By Ngozi Rogers, NBC33
May 2, 2016Updated May 2, 2016 at 3:51 PM EDT
NBC33 honors Abigail King, Founder of Save Maumee Grassroots Organization whose purpose is to preserve, protect and improve the ecosystems of the Upper Maumee River and watershed by increasing public awareness through advocacy, collaboration, education and hands-on projects.
In 2005 Abigail King was told by friends that her kids would be poisoned if they swam in the Maumee river only 200 feet from her house. “I said ‘Why, what’s wrong with the river?’ and they said – I don’t know.” explains Abigail King, “Nobody knew. So I researched and payed attention and was horrified by what I found and I thought others should know.”
This is how Save Maumee Grassroots Organization began over 10 years ago. Founder Abigail King first took it upon herself to go down and clean up trash, then a couple years later the DNR gave her approval to plant native plants and get on their planting list. Now the organization, supported by memberships and 100% volunteer efforts, has tuned into something beautiful. “It’s huge” she says, “It’s an animal I am not in control of anymore, it’s quite its own entity.”
It is indeed its own entity with this year’s Save Maumee Earth Day celebrating 11 years by planting 380 trees along the riverbanks by 262 volunteers. Planting that happened only after 800 invasive plants were removed from the site. There’s a lot of prep work that must happen before any and all Save Maumee projects – each one very important to Fort Wayne’s ecosystem and many other cities.
“11 million people get their drinking water from the Maumee or Lake Erie.” Abigail says, “11 million people depend on us.” Save Maumee focuses on surface water not drinking water but one definitely impacts the other. For example, 21 cities discharge into the Saint Joe river where Fort Wayne gets its drinking water.
“What’s happening is all the algae from phosphorous and from nutrients are blooming and then you have this proliferation of all this algae,” Ms. King explains, “things die, other things grow, things die again and then you have a problem. It starts in surface water which costs more every time the water is degraded. So if you improve water quality from raw intake (surface water), it makes it less expensive from the tap (drinking water).”
So it’s important that the surface water is as clean as possible which is why Save Maumee does their annual Canoe Clean Up each September. “We’ve cleaned up a lot of trash over the past 8 years in the Saint Mary’s river,” says Abigail, “if not, (trash) would just flow into the Maumee which is just upstream.”
The Canoe Clean Up and it’s importance was featured in Fort Wayne filmaker Terry Doran’s latest documentary entitled: Anne Frank and the River Traveler. “The worst of human nature dumps trash and pollution in the river,” Doran said in a News Sentinel article, “The best of human nature inspires people to try to save our streams.”
A third component of Save Maumee is the annual Seed Harvest in October where volunteers gather native seeds to use when rehabilitating the ecosystem. “Seeds are expensive,” Abigail says, “an ounce of milkweed seed is $360 but if we go collect seeds then it’s free.”
Other projects include the Save Maumee Riparian Buffer Initiative to plant over 1,000 trees on riverbanks and streams leading to the Upper Maumme and the Upper Maumee Watershed project that creates a snapshot of current water quality to compare to water quality in the future.
People can get involved in annual events like Save Maumee’s Earth Day in April, Canoe Clean Up in September and Seed Harvest in October but the organization needs many more volunteer advocates to help speak for our rivers.
Find out how you can help by visiting their website Save Maumee Grassroots Organization or attending their monthly public meeting on the first Monday of each month at Don Hall’s Gas House, 305 East Superior street from 7-8:30pm.
Original from ABC21 Alive NBC33
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