Nelson Brooke is the Black Warrior Riverkeeper, one of 350 Waterkeeper organizations that are defending local waterways world wide. RFK Jr discusses Nelson's job and battles protecting our blue planet in this special Earth Day episode.
Coal pollution -- from mining, to burning, to the storage of leaky coal ash waste -- present the biggest threats to water, air, and public health in Nelson Brooke's Black Warrior River basin, which provides the drinking water for over one million Southerners. Brooke was hired for his "dream job" in 2004 by his childhood friend David Whiteside, who founded Black Warrior Riverkeeper in 2001.
Twitter: www.twitter.com/BWRiverkeeper
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I'm really happy that my guest today is Nelson Brook, who is the Black Warrior Riverkeeper in Northern Alabama.
It's the water supply for Birmingham and I think Tuscaloosa.
Nelson has been Riverkeeper there, I think for now, something like 17 years, right?
Yes, sir.
And tell us about what you do.
Well, I'm really lucky to count myself as a water keeper, as a river keeper.
It's something that I've really grown to love.
It's a dream job.
Like you said, I've been doing it for about 17 years.
Your godson wrote me into the movement when he founded Black Warrior River Keeper and was looking to finish his degree in college.
And it's something that I just kind of happened upon through David.
And it's been an amazing job being a water keeper.
My job entails being the spokesman and the patrolman for the Black Warrior River watershed in Alabama.
Essentially, to boil it down, we stand up to major polluters who are polluting the river and its tributaries, and we stand strong to hold them accountable where our state and federal agencies aren't willing to do so.
One of the key things that we utilize is the Clean Water Act, but there are a number of other environmental statutes that we can stand with to hold polluters accountable and hopefully leave a better state for future generations.
Nelson, you're not what a lot of Americans would think of as a prototypical environmentalist.
You come, as many of the waterkeepers do, from this kind of hook-and-bullet tradition that is very, very strong in the southern waterkeepers.
And a lot of people are surprised about how strong the movement is in the southern states and also how combative and aggressive it is.
How do you explain that?
Well, yeah, I grew up I grew up fishing, and grew up hunting, grew up spending a lot of time outdoors, hiking, camping, and backpacking.
It just comes naturally.
I think I can say that for a lot of other Southerners.
There's just a lot of people that enjoy spending time outside, and most of them do not consider themselves environmentalists at all.
Usually the leading line that I get from my fellow Alabamians that like what I'm doing is, hey man, we really appreciate what y'all doing.
I mean, I ain't no tree hugger now, but We really like what y'all are doing.
And, you know, I want to have a, you know, healthy duck hunting hole and, you know, place to take my kids fishing.
So kudos to y'all for standing up to the big guys.
And, I mean, I think that's what it boils down to is we can...
Connect with people across all backgrounds, all political and religious persuasions, because everybody agrees that clean water is a right that we should all not have to fight for.
And so unfortunately here in the South, For a long time, our elected officials and politicians have just handed the keys to polluters, and they've allowed them to get incredibly wealthy by polluting our state and making us sick.
And a lot of us don't even realize that, that we're unfortunately being exposed to all of this stuff.
So we're having to fight really hard to one day.
Educate the public about all these problems and to fight these really entrenched, powerful interests who are used to getting their way.
And unfortunately, that comes with fighting the elected officials and the regulatory agencies that are also essentially bought and paid for.
They're captured as a part of this fossil fuel pollution generating wealth machine.
I remember I think 20 or 25 years ago, I went down and I spent three days at the Alabama DEP offices going through Clean Water Act permit files, and we found huge violations that the state had on record for many, many years from all the big steel companies.
I think there were five or six steel companies that had thousands and thousands of Clean Water Act violations.
We filed lawsuits against them.
And as you know, when you file a Clean Water Act lawsuit, you have to file a notice and attempt to sue 60 days before you file a complaint.
And it gives the state an opportunity to come in and preempt you by filing their own suit against the polluter.
And if they do that, you're out of the box.
