The Mobile River System -- which includes every stream that flows into Mobile Bay, from the Cahaba, Coosa, and Tallapoosa in the north part of the state, to the Tombigbee, Alabama and the rivers of the Delta in the southern part - has been named one of the ten most endangered river systems in the country.

In announcing the listing, the conservation group American Rivers cites the system's claim to fame as America's Amazon, a reference to the film and AL.com series of the same name, which both highlighted the exceptional diversity of plants and animals in and around these rivers. Thanks primarily to the life in these rivers, Alabama ranks number one in the nation for the number of aquatic species, including fish, turtles, mussels, crawfish and snails.

In the report, "America's Most Endangered Rivers, 2017," American Rivers describes the system as "The Mobile Bay Basin," and states that it accounts for 14 percent of all the freshwater flowing in the United States. The Mobile system drains parts of four states, and despite the biological riches living in its waters, has a long and tortured history as a pack mule for industrial interests, beginning with cotton in the 1800s, and then coal in the 1900s. There are more than 30 dams on the rivers in the system, some built to make electricity, and some to make them navigable for barge traffic. The river system has also suffered from decades of use as a sort of industrial wastewater treatment system, where industries have been allowed to dump barely or partially treated waste - waste still too contaminated for dumping in most states.

The system is considered endangered by the group because Alabama lacks a water management plan, something most states have. Such plans regulate and often limit how much water industry, including agriculture and manufacturing, are allowed to pull from the rivers for use each day. That problem was highlighted by a short but intense drought in 2016 that saw some major rivers dry up and stop flowing due to overuse by everything from paper mills to golf courses. During that drought, the mighty Cahaba River dried up so much that around Trussville almost the entire flow of the river was coming from the city water treatment plant. Imagine that, a river made up almost entirely of treated wastewater! Then consider that in its short 192-mile run, the Cahaba has as many species of fish as you can find in all the rivers in the entire state of California.

"Mobile Bay, its Delta and the rivers that sustain them are under threat from mismanagement of water resources within the Basin. Waste and overuse of water are rampant. Throughout the Basin, river flows are increasingly altered to accommodate excessive use and consumption," reads the American Rivers report. "As threats to Alabama's water resources have mounted, the state has been too slow to act. Alabama does not reliably track its water use and has no enforceable policies to ensure that streams and water users are protected during droughts. Additionally, the state fails to provide protections for flows when it authorizes water use within the state or negotiates with federal regulators and its neighboring states. Likewise, the state has no policy to ensure that water conservation is required as a component of water authorizations."

Contrast that with neighboring Georgia, where state laws lay out a rigorous and highly detailed plan for water usage by people and industry. There, if a water crisis emerges, state laws kick in that outlaw outdoor watering of lawns and gardens, golf courses are restricted in their water use, restaurants are only allowed to provide glasses of water to customers by request, and farms and businesses in the state can have their water use restricted or curtailed entirely. Every water permit issued in the state makes clear that "any permit may be suspended, restricted or otherwise modified by emergency order," of the Director of the Georgia Department of Environmental Protection.

But there is no mechanism or law in Alabama designed to force industry or farmers to use less water in an emergency. Instead, state law essentially guarantees the right to water for thousands of property owners along our rivers. Meanwhile, there are no rules protecting the creatures that live in those rivers, no laws to ensure they have enough water to survive. That's how we ended up with the Tallapoosa's flow completely collapsing during the last drought, so that the river was rendered a series of pools with no flowing water.

"Repeatedly, the state legislature has failed to enact legislation that would protect the Mobile Bay watershed. Exacerbating the problem, state leaders are currently seeking to promote even greater water consumption by relaxing standing prohibitions on water diversions, while providing incentives for farmers to increase irrigation," reads the report.

