“Never in our lifetime has the Southeast faced environmental issues of such consequence or such urgency,” said Rick Middleton, founder and executive director of SELC. “The South is the fastest-growing region in the U.S., and we are facing unprecedented pressures from explosive population growth and destructive development trends that threaten to overwhelm our mountains, forests, rivers, coast, and countryside.”
While the threat is great and widespread, the SELC, each year, publishes a list of the top ten endangered places in the Southeast, which face the most immediate and potentially irreversible threats. Jeff Gleason, SELC’s deputy director, says “the common themes on this year’s Top 10 list include uncontrolled growth, flawed energy policy, and lax environmental enforcement, particularly as it relates to our heavy reliance on coal to produce electricity. When you look at our list this year, you’ll see that our waterways and wetlands—critical areas that protect and define the South—are experiencing some of the most negative impacts from these trends.”
In this year’s “Top 10 Endangered Areas in the South” list, SELC points to the Chesapeake Bay, Virginia’s Roanoke and Dan River Basins and the Appalachian Mountains as our State’s most threatened areas.
First, the Chesapeake Bay, the nation’s largest estuary, faces pollution from all sides. Populations of blue crabs, oysters, and other species vital to the bay’s commercial fisheries have plummeted to historic lows, and nutrient pollution from urban and suburban runoff, sewage treatment plants, smokestack and tailpipe emissions, agricultural lands, and fish processing feeds algae blooms that die off and create oxygen-starved “dead zones.”
In the face of a major federal and state initiative to clean up this pollution, an electric power cooperative wants to build what would be the largest coal burning plant in Virginia just 30 miles from the Bay. SELC is battling threats to the bay on multiple fronts, from fighting the Old Dominion Electric Cooperative’s proposed power plant to strengthening regulations to control polluted runoff.
Second, the Roanoke and Dan River watersheds provide drinking water for millions of people, from heavily populated areas such as Virginia Beach and Norfolk to smaller rural communities in northeastern North Carolina. A recent push to mine uranium in southern Virginia, however, poses serious risks to water quality, public health, and the environment. Uranium mining is currently banned in Virginia because of these threats, but as pressure mounts for alternative fuel sources, a Canadian company is attempting to lift the ban. If the ban is lifted, more sites across Virginia’s piedmont countryside will be open to uranium mining, potentially affecting people from central Virginia to the tidewater area for generations to come.
Few can argue about the scenic beauty of the Southern Appalachians, yet weak laws and lax enforcement are allowing coal companies to literally blow up mountains and dump the leftover rubble into nearby valleys, burying hundreds of miles of streams in the process, and obliterating more than 500 mountains. SELC is collaborating with numerous national, regional and local groups to bring this destructive mining practice to an end.
SELC explains that their Top 10 list is important to bring focus to its efforts to protect important areas. The Top Ten locations are:
Black Warrior River, AL; Right Whale Calving Waters, GA; Georgia’s Blackwater Rivers; Cape Fear Wetlands, NC; Catawba-Wateree Basin, NC/SC; South Carolina’s Freshwater Wetlands; Ocoee Region, TN; VA / TN Mountains; Chesapeake Bay, VA; Roanoke & Dan River Basins, VA.
“We hope that our Top 10 list will serve as a wake-up call—a powerful reminder of what we stand to lose,” says Gleason.
For more detailed descriptions of each endangered area, a list of the top threats by individual state, and photographs and video, visit http://www.southernenvironment.org/topten_2010
Reprinted with permission by SELC.