And what happened in that case on the 59th day, the state attorney general Came in and signed a sweetheart settlement with all of these companies that had no penalties in it and basically required them to do nothing.
But the purpose of it was not to enforce the law, but to make sure that we could not enforce the law.
And that, unfortunately, is how enforcement works all over the South and many, many other states outside of the South.
I know that you've run into that.
Yeah, unfortunately, more times than I would like.
I mean, that was a real shock for me coming into this job as a kid in his young 20s.
I thought, you know, we have the law on our side.
We have collected damning evidence against these polluters.
As a matter of fact, they've collected their own damning evidence by doing their own monitoring and self-reporting all their violations to the state.
All these violations just sitting here in the state's record box with them doing nothing about it.
So here we are.
We're going to come in.
Pick up all this evidence and take it forward through federal court and hold these polluters accountable.
And yeah, I mean, here comes the state.
We won't hear anything back from the polluter.
We don't hear anything from the state regulatory agency.
And then they just wait until the very last hour.
And follow their own action with the intent of blocking our case and nothing more, right?
I mean, they certainly weren't just all of a sudden waking up and trying to do their job.
They were just trying to act like they were doing their job to keep us from truly holding the polluter accountable in court.
And they'll still attempt to do it today.
But a cool thing is that over our history of almost 20 years, of being a waterkeeper organization is we've won some pretty cool lawsuits that set precedent that allows for the Clean Water Act citizen supervision to be upheld in Alabama and throughout the 11th Circuit because we do have a right to do it.
We have a right to bring an action against a polluter if the state and federal regulatory agencies aren't doing their job.
And that's essentially why we even exist.
We've always said it would be great if our state agency would get off of its laurels and do its job and uphold Alabama law.
And if they did, we probably wouldn't even need to be in existence.
They'd work us out of a job.
But unfortunately, we have really strong job security and an estate agency that has shown no interest to do its job any different.
And we've been through multiple attorney generals since we started doing this work, and we've heard promises from several that they would reform things and do a better job holding polluters accountable to clean up the environment here.
And we've not seen any reform whatsoever.
Within the past handful of years, the Attorney Generals have continued to follow those same suits to block us and other water keepers.
What's interesting is ADEM, the Alabama Department of Environmental Management, has chosen to pretend like that's not what they're doing, that they're not trying to block us, that they're just doing their job.
But there have been plenty of articles where associates with Attorney General's office have admitted that that's exactly what they're doing, that they are trying to protect municipalities in the case of sewage lawsuits from the river keepers.
Well, just so that people who aren't that familiar with the Clean Water Act kind of understand what water keepers do and how we use the law.
Prior to Earth Day, essentially all the environmental laws had been overrun.
We had ancient laws like nuisance laws, public trust doctrine.
That had protected the environment, but since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, they had been eroded.
And the pollution was getting really bad in the late 1960s.
So I remember what it was like before Earth Day.
I remember the Cuyahoga River burning with flames that were eight stories high.
I remember Lake Erie was declared dead.
Zero dissolved oxygen, no life in it that needed oxygen to live.
On the Hudson River and the Potomac and the Charles River where I grew up, I couldn't swim in them.
We couldn't, you know, there were signs on the side of the river, do not get wet.
If you do, go get shots.
The Santa Barbara oil spill that same year in 1969 closed virtually all the beaches in Southern California.
That accumulation of insults drove 20 million Americans out of the street on Earth Day 1970, 10% of our population, the largest public demonstration in United States history.
And the political system, Republicans and Democrats, were so frightened by that Democratic outpouring that they came together.
Nixon was president.
He created EPA. He signed the Clean Water Act.
We passed 28 environmental laws in the next 11 years.
The Clean Water Act is by far the most popular of them, but all of those laws, when we wrote those laws, we understood that the regulated industry, over time, was going to be able to come in and take over those regulatory agencies to capture them.
And that we needed to protect the laws and give citizens the rights to protect those laws when the regulators and the enforcement agencies were compromised.