"This is a real opportunity not to navel gaze and say we've messed things up, but to say 'Now is the time to take some action and do what we need to do to protect this really important resource for the state,'" said Mitch Reid, program director for the Alabama Rivers Alliance. "We keep looking at little pieces of the puzzle and not understanding what we are doing to the entire system. There's a bill in the senate right now to encourage farmers to take more water out of the Tombigbee. I don't think they want to hurt anything, but they may not understand what that means downstream. When we talk about management, we have to understand that decisions we make on the Coosa or the Black Warrior are ultimately decisions that are going to affect Mobile Bay. We have to look at the whole state. We can't have a conversation about helping shrimpers by talking about the Five Rivers area. We have to talk about what we are doing with water in Birmingham and other places up the rivers, and how that will affect everything downstream."

In addition to all the obvious effects upstream, where rivers dried up and left fish and other creatures high and dry, another problem developed in Mobile Bay. Salinity levels crept higher than normal due to the lack of freshwater coming downstream. That has implications for oysters, which require extended periods of low salinity to combat various predators, and for the migrations of all sorts of animals that move from the bay into the Delta, from menhaden to bull sharks.

"The good news is we've got the water to meet everyone's needs and still preserve and protect this wonderful resource. We don't have a water problem in Alabama, we have a water management problem," Reid said. "Now we are seeing our need to protect this water rubbing up against the needs of neighboring states. What we don't want to see is our bay being harmed the way Apalachicola Bay is being harmed by management decisions in that basin."

Apalachicola Bay has suffered an almost complete collapse of its oyster population in recent years, due to a lack of flow coming down the Chattahoochee River system, which is shared with Alabama. Oysters in the Florida Bay were subjected to ever higher salinity levels as metro Atlanta sucked too much water out of the system during recent drought years.

The report also highlights the legacy of Alabama's use of its rivers, focusing on the 140-plus aquatic creatures listed as threatened or endangered. That doesn't include the 90 species Alabama has already lost to extinction, the most on the continent. California only has 53 extinctions, despite being three times larger. To put that number in starker perspective, consider this: Alabama has more extinctions than the surrounding states of Mississippi, Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee combined. For comparison, Mississippi has 11 confirmed extinctions, and Louisiana just nine.

"We are on a precipice. That's why the river system is designated as endangered," Reid said. "We have some decisions we need to make in the state. Those decisions will tell us how we are going to live and protect that resource into the future."

This is not the first time the state's rivers have been highlighted for our rough treatment of them. In 2013, the World Wildlife Fund used the damming of the Coosa River as one of seven examples from around the globe for the "Seven Sins of Dam Building." The Alabama river was used to illustrate the sin of "Neglecting Biodiversity."

"The entire Mobile Bay Watershed is vitally important to our community, economy and our quality of life along the coast.The decisions being made or avoided in Montgomery have an impact on the health of our waterway and we must do better," said Casi Callaway, executive director of Mobile Baykeeper. "Each drought we go through without adequate protections for our streams means a higher concentration of pollution hitting Mobile Bay. We have to plan better in order to protect jobs, swimming, fishing, tourism and the beauty of our incredible waterways."

The rivers included in this year's top ten list from American Rivers are:

Lower Colorado River, Arizona, California, Nevada Bear River, California South Fork Skykomish River, Washington Mobile Bay Rivers, Alabama Rappahannock River, Virginia Green-Toutle Rivers, Washington Neuse and Cape Fear Rivers, North Carolina Middle Fork Flathead River, Montana Buffalo National River, Arkansas

You can read all of the stories from the America's Amazon series here:

A complete guide to our essays on America's Amazon

>> Journey into one of the planet's treasures, a cradle of biodiversity

>> How ancient ice, or the lack of it, shaped the amazing biodiversity of Alabama

>> Where the rivers meet the sea, the Mobile-Tensaw Delta, is important on a global scale

>> Visions of glories past: Manhandled Mobile River Basin sadly diminished; in hidden places, hints at wonders of long ago

>> Dams put a chokehold on Alabama waters

>> Old timers remember Delta's pristine water and teeming wildlife

>> What will be the fate of the Mobile River Basin? Time ticks by for America's Amazon



