A History of Water

Sally Bethea recalls her time as Chattahoochee Riverkeeper in debut book

By Collin Kelley

Sally Bethea was one of the first women in America to become a "riverkeeper" – a defender and guardian of an essential waterway. The nonprofit Chattahoochee Riverkeeper she founded in 1994 took Atlanta to court for polluting the river with untreated sewage just a year before the Summer Olympic Games.

Even now, Bethea said a year-old environmental group filing a lawsuit against a major city in the international spotlight was a "bold move."

But the organization prevailed in court and the city was forced to clean up its act – literally.

For the next two decades, the organization would file more lawsuits against companies polluting the river and be a thorn in the side of politicians whose laisse-faire attitude – or political expediency – concerning the Chattahoochee was causing harm to the waterway.

When she retired and passed the torch to a new riverkeeper, she was constantly asked the same question: "When are you going to write a book?"

Bethea honed her writing skills with her long-running, award-winning the Waterline column, which appears in Atlanta Intown and right here at Rough Draft. But it was reading "The Forest Unseen" by biologist David George Haskell that planted the seed for her debut book.

Haskell visited an old-growth forest in Tennessee on a daily basis for a year to examine its seasonal changes.

"Reading Haskell's book inspired me to start taking walks," she said. "I decided to walk deliberately and attentively through a landscape and oversee the changes and seasons of nature."

In May 2019, Bethea began walking a path along Cabin Creek in the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area (CRNRA). She went back again and again – usually weekly – to simply feel and observe. She documented those walks in a journal.

"I realized that I had been dashing through landscapes all my life and failed to pay close attention to the wonder and awe," Bethea said. "I love to be outdoors, but these walks brought nature into perspective."

When the pandemic struck and closed the CRNRA for two months, Bethea kept writing about what she had seen. Then, she landed on the idea of pairing her walk observations with memories of her days as the first Chattahoochee Riverkeeper.

The COVID-19 shutdown gave Bethea time to research and write. "I started writing and kept writing, so the pandemic also acted as a spark plug. I had a lot of time on my hands and all these hours at home. That gave me permission to reflect and not race around and focus on the writing."

The result is "Keeping the Chattahoochee: Reviving and Defending a Great Southern River," which is out now from University of Georgia Press.

The book is filled with lovely passages from Bethea's nature walks to serious and often funny recollections during

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