On every one of those laws, we inserted what we call a citizen suit provision, which says that any time that somebody is violating that law, And a polluter is discharging against the law.
And the government fails to act.
Any citizen can step into the shoes of the United States Attorney, prosecute that polluter for penalties that are over $30,000 a day in injunctive relief.
And that's what you do.
You go and you take your patrol boat out, you test the pipes, you go into the office of ADEM, which is the state EPA, You look through the files, you prepare a case, you file the letter of intent to the zoo, and then 60 days later you file your complaint, and then you're in a very strong position to make that polluter clean up.
And unfortunately, what we see is the state agencies coming in to protect the polluters instead of protecting the public health.
What is your relationship?
Do you ever talk to any of the people from the Attorney General's office or from the state agency who are doing these shenanigans?
We do.
I mean, we've been in touch with them, of course.
We have to be.
But ultimately, what it comes down to is they used to be able to take all of our cases, and because of the advances that we've made in upholding our right to file, especially where they're not doing anything demonstrably, you know.
We have been able to keep our cases where we go out and collect our own evidence.
And so, whereas in the beginning, we were trying to pick up all the messes that they had let fester, just all these polluters that had thousands of violations of their permits that had never been addressed meaningfully by the regulatory agency, as we worked through all of those, and in a lot of cases had our cases preempted or taken by the state, We got to a point where we started to do a lot more of our own data gathering.
And so as Riverkeeper, I'm out going to the permitted pipes that discharge pollution through a state permit into our waterways.
I'm taking pictures, video, water samples, and having labs analyze it.
And so we're essentially looking at whether or not what they are discharging is complying with their permit.
Where we found really awful facilities that are violating their permit all the time, it's not that hard for me to go out and grab a sample and show that they are violating their permit.
And so where we have that kind of evidence, it's very difficult for the state to take her case away.
And so we've been able to bring a number of cases Not saying the state didn't try to take our case away, but where we've been able to hang on to our case and continue to hold polluters accountable in federal court.
And so we've made a lot of strides by getting out there and doing the tough, difficult work that unfortunately the state most of the time doesn't do.
I think a lot of people out there assume that the EPA or the state agency is out there I'm really doing thorough investigations all over the place and collecting a bunch of evidence, but what we found is that our state agency very rarely does a thorough inspection against major polluters by going down to the actual discharge pipe and taking samples to double check what they're being Sent by the polluter,
they oftentimes just believe whatever the polluter is sending to them data-wise about compliance or whatever the permittee is telling them through email correspondence.
And so a lot of the enforcement that is done by the state of Alabama is actually just paper letters.
It's not even real monetary fines or anything meaningful that's going to really Get a polluter in line.
And that doesn't apply to just Alabama.
That applies, unfortunately, all over all.
All captive agencies.
And when you say they very rarely actually check the pipe, you may never, because that's...
I've never seen them out there checking pipes.
It's uncommon.
Tell us about the coal industry.
Coal is definitely one of our top threats in the Black Warrior Basin and around the world.
Coal burning power plants, Duke Energy, Southern Company.
Yeah, I mean, from cradle to grave.
So, mining, whether it's strip mining or mountaintop removal or underground mining.
Whether it's coal that's being used to burn for electricity by power plants, or if it's metallurgical coal that's being cooked in coke ovens into coke for the steel industry, which is incredibly toxic as well.
There's the coal ash that is generated by the power plants.
It's incredibly toxic.
And then there's the transportation of all of the coal around the world.
Most of the coal that's mined in Alabama is actually exported to other countries.
So this is really, even if it seems like a local issue, it's a global one because this stuff is being sent all over the globe and then we're importing stuff from all over the place to burn here and utilize here.
So it's an intricate web of Unfortunately, one of the nastiest fossil fuels out there being perpetuated across communities where many people don't even realize that this is going on, being transported by barge and rail and truck.
And we're left to pick up the pieces.
