The Oconee River is one of Georgia’s most significant, running for 221 miles and providing multiple counties with recreational activity and drinking water, but substantial problems loom beneath the surface. Unlike statewide waterways such as the Chattahoochee and Ogeechee, it is visibly clear to a casual observer that the water quality in the Oconee especially around Athens is subpar due to a number of polluting factors. So what can our community do to stop it?
While many pollutants affecting the water quality of the Oconee could easily go unnoticed in the everyday life of Athenians, trash is certainly not one. Stephanie Green, Ecological Resource Coordinator at the Athens Clarke County Department of Sustainability spoke about their department’s involvement in river cleanup saying,
“So the trash traps that we call trash bandits, there’s actually three deployed across Athens Clarke County right now. One of those is completely owned and operated by UGA on Tanyard Creek and the other two are at Trail Creek so we work with UGA’s sustainability office, they actually maintain that trash trap and students help clean it.”
These efforts have proven to be effective, but trash pollution remains a significant problem for the Oconee and its tributaries. Athens Clarke County Sustainability Director Mike Wharton spoke about the issue saying,
“What’s interesting is they are probably within 1000 yards of each other or less, and so it’s in the things that people don’t think about. You see it sometimes on the top of your stormwater inlets, if your recycling blows over or you overfill it, and if stuff falls onto the roadway, or the company drops it into the back of the truck and three or four things fall out, and you compound that over a street or multiple streets, now you have a lot of the garbage is going straight into your water. I want to say in about two or three years we’ve taken out over 2500 pounds of trash in that stream between the two.”
Rivers Alive is a statewide initiative managed locally by non-profit organization Keep Athens Clarke County Beautiful which, “empowers citizens and businesses with the resources to take action as environmental stewards of litter prevention, waste reduction, and beautification. Through partnership with the Athens Clarke County Government Rivers Alive accounted for 4,159 pounds of trash collected from rivers and streams in 2024. Jackie Sherry who serves on Rivers Alive as well as working as Water Conservation Coordinator for the Athens Clarke County Public Utilities department said,
“Here in Athens what we typically do is have a committee full of Athens Clarke County departments, we have some folks from UGA, we have some nonprofits involved from the Upper Oconee Watershed Network and all of us collectively plan this one day event where we have selected sites around the county, along our rivers, along our creeks and streams, even roadways, and we identify these different sites and have volunteers go out and either do litter cleanup or do water quality testing, storm drain decaling, just various projects all with the focus of protecting that water quality.”
Another significant factor in the Oconee is sediment pollution. According to the US Environmental Protection Agency sediment primarily harms wildlife by clogging fish gills and reducing water clarity which can significantly impact their ability to feed and reproduce. Sherry agrees that this is a primary concern saying,
“We did some stream walks last week as part of the watershed protection plan, and we were talking with some of the folks helping us and they said some of our creeks and rivers used to be full of a lot of gravel and rocks but now it is a lot of sand and sediment, and that’s just from runoff.”
Runoff can be a pollutant in multiple ways, typically through picking up fertilizers, pesticides or oil, but the biggest runoff issue in Athens may actually be dog feces according to Katie Kenerly who also serves on Rivers Alive on top of working as the Program Education Specialist with Stormwater Management. Kenerly said,
“We just have so many dogs in Athens, and a lot of people aren’t picking up after them. And so even if its in a park and it’s off the trail when it rains, its still going to wash into the waterways. There’s like 23 million bacteria in a single gram of dog poop which compared to livestock and even human waste, its astronomically higher.”
Despite efforts to give out dog bags, Kenerly concluded that the most effective way to prevent fecal pollution from dogs is simply to raise awareness. Kenerly added,
“We have a plan to hit some of these apartments downtown with just a letter and a little pet waste bag gift, but we found that a lot of the time education is the most effective. People just don’t know, because they see poop is poop like oh its fertilizer, but it’s really high in phosphorous and nitrogen and things that actually kill plants and wildlife.”
If you’d like to get involved in local river cleanup visit riversalive.georgia.gov
