Saluda-Reedy Watershed Project Underway

By Jason Van Driesche

     The Saluda-Reedy Watershed Project is up and running! In our last issue, we gave a broad overview of our plans for this ambitious $1.5 million collaborative effort to understand –and ultimately to reduce – the impacts of changing land use on water quality in the Saluda-Reedy Watershed. Now we can report on tangible accomplishments, as well as provide a more detailed look at what’s in store.

Our first major report – on sedimentation in the upper reaches of Lake Greenwood – received widespread attention. The report was a front-page story in the Sunday edition of The Greenville News, and received coverage in most other major regional papers as well. It showed that the upper arms of the lake have lost 45 to 60 per cent of their original capacity and now contain enough sediment to fill over one million dump trucks. While the findings applied only to a small portion of the lake, they provided the first scientific evidence that intensifying land use in the upper reaches of the watershed has significant and measurable impacts on the water resources that our downstream neighbors depend upon.

	The Saluda River near Ware Shoals, blanketed in early morning mist.

On other fronts, our water quality database is at 2 million records and growing, and will serve as the foundation for much of the rest of our work. In addition, a team at Clemson is assembling the data necessary for creating a growth model that will predict patterns of development over the next 20 years. We’ve also begun work on a public website that will function as a portal for everyone interested in learning more about their watershed. And we’re almost ready to go into production on a large-scale, full-color brochure and map of the watershed that will be our first major public outreach tool.

Next year, we plan to design workshops for local officials and developers, engage the business community, get involved in on-the-ground stream restoration, and much more. To this end, we are continuing to build new collaborative relationships with other partners, from the Earth and Environmental Sciences program at Furman University to the South Carolina Department of Parks, Recreation, and Tourism. Many of the initiatives we have planned for 2004 will involve new partners, for this project is more ambitious than even the large and diverse group of original partners can take on.

Upstate Forever serves as coordinator for the project. For more information or to volunteer to help, contact our office at 864-250-0500, or visit the project website at www.saludareedy.org.