Why Protecting Watersheds Is About Community and Culture

Editor's Note: This article appeared in the Winter 2008 issue of Waterkeeper, the official magazine of Waterkeeper Alliance.

Turkey Creek, Mississippi lies at the very crossroads of America's most noble and ignoble traditions. Established by emancipated slaves, the settlement began in 1866 as a long awaited promised land for a people denied all manner of dignity, even names, for fourteen generations. Their descendants have lived here, navigating American life and culture as free human beings and citizens for seven generations and counting.

No less than the legacies of slavery, segregation or civil rights; environmental stewardship is not new in Turkey Creek. We live in a place that gets 70 inches of annual rainfall, has the largest fire ant colony in North America, threatens water moccasins every few yards in May and 30-foot storm surges from hurricanes. We've been making peace with coastal Mississippi's ecology for a long time. This is our home. But our future is imperiled. Today our watershed is the crossroads between two competing visions for Mississippi: one that values communities, culture and the environment; and another that does not.

In 1991, after 20 years in Boston, I returned home to produce a documentary film on how the New South's homogenizing sprawl was pushing my community off of Mississippi's 21st century map. I quickly realized, however, that the immediate defense of Turkey Creek was profoundly more urgent. I was soon embroiled in the fight for environmental justice: the intersection where racism and classism -- historical evils deeply embedded in our national story -- meet with our equally evil legacy of environmental destruction.

Geographically, Turkey Creek sits where Interstate 10 meets US 49, near the Gulfport-Biloxi International Airport. Governor Haley Barbour and his post-Katrina planners have called the area the "center of gravity" for the entire region's economic recovery. I call it the place where my mama was rescued from a house full of toxic floodwater by neighbors piloting an air mattress nearly 5 miles from the Gulf. I call it the place where my ancestors are buried in graves that are now underneath apartment buildings that the Army Corps and city government allowed developers to put there. Turkey Creek is no doubt the center of gravity for someone's future; the question is whose future?

When Barbour and his inner circle think of Mississippi, they see highways, ports, plants and casinos -- not people. Their outlook explains why now, more than two years after Hurricane Katrina, the government -- state, federal or local -- still isn't involved in rebuilding peoples' homes. Across the coast, homes are being rebuilt one at a time by out of state volunteers, with tens of thousands still to go.

It explains why community based small business owners have little access to financial assistance, while casinos bounce back bigger and more numerous than before. Shipping facilities, major roadways and high end hotels that didn't exist before the disaster are sprouting up all over. It explains why we are seeing a deliberate acceleration of wetlands destruction, our first line of defense against future storm surges and proven protection from our normal bouts of heavy rain and flooding.

While everyone's Mississippi suffers from this slash and burn development, our political and business elites are having the time of their lives playing with unprecedented public and private dollars sent down for hurricane recovery (an amount greater than the state's annual budget.) But I cannot name more than a few individuals who have seen a dime of it. The resources for rebuilding allocated by Congress and the American people have been stockpiled in Jackson and diverted for an imbalanced and unsustainable Gulf Coast makeover. And many of coastal Mississippi's people -- of all races, rich and poor -- are exasperated. They know that the real Mississippi is our communities, homes, wetlands, streams, wildlife and trees. It's our people. Our fried mullet and catfish. Our porch swings and the blues. These are what make Mississippi worth loving, worth coming home to.