If you are interested in protecting rivers and waterbodies in the State of Georgia, one way to do that is to find and join a Rivers Alive Group or start your own. Rivers Alive is a program administered out of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources Environmental Protection Division Outreach Program. There are many different groups across the state monitoring waterbodies for chemical and biota. The data gathered by the groups is submitted to the Rivers Alive program manager where it is uploaded to a database after some Quality Assurance reviews.
Rivers Alive is a way to monitor local waterbodies for many different reasons, but it is also a way for small groups (or large groups) to get citizens involved in the water resources in their community and help clean the water of Georgia. This is also a good way to get people involved in the water resources while also teaching them about chemical parameters of the water (pH, temperature, dissolved oxygen) as well as macroinvertebrates.
If you are interested in finding out if there is a group close to you, go to the link provided above and contact the main Rivers Alive Office and they can help you find a local group to work with or they can guide you in starting a group and provide the needed training.
HABESHA, Inc. – Urban Green Jobs — One of the Rivers Alive groups. Image from the Rivers Alive webpage.
