Revisiting Rivers of History: Another Look at Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Alabama Rivers

摘要

It was a coincidence. I had just received the invitation to submit this article to the EWRI Proceedings when the "Coosa-Alabama River Improvement Association Newsletter" arrived to announce that once again President Bush's budget did not include funding to maintain and operate a navigation channel on the Alabama River. Why? Because by federal criteria used to assess navigation projects this stream, which was once crowded with all sorts of watercraft, is now an "unproductive" river. That got me thinking -- thinking about what I had written back in the early 1990s when I was pulling together the loose ends that, when tied up, would be Rivers of History: Life on the Coosa, Tallapoosa, Cahaba, and Alabama. And thinking about what I would say now, to explain why this once important river system, today, isn't. To do this, to make sense of the rise and decline of this remarkable waterway, I need to go back, back to where I began the book, back to the rivers before man came to change them, back to when they still ran wild and free.