Right now we're just trying to get all the existing operations to follow existing law, but we're also looking to the future.
And asking for a better one, right?
We're pushing really hard for cleaner sources of energy, and that's where the Waterkeeper Alliance Safe and Clean Energy campaign is a really important one that binds together all the different waterkeeper programs around the world that are fighting not just coal,
but all forms of fossil fuel pollution so that we can Ideally, get away from having to deal with it, because it's a wreck from the moment that we pull it out of the ground, millions of years old, and it's affecting our environment, our air, our rivers and lakes, our groundwater, and it's affecting our lungs and our health, ultimately.
And this is a problem that future generations are going to be shaking their heads over.
And the whole system is corrupt, and it's completely dependent on subsidies.
If the coal industry had to pay the true cost of coal to the public, all the coal plants would be shut down overnight.
It's the most heavily subsidized industry on the planet.
I think the World Bank just did a study that shows that the carbon industry gets about five trillion dollars.
In subsidies annually.
And there's no way that they could compete.
I think the cost even of building a coal plant now is about $5 billion per gigawatt.
The cost of building a solar plant is about a billion dollars a gigawatt.
And once you build a solar plant or wind plant, which is a little bit more, maybe $1.2 billion a gigawatt, it's free energy forever.
And once you build the coal plant, now the real cause began, because now you have to knock down the mountains, get at the coal, you have to poison the rivers, you have to poison the groundwater.
The air pollution from coal plants cause America, just in particular, in our lungs.
Out from the damage from that, about $347 million a year.
We've acidified all the lakes on the high-altitude lakes and the Adirondacks and the Appalachians.
We have put mercury contamination in every freshwater fish in America.
And the cost of that to our country, if we force those companies to internalize their costs, And pay the true cost.
There's no way that they could compete in a marketplace.
We're free market believers.
We believe in free market capitalism.
And what coal is, as you say, from cradle to grave, it's corporate crony capitalism.
It's all based on corrupt subsidies.
Yeah, and unfortunately, in the regulatory realm and in the health realm, all of the data and all the science out there It's just now catching up regulators to actually putting in place permits that even try to scratch the surface of being truly protective of the environment and public health as the industry is falling apart, crumbling.
A lot of the coal mining companies out there are going bankrupt because of the competing price of renewable clean energy.
And also because now they're having to pay their fair share to do things the way they should have been doing it decades ago.
It's just sad to see that it's taken so long, so many decades for our government and our infrastructure and our regulations to catch up.
I mean, to think that The neurotoxin mercury was not even covered by the Clean Air Act until 2011 is mind-boggling.
I mean, we have rivers and lakes and water bodies across the world that have fish consumption advisories for mercury because of air deposition of mercury from burning coal around the globe and several other industries.
You know, these coal burning power plants are king there.
And that's devastating, particularly throughout the South, where there are so many rivers that are loaded with more fish than any other place in the country.
And Alabama has the number one Boasting rank for aquatic biodiversity in the whole country.
It rivals some of the most biodiverse places in the world.
People eat tons of fish here, and a lot of people are unfortunately not being properly notified about the danger of eating certain types of fish ever, or how they should only eat certain types of fish maybe once a month, whereas they're eating these fish multiple times a week.
So, I mean, we've got a lot of catch-up to do We're good to go.
Southern Company is one of the last utilities to try to upgrade and do things properly.
And here in Alabama, we're really the red caboose with coal ash.
Alabama Power is still towing the line that they can cap and place their coal ash and wet unlined impoundments.
With no liners that are situated right next to our rivers, and they're just leaching toxic contaminants such as arsenic, mercury, lead, cadmium, and the list goes on, into groundwater and into the rivers with impunity.
They plan on just leaving it there for decades to come, whereas Georgia Power, next door, another southern company, subsidiary, and Santee Cooper in South Carolina and Duke in North Carolina and Dominion up in Virginia, Utilities all across the country are being required to remove their coal ash and put it in upland, lined, dry landfills away from waterways.
