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You never know what those wild and crazy
guys, the Neuse Riverkeepers Dean
Naujoks and Larry Baldwin, will do, but
in April they have a new stunt. They
will paddle the 280 miles of the Neuse
River from Durham to Pamlico Sound over
a three-week period, April 7 to 29.
And you can join them,
either symbolically through a donation
or in a canoe right next to them.
During their trek, Naujoks
and Baldwin will beach their canoes at
towns and cities along the Neuse to
visit schools, talk with local
government officials and talk with
reporters to bring their message that
the Neuse River is a vital source for
drinking water, recreation and fishing,
both commercial and recreational.
People can sponsor the
riverkeepers by pledging an amount for
each mile traveled. A pledge of 20 cents
a mile times 280 miles would result in a
donation of $56. People can also solicit
pledges from family, friends, neighbors
and co-workers. All pledges are
tax-deductible and allow the Neuse River
Foundation to continue its work.
People can also join the
riverkeepers and canoe or boat a leg –
or several legs – of the journey.
The journey will end on
Saturday, April 29, when Naujoks and
Baldwin will trade canoes for a
riverkeeper boat and travel from New
Bern to Oriental for a celebration
there. They hope to be joined by a
flotilla of boats that day.
For complete information
about the “Tour de Neuse,” go to the
Neuse River Foundation web site at
http://www.neuseriver.org.
One of the recent successes
of the riverkeeper program is the
agreement reached this January with
Smithfield Foods (operating as
Murphy-Brown LLC in North Carolina) to
enhance environmental protections at
about 275 hog farms in the state. The
agreement stems from two lawsuits filed
in 2001 by Waterkeeper Alliance, the
Neuse River Foundation and the Lower
Neuse Riverkeeper against two farms.
Under the agreement,
Murphy-Brown will fund programs to
identify risks that the hog-waste
lagoons might pose for groundwater,
monitor runoff from areas where the hog
waste is sprayed and increase stream
buffers and wetlands and increase other
protections for streams and rivers. The
company will also use a computerized
alert system to prevent spraying the
liquid hog waste before, during and
after rainstorms and will use other
devices to shut down spraying when wind
speed is more than 15 mph. |
