If a sewage line cracks near Nancy Creek, or a metal recycling company’s mess is flowing into nature’s waterways, expect the city’s Stream Team to be on the case.
Why it matters: Atlanta’s roughly 225-mile stream network is under constant bombardment from stormwater sliding off roads and rooftops and pollution from industrial and other sources.
- Creeks and streams lead to rivers. One way to keep the Chattahoochee clean is to keep the smaller waterways — major corridors for wildlife like deer, beavers, coyotes, otters and others — clean and thriving.
What’s happening: Throughout the week, Robert Thomson and Tessa Winbigler slip on waders and wet boots and trudge and prickly holly bushes, downed trees and mosquito clouds along the way to monitor the waterways and report potential violations.
- Over one year they’ll cover 45 miles of streams.
- The Atlanta Department of Watershed Management employees recently knocked west Atlanta’s Proctor Creek off their list. They’re currently walking and kayaking Peachtree Creek.
Intrigue: The team’s work helped eco-advocates and researchers link a polluted creek in far southeast Atlanta to TAV Holdings, a metal-recycling plant, and prompt the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to take action.
- Among the strangest things they’ve come across: cars, a homemade mini landfill behind someone’s house, a blind beaver that swam alongside the crew and lots of suitcases, wallets and purses ostensibly dumped by thieves.
Their favorite creeks: Winbigler, who joined the team six months ago and is a rock climber, loves Peachtree for its large picnic-ready boulders scattered along the banks.
- Thomson, a quick-witted Australian who’s hiked every watershed twice over his 10 years on the Stream Team, is a fan of Utoy Creek’s relative remoteness and trees.
How it started: The city created the division roughly 10 years ago to better monitor areas between bridges and “sewer outfalls” — pipes where storm drains lead to creeks — to spot runoff from…
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