Charlotte Magazine / Charlotte Magazine July 2005 / Catawba River Rising

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Catawba River Rising

We're here because the river's there. Yet few of us acknowledge the Catawba, that thick ribbon of water that flows under interstates 85 and 77 and feeds our lakes, lawns, and faucets. So I set out to discover it.

"HEY!"

"THE RIVER IS NOT A TRASH CAN!"

Catawba Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby's voice booms, echoing off the underside of Lake Wylie's Buster Boyd Bridge. She's yet to see the culprit, the person responsible for dirt and debris sprinkling into the river through a drainage hole in the bridge. But after only fifteen minutes with Lisenby, I sense the perpetrator could be the Incredible Hulk and she'd be no less deterred. This is her river. Someone is trashing it. That someone will pay.

We boat out from beneath the bridge and look up at a large North Carolina Department of Transportation man wearing a yellow hard hat, holding a push broom. He looks at us, head cocked slightly to the side.

"IT'S ILLEGAL to dump trash in the river."

The man stares, mouth open. Perhaps he's trying to comprehend the situation: He's sweeping road grit when he hears a commanding voice from below. Peering over the bridge, he finds a small white boat floating into view,piloted by an angry woman with two bemused-looking male passengers, one with a camera in hand. Is that lady yelling at me?

Finally, "I'm just doing what the boss man tells me to do."

"WHO'S YOUR BOSS MAN?"

Confusion. Silence.

"WHERE'S YOUR BOSS MAN?"

The man hesitates and then points to a collection of yellow hard hats farther down the bridge. Lisenby guns the outboard Yamaha and rockets the Miss Rachel Carsontoward the road crew. In no time, the "boss man" reports to the edge of the bridge.

"Your crew is ILLEGALLY dumping trash into the river."

The foreman feigns surprise, says he'll put a stop to it, and Lisenby thanks him for his cooperation. We speed back to the Lake Wylie Marina to report the infraction to two officials with Mecklenburg County's Water Quality Program, whom we'd run into not ten minutes before. The county workers assure Lisenby they'll speak to the road crew on their way to test water and sediment runoff from the Palisades, a 1,500-acre, 2,000-home golf course development that drains into eight of the lake's coves.

Turning south again, back toward the bridge, Lisenby stands at the helm. Dressed shoulder to ankle in a thick, black, GoreTex, wind-avalanche-nuclear-fallout suit and eyes hidden by mirrored sunglasses, she cuts an imposing figure commanding a craft with "Catawba Riverkeeper" emblazoned on both sides.

"It's like the Old West out here, where lots of things happened when no one was looking," she says. "But there's a new marshal in town and people are like, ‘Where did you come from?' "

In fact, Lisenby is not new. She saddled up as the Catawba Riverkeeper seven years ago. But forget marking anniversaries; there's work to be done. Our river flows, polluters lurk, and if she's not fighting the bad guys, who is?

"We're going dam to dam, Lake Wylie to Mountain Island Lake," she says of the day's maneuvers. "First, we'll buzz Duke Power's security cameras. Wave and let 'em know we're out here. Then we'll head north to pick up [newly elected Mecklenburg County Commissioner] Jennifer Roberts in Belmont. She needs to see the river. Then we'll continue to the dam at Mountain Island. You'll see a lot. Questions? Hang on, then."

The smooth roar of the 175-horsepower engine puts us in motion, unleashing a furious flow of wind -- particularly biting on this overcast March day -- and unfolding an even, curling wake behind us. So begins my day on patrol with our riverkeeper and also a journey to discover Charlotte's most-important natural resource: the Catawba River.

Zipping along the surface of Lake Wylie, I'm reluctant to admit -- especially as a native Charlottean -- that I know the lakes but had never given the Catawba much thought. In fact, I wasn't even sure it was a "real" river, certainly not one you could paddle. Rivers raged in the mountains or flowed wide and lazy near the sea.

"The Catawba always seemed to be just a muddy, seventy-mile-per-hour blur off the interstate," I half-yell, hoping the wind will carry away my admission.