And we're just still dealing with the worst kind of decision for future generations.
But, you know...
This is a struggle because coal ash is the largest toxic waste stream that we have to deal with, and it's going to be dealt with by many future generations.
And we're living now in a science fiction nightmare where my children and your children and the children of literally every other American can no longer engage in the seminal primal activity of American youth, which is go fishing with their father and mother in the local fishing hole and then come home and safely fish.
Freshwater fish in Canada and the United States now has dangerous levels of mercury in its flesh.
Yeah, and unfortunately...
Even though we have these great environmental statutes, the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Water Act of 1972, they still had shortcomings.
And like you said earlier, there have been plenty of opportunities since then for polluters and the corrupt politicians who are bankrolled by them to keep themselves in office for decades on end to take advantage of loopholes and corrupt state and federal governments Regulators and, you know, really work in a little niche for themselves to figure out how to continue polluting while calling it legal.
It's a travesty, really, that we lack the leadership in this country to not just uphold these amazing environmental statutes that protect our environment and our health, most importantly, but instead, you know, just basically hand the keys of our future away to a few Greedy interests for their own wealth gain.
It's part of this whole cycle that I think future generations are going to really be looking at us and saying, how the hell did y'all let this happen?
Why would y'all stick us with this mess?
That was a lot of doom and gloom.
Can we just talk about how y'all just end on a positive note?
How do y'all both keep going?
What hope do you have for the future?
How do you wake up and go to war every day?
All right.
You keep a positive attitude, Nelson.
Well, I guess I can keep a positive attitude because I love Alabama.
I was born and raised here and it maybe took me going away to school and coming back to realize all the things that I took for granted here.
But it's just a, it's a paradise.
It's a very wild place, lots of forests, wild rivers, and great people that enjoy all of that.
Being a state that is a little bit behind the times, we always joke that we're like 20 years behind the rest of the country when it comes to progressing forward.
We realized that if we weren't doing this work, who would be?
This is not a This is not a California kind of scenario where we have, you know, so many different nonprofit and non-governmental organizations out there fighting for all the things that matter, that it's hard to get a job.
There's no shortage of opportunity here.
If Black Warrior Riverkeeper didn't exist, then all these polluters would just continue to be taken advantage.
So it's tough.
A lot of what I do is depressing.
A lot of what I find is depressing.
And so unfortunately when I'm Telling about what I do, it can be really depressing for people to hear.
But I just know that this is important work and that I need to be doing it.
It's what I was meant to do.
And so I can wake up every day, no matter how stressful the job is, knowing that I'm making a difference.
And I've got kids now.
Honestly, that really took it to a whole new level.
When I realized that it wasn't just about me and what I thought was right or wrong anymore.
It was about really stepping up more aggressively for my kids.
You know, this is really about the next handful of generations because we're not going to solve all these problems now.
We're just basically laying the groundwork for what is to come.
Nelson Brooks, thank you very much.
Black Warrior Riverkeeper in Alabama.
Tell us, our supporters, our listeners, how they can support your work.
Black Warrior Riverkeeper can be found at blackwarrioriver.org.
We've got a bunch of different social media handles out there.
We're a membership, non-profit organization.
We're actually really small, so every little bit helps.
We're really floated by all of our volunteers, so we really encourage everybody up and down the river and from anywhere who thinks what we're doing is great to lend a hand.
If they can't provide money, volunteerism is great as well.
Help us spread the word about the waterkeeper movement.
There's over 350 waterkeepers around the world, and we're really proud to be a part of the Waterkeeper Alliance.
Y'all...
Y'all digging into those books back there?
It just makes me want to, like, come sit down on your couch and take a cup of tea and just read for five hours.
If you come to California, come and stay with us.
You'd be surprised how many of them are about Alabama.
Each shelf has a book about Alabama on it in some capacity.
I wouldn't be surprised, man.
You've got a lot of roots here.
Yeah.
I do.
Nelson, thank you very, very much.
God bless you, and we'll see you on the barricades.
