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On the Road with the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels

COMMENTARY

Peter Burgess

On the Road with the Sierra Club's Water Sentinels

'This is how we roll: hands on, and knee deep!'
-- Sierra Club Water Sentinels Program Director Scott Dye

In late autumn 2010, Water Sentinels Program Director Scott Dye, videographer John Vande Wege, and Sierra Club staff reporter Tom Valtin undertook a weeklong trip to interview and film Water Sentinels activists on their home turf in Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri. Here are their stories.

Episode 1: November 28, 2010
Our three intrepid travelers arrive in the rolling hills of northern Alabama and enjoy some southern hospitality as they commence their tour.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog | Watch the video

Episode 2: November 29, 2010
Reverend Mark Johnston, Director of Camp McDowell in Nauvoo, Alabama, takes us for a walk through the camp's hinterlands and talks about how he became a water quality activist.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog | Watch the video

Episode 3: November 30, 2010
Young campers learn about pond and stream ecology, and Maggie Johnston, Director of the Camp McDowell Environmental Center, talks about the importance of instilling environmental awareness at an early age.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog

Episode 4: December 1, 2010
Brooklyn native Dr. Cliff Cockerham invites us into his science classroom at Whites Creek School in Nashville, takes us water sampling with his students, and talks about his work with at-risk youth.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog | Watch the video

Episode 5: December 2, 2010
Kentucky Water Sentinels Aloma and Lee Dew take us on a 'Tour de Stench,' where we talk with longtime clean water activist Hank Graddy and meet Bernadine Edwards, a grandmother who is fighting factory farm pollution.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog | Watch the video

Episode 6: December 3, 2010
Retired Army Colonel Gene Nettles talks about what factory farming has done to his corner of far-western Kentucky and what prompted him to become a Water Sentinel.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog

Episode 7: December 4, 2010
Jack and Leslie Warden's home town of Herculaneum, Missouri, is being poisoned by the dirtiest lead smelter in the U.S. But with help from Missouri Water Sentinels Tom and Angel Kruzen, they have helped compel the smelter to shut down by the end of 2013.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog | Watch the video

Episode 8:
Twenty-seven years after Angel and Tom Kruzen started fighting the expansion of lead mining into the Scenic River watersheds of the Missouri Ozarks, the EPA announced that Doe Run, the country's largest lead producer, will pay $65 million to correct environmental violations at ten of its lead mining, milling, and smelting facilities in Missouri.
Full story and photos in our Scrapbook blog