Collaborating for Quality Growth

This slide show was created by the Cahaba River Society’s outreach and collaboration program to transform the way our region grows. We have presented this to numerous people in development-related professions, to local

government officials, and to citizens, to engage them in conversations about how to encourage low impact development as standard practice, so that the Cahaba River and all our water resources can be conserved for

future generations as our communities grow. This presentation outlines the values provided by the Cahaba, the challenges to the River’s health from urban development, and cost-effective, locally-proven solutions for

improved river conservation.

Our Mission – To restore

and protect the Cahaba watershed and its rich diversity

of life

Our mission is to restore the Cahaba watershed and its incredible diversity of life.

The Cahaba is a wonderful recreational resource for the Birmingham area. Just 15 minutes from downtown, you can be out in the woods running along a beautiful river on the Irondale Trail.

Raymond Miers

Or you can be canoeing or fishing. Few urban areas can boast such a close-to-home, close-to-Nature resource.

Less than an hour from Birmingham, in Bibb County, you can experience the famous Cahaba Lilies. The Cahaba River Society takes almost 2,000 people a year on the river – including 1,500 school children who learn about the river’s ecology and how to protect their drinking water in full day field trips. CRS has taken over 19,500 students

into the Cahaba for hands-on science education since 1996.

The Cahaba is a major drinking water source for the BWWSB system, which

serves one-fourth of Alabama’s people

But the Cahaba is much more than a recreational resource. It is a major drinking water source for the Birmingham Water Works Board, which serves one fourth of Alabama’s people.

Most people think our drinking water comes directly from Lake Purdy, but in fact the BWWB drinking water intakes are on the main stem of the Cahaba River, almost at the intersection of I-459 and Hwy 280. (Lake Purdy

is our dry weather back-up supply.) This means that all 200 square miles of the Cahaba watershed above Highway 280, and all the urban development on those lands, is our region’s drinking water source.

This picture shows some boaters canoeing through a lake of trash at the drinking water intakes, next to Sicard Hollow Road.

Alabama: #1 in states for Alabama: #1 in states for freshwater diversity, i.e. freshwater diversity, i.e. the number of species the number of species that live in our rivers and that live in our rivers and streamsstreams

•species of freshwater fishspecies of freshwater fish

•species of musselsspecies of mussels

• species of freshwater snailsspecies of freshwater snails

•species of freshwater turtlesspecies of freshwater turtles

•species of crayfishspecies of crayfish

•species of damselfliesspecies of damselflies

The third major value of the Cahaba River is its globally-significant freshwater wildlife. Most Alabamans don’t realize that their state is no. 1 out of all 50 states in terms of freshwater biodiversity. In fact, scientific studies by

The Nature Conservancy and The World Wildlife Fund, highly respected international conservation organizations, have identified the Cahaba River as a priority to save within the lower 48 states and globally.

The 2007 National Geographic College Atlas of the World listed six bioregions around the globe that are special examples of diverse life. One of these six is our southeastern US rivers and streams. The Atlas specifically

mentions the Cahaba River because it has more fish species per mile than any other river in the entire continent of North America.

In the summer of 2009, Smithsonian Magazine published an article about the Cahaba calling it “an unsung Alabama waterway [that] turns out to be one of the most biologically diverse places in the nation.”