Growing up, my family had a farm on the Broad River just above Lockhart. It was a farm for my great-uncle and his family, but a natural wonderland for my grandmother.
When I was young, my cousin and I spent summers there working in the garden, riding horses, and cooling off in the river. In autumn they would gather at the bottom of the same river for warm fires, big meals and wild game. The farm and our family have changed a lot over the years, but not much has changed about the river.
My kids tell me jokes. Every time I drove over a bridge with a local river below, I would instill that joke into my children’s heads. If I jumped into that river, I could float all the way to the farm. Maybe I exaggerated the idea a bit, but the truth is, if you live in Spartanburg County (or Cherokee or Union), all creeks, creeks, and rivers eventually head for the Broad. , which flows into the larger Santee River basin.
For context, it could be argued that the Santee River Basin flows from the mountains to the coast, and if you spill a drink while sitting at a table outside Morgan Square, it ends up in the Atlantic just south of Georgetown. increase. But the course the drink takes is Fair Forest He down the Creek, the Tiger River, the Broad River, the Congaree River, and finally the Santee River.
SPACE’S NEW LEADERDevelopment in Spartanburg County is causing land encroachment problems
For me, these local stories teach two lessons about conservation. The first is that we are all connected by a web of water. Backyard streams are fed by water flowing from lawns and driveways that eventually become everyone’s water. This water web is also the source of drinking water for the entire state, but it originates from small, intimate places like backyards. have a role to play.
The second lesson is how important land is to protect water quality. Recently, I met the authors of a study evaluating ecosystem services within the Santee River Basin. The study itself is broad in scope, but at its core it shows how land contributes to the quality of river ecosystems. For example, the study found that only 50{ea2cba5bdf6fe62bbe85e24807814144a71e77d3ae7311fbc27a008558d1372c} of the basin’s total land area, forest land, provided 80{ea2cba5bdf6fe62bbe85e24807814144a71e77d3ae7311fbc27a008558d1372c} of the sediment retention, and just under 850 million tons of soil effectively prevented river erosion each year. I understand.
Conversely, urban or developed land, which constitutes only 13{ea2cba5bdf6fe62bbe85e24807814144a71e77d3ae7311fbc27a008558d1372c} of the total land in the basin, provides 46{ea2cba5bdf6fe62bbe85e24807814144a71e77d3ae7311fbc27a008558d1372c} of the total water volume. This is what we often call ‘runoff’, effectively adding 112 trillion cubic meters of runoff to the stream. Streams and rivers every year. As we have seen in our state in recent years, spills of this level can be harmful and even fatal.
Studies like this show the importance of how we all manage our land in relation to water. As Spartanburg County grows and more and more forests and fields are lost to urban and suburban development, we will eventually have to deal with increased water flow and erosion that sometimes floods rivers.
Our local conservation community is acutely aware of this issue, and nonprofits such as the Spartanburg Area Conservancy (SPACE), Upstate Forever, and the Tiger River Foundation are working to protect the land around our waters. In addition to working for the cause, we encourage and educate local policy makers to act wisely. Decisions as we grow.
Learn more about this important issue and support the efforts of those who protect the land that protects our water.
Richard Carr is from Spartanburg and works as a Land Conservation Specialist for Upstate Forever.