say that basically every storm drain in downtown Birmingham is the beginning of the Black Warrior River watershed,” he says. “Red Mountain is the dividing line between the Black Warrior and the Cahaba watersheds. So if a raindrop falls in front of Vulcan’s face, for example, it’ll make its way to the Black Warrior watershed. If it falls behind him in Homewood, it’s going to make its way to the Cahaba.” He goes on to say that the Black Warrior also begins to emerge in the waterfalls and springs of the Sipsey wilderness in Winston County, with the Mulberry Fork in Cullman County, and in Blount County’s Locust Fork. That’s why Black Warrior Riverkeeper’s mission extends beyond the flowing river waters to a multi-county river basin that’s part of what makes Alabama the leading state in the country for freshwater biodiversity.

Scribner has been part of Black Warrior Riverkeeper for 19 of its 21 years, and in that time, he’s seen a lot of other beginnings – many of them thanks to the support of the Community Foundation. “If there’s a theme to this, it’s that the Community Foundation is more than just a check writer, even a very generous check writer. They are really advisors and partners to us,” he says. “And the grants that they’ve provided through the years have always been the start of something new for us that has lasted to the present every single time. They always catalyze some new program or some new structure for us that has really changed us for the positive.”

In 2008 the Community Foundation helped Black Warrior Riverkeeper buy a patrol boat. “I’m pleased to say that that is still our patrol boat and we still use it not just to patrol for pollution, but to take key stakeholders out on the river, whether they’re big donors, reporters or scientists,” says Scribner. And being able to take scientists out on the river has yielded some exciting discoveries. “One time the scientists discovered a new species of crayfish! Alabama was already number one in crayfish species, but now we’re running up the score on other states because we helped find a new one – the twisted dwarf crayfish.”

Then in 2017, with more assistance from the Community Foundation, they were able to start the Ambient Water Quality Monitoring Program where staff scientists go out once a month to seven different locations throughout the watershed and take the river’s vital signs. Scribner explains that they had already been doing a lot of monitoring, specifically downstream, of pollution hotspots like a city’s wastewater treatment plant, a coal mine or a factory. But those were very reactive samplings where Black Warrior Riverkeeper was addressing a specific problem. The Ambient Water Quality Monitoring Program is designed to gather data and enable them to proactively start answering questions about the overall health of the Black Warrior watershed.

“The Community Foundation created the biggest gift that launched that program in 2017, and  it’s still a monthly and perennial project for us to this day,” he says. “It also enables us to use interns from diverse backgrounds who come out and get field experience. It’s just really good to see kids from all different schools engaging in real science and putting information on our website for anyone to use.”

Currently Black Water Riverkeeper is in the middle of a three-year grant for volunteer litter cleanups, a new program that was started in 2020 with the help of an AmeriCorps member. “Her name is Katie Fagan, and she did such a great job in her one year as an AmeriCorps member launching this new program with me that we decided to hire her full time as outreach coordinator,” says Scribner. “And the Community Foundation gave the largest grant towards funding her salary to help launch this program, and it has grown every year. Our volunteers removed almost 30,000 pounds of trash from the watershed last year.” There is also an educational component to the program that Scribner says has enhanced outreach and partnerships and catalyzed new forms of support. “For example, the city of Birmingham has multiple city councilors now in different districts that have signed up for formal partnerships with Black Warrior Riverkeeper so that they have regular cleanups and are even providing funding towards those cleanups,” he says. “So again, it’s a situation where the Community Foundation starts something, but then it grows far beyond their support.”

Next Story: Grace Klein Community