Articles

American Whitewater is working to bring whitewater boating back to West Canada Creek in the Adirondacks as part of the relicensing of the hydropower dams at Prospect and Trenton. Over the past month, AW members have participated in two whitewater boating studies demonstrating the importance of whitewater boating on the river. The upper reach, located in te natural river channel below the Prospect Dam, completely dewaters the dramatic 35-foot Prospect Falls. Participants in the whitewater boating study at Prospect likened

American Whitewater has big stewardship plans for 2021, removing dams, securing new Wild and Scenic designations, enhancing access and protections for rivers on public lands, and protecting our bedrock river conservation laws such as the Clean Water Act and National Environmental Policy Act. We continue to press forward with bipartisan opportunities to pass legislation that’s good for our rivers, but we can’t do it without your ongoing support to keep our work on track.  Your membership dollars and donations will support our conservation efforts, from protecting

A Tennessee kayaker was rescued after spending 8 hours trapped behind the veil of Kanawha Falls, a 15 foot drop located below the confluence of the New and Gauley Rivers in West Virginia. The victim was paddling alone; a fisherman spotted his loose kayak and notified authorities. Top expert kayakers from Fayetteville, WV teamed up with WV-DNR officers and first responders to locate and rescue the man. Read their remarkable first-person accounts in the American Whitewater Accident Database: https://www.americanwhitewater.org/content/Accident/detail/accidentid/112642

American Whitewater members Vance Harris, Nate O’Connor, Cameron O’Connor, and Dominic Judd are humble heroes. While camping on their way to the recreational releases on Pit 5, these young men took action to prevent another wildfire from burning out of control in Northern California.   After not quite making it to the Pit River Madesi campground, our intrepid boaters set up camp off of Hagen Flat Road by Tunnel Reservoir. Right as they were settling down, they witnessed a local’s trailer

A discussion of low head dam hydrology, and what features make a dam dangerous, and how to mitigate them.   A list of low-head dam related fatalities nationwide: http://krcproject.groups.et.byu.net/browse.php   A list of dam-related fatalities in Iowa going back over 100 years. Iowa has done a remarkable job removing or modifying low head dams. http://www.iowawhitewater.org/lhd/fatalities.html   The original video on dam safety: The Drowning Machine

Tallulah Gorge State Park has determined that scheduled Tallulah Gorge whitewater releases for the fall of 2020 need to be cancelled to comply with their Covid-19 related policies. Access to the gorge floor has been closed to all visitors since March, and paddlers gathering at access areas and on the stairs would exceed their limits on people occupying areas of the Park. Representatives of American Whitewater and an affiliate club represented paddlers on a call today with the Park and

For the past two and a half years American Whitewater has participated in a cooperative effort bringing together members of the hydropower industry, national conservation organizations, the Department of Energy, and others who are committed to addressing the urgent challenge of climate change, and its impacts on rivers. Co-convened by Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment as a part of the Energy Futures Initiative, this Uncommon Dialogue process resulted in a Joint Statement of Collaboration on U.S. Hydropower that

The Forest Service recently released a Draft Environmental Impact Statement (DEIS) for a large-scale mining project in the headwaters of the South Fork Salmon (ID) and we need YOU to let the Forest Service know how important of a whitewater resource the South Fork is to our community! The DEIS clearly states that the Stibnite Gold Project, as proposed, will adversely affect endangered fish species, their habitat, and the river’s water quality and quantity. These effects to water quality and

All of our festivals, including our traditional Gauley Fest throwdown in West Virginia, unfortunately had to be canceled this year. We missed seeing every single one of you in person this year, but it was awesome to connect virtually with our community and to celebrate the Gauley River, our stewardship success in the region, and to give away some great prizes from our awesome industry partners. It’s also something to be thankful for, that the pandemic may have stopped our

This action alert requires a quick turnaround time! Comments are due tomorrow, October 8th. Use this link to help shape the future of scheduled whitewater releases on the Russell Fork River (VA/KY) for the next 25 years! We need to let the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers know how best to manage the river for paddlers, making sure they maintain recreational flows during the month of October (including the new Friday release days!), relay our desire for increasing scheduled releases

In an effort to keep you, our staff and volunteers, and the communities that host our events as safe as possible, we made the incredibly difficult decision to cancel all AW events in 2020, including our traditional Feather Fest throwdown in California. We’re so bummed to not be able to gather in person but we’re pleased to announce that we’ll all be congregating for a virtual festival to celebrate some of our stewardship victories and to thank our membership base

Access to the Bulls Bridge section of the Housatonic River has been restored in Connecticut in response to American Whitewater’s complaint to FERC about the closure. FirstLight, the licensee for the Bulls Bridge hydropower project, restored access after AW filed a formal complaint that the closure violated the project license. The areas had been closed by FirstLight in May at the request of local communities due to COVID-19 and overcrowding concerns. In our complaint, we alleged that the closure violated

American Whitewater is proud to release some big upgrades to our website with the support of a U.S Coast Guard grant. We’ve totally revamped the mapping tool for interacting with our National Whitewater Inventory (NWI), our database containing over 5,700 runs, with crowdsourced descriptions, recommended flow levels, rapid descriptions, alerts, news and more. This improved planning tool will not only help paddlers select the rivers and flow levels appropriate for their skill, it will also inspire you to visit new

Reiciendis dignissim.

The owner of Santeetlah Dam, Brookfield, has refused requests to reschedule eight spring releases on the Cheoah River that were cancelled because of Covid-19. Today, American Whitewater filed a request asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to require Brookfield to make up at least half of the cancelled releases later this year. The request comes after Brookfield delayed a meeting to reschedule releases and then flatly refused to provide any make-up releases. Similar releases on nearby dams operated by other