Stanford researchers identify strategies for 'remaking' Appalachia's polluted waterways

For many Americans, there is a single word that elicits images of both enduring poverty and environmental degradation: Appalachia.

New Stanfordresearchpublished in the journalSociety and Natural Resourcespaints a starkly different image of the mountainous region by focusing on an emerging movement of citizen volunteers working to clean up watersheds polluted by abandoned coal mines and sewage-clogged streams.

The study, which was co-authored by Heather Lukacs, a graduate student in Stanford's Emmett Interdisciplinary Program in Environment and Resources, andNicole Ardoin, an assistant professor of education and center fellow at theStanford Woods Institute for the Environment, finds that people share a common motivation to improve highly polluted places. The researchers also found that people were further motivated to participate in cleanup projects if they saw how other volunteers' efforts had restored previously polluted areas.

The researchers' findings about how these "remade places" encourage other projects could help organizations elsewhere recruit and motivate volunteers more effectively.

"Our research highlights the positive feedback loop between watershed group restoration efforts and volunteer participation," said Lukacs, the study's lead author. "When restoration projects and their results are visible, people are motivated to become involved in community action. Seeing others working to clean up their stream and community motivates volunteers to improve their place."

Throughout Appalachia, a lack of resources, infrastructure and government oversight has led to toxic waste sites and household sewage being discharged directly into waterways. More than 3 million people in West Virginia live within one mile of an abandoned mine designated by the U.S. Department of the Interior as a "threat to health, safety and general welfare." All 13 of the watershed cleanup groups that Lukacs and Ardoin studied operated in areas with rivers and streams deemed "impaired" by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

In recent years, some local residents have banded together to restore fish to streams that had, for generations, been too dirty to support them. They have also raised funds, supervised mine cleanups, tested water quality and advocated for basic wastewater services, among other projects.

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Taxonomy

• Pollution
• Aquatic Environment