Altamaha River Basin Altamaha River And Tributaries Georgia Survey Report

Author : Richard Anthony Milligan (Jr.)
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 500 pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (11 download)

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Download or read book Confluences of Race and Nature in the Altamaha River Basin written by Richard Anthony Milligan (Jr.) and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 500 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rising from urban headwaters in metro Atlanta and Athens, Georgia, the Altamaha is a large river system. Its catchment lies entirely in the state of Georgia, drains an area of roughly 14,000 square miles, making it one of the largest single contributions of freshwater to the Atlantic on the east coast of the United States. This dissertation is a study of the confluences of race and nature in the Altamaha River Basin. I approach the discursive and material qualities of race and nature in this basin as ontologically connected, emergent, and shifting in territorial assemblages. In this dissertation, I demonstrate the particular ways that race and nature are co-constituted in the territorialization of the Altamaha River System. I demonstrate how the organization of space into territory discursively and materially shapes configurations of race and nature. Conversely, the organization of race and nature, as powerful sets of ideas that order how people interact with each other and the environment, frame the production and expression of territory. In particular, this dissertation explores the growing institutionalization of community-based watershed and river advocacy groups in the governance of surface waters and riparian environments. Framing the growth of these organizations not simply as a recent development in the U.S. environmental movement, my research with four Altamaha-based organizations suggests that we understand the nation-wide proliferation of such organizations as an innovation in the technology of water governance supported by federal, state, regional, and municipal agencies. While approximately forty percent of the three million people living in the Altamaha Basin are African American, my research shows that a persistent lack of minority representation in this innovative form of governance exacerbates inequalities in the Altamaha's racially differentiated landscape including disproportionate exposures to environmental risks and uneven access to the benefits of environmental regulation. The broader impacts of this dissertation include the identification of key barriers to fostering greater racial diversity in main stream river and watershed groups as well as successful strategies employed by the South River Watershed Alliance in DeKalb County to address racial bias in water governance.