Renew Our Rivers
Story by Elaine Hobson
Submitted photos
Fish habitats, marine patrol, increased depth, Renew Our Rivers, educational programs for school kids, Water Wars with Georgia — phew! The Neely Henry Lake Association is involved in a lot of programs to preserve, protect and improve the quality of life in and around Neely Henry Lake.
“Quality of life, the environment and safety are our chief concerns,” says NHLA president Dave Tumlin. “But we like to have fun, too.”
Some of that fun comes from their annual two-night Christmas Boat Parade, which began in 2018 and skipped last year due to COVID concerns. It will be back full throttle Dec. 3 and Dec. 4.
Friday, Dec. 3, the parade will be held in Gadsden along the Coosa Landing marina area. Sunday, Dec. 5, it will be held in the Rainbow City/Southside area, between Rainbow Landing and the Southside Marina. Details (contact person, start times, parade maps, etc.) for both parades will be posted on the NHLA website (neelyhenrylakeassociation.com) and Facebook page.
The Great Alabama 650, a 650-mile paddle race across Alabama that passed through the Coosa River again in September, is another fun time for lake residents and more. Billed as “the world’s longest annual paddle race,” it starts in Northeast Alabama and ends at Fort Morgan in Mobile Bay.
The NHLA was formed in the mid-90s with 15-20 members, but gradually grew larger and was incorporated as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in 1999. Today, it boasts more than 250 members. “We were formed for two reasons,” Tumlin says of the NHLA. “The first was a safety issue. We wanted Alabama Power to cut trees along the eastern side of the river because they were rotting and falling into the lake, and boaters couldn’t see them. APC responded and had the trees removed.
Also, APC was dropping the lake three to five feet every winter to prevent flooding in the Gadsden area. The flooding was caused by heavy rainfall and a narrow section below Gadsden known as Minnesota Bend that restricted flow.
In 1999, the NHLA petitioned Alabama Power, the Corps of Engineers and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to establish a fall and winter elevation of 507 feet above sea level on the lake. This is two feet higher than the 505-foot elevations previously allowed. After a number of meetings with the various entities involved, the request was approved in 2001. That improved boating safety and access to the lake and significantly increased property values and recreation/tourism, according to an informational brochure published by the NHLA.
Alabama Power started the dam-building project that created Neely Henry and Logan Martin lakes in 1966, the same year Tumlin’s father began building his lake house. The elder Tumlin had purchased a 160-acre farm with 1.5 miles of frontage on the Coosa in 1962, sight unseen.
Completed in the spring of 1968, his house was one of the first ones built along that waterfront. “You used to see pastures on the banks of the Coosa,” Tumlin says. His dad sold off lots through the years, and The Farm, as his family calls it, is down to 30 acres, including a small cemetery that has become the burial grounds for the Tumlin family.
“I bought out my siblings’ shares after dad died in 2014,” Tumlin says. “I just sold a lot to a couple from Georgia, who chose Neely Henry after much research because of the lake’s quality of life and stability of water level.”
He says the NHLA focuses on sharing information for the people on the lake by having monthly meetings, addressing concerns such as the fish population. “We got the State Department of Conservation and Natural Resources to come to a meeting and talk about the fish population, which they say is good and stable,” Tumlin says. “It’s full of crappie and bass.”
Representatives of APC have attended association meetings to talk about aquatic weeds and their control and shoreline management regulations. Alabama Power controls permits for structures or other changes along the shoreline, such as boathouse size and location and the building of seawalls. “You have to go through APC to get a permit for any shoreline changes,” Tumlin explains.
Other speakers have talked about the Native Americans who used to live along the Coosa and the artifacts people find along its shores. They also hosted the Alabama Marine Patrolspeaking on boating safety and regulations. It’s all about providing informational resources to lake residents and businesses.
The association is a key participant in Renew Our Rivers, a regional cleanup project that began on Neely Henry in 2000 and now covers most of the rivers in Alabama. It has spread also to Georgia, Mississippi and Florida.
“That program was started as Renew the Coosa here in Gadsden by Gene Phifer, a Southern Company-Alabama Power employee, who is also a former president of the association and is still on our board of directors,” Tumlin says. “Volunteers will choose a part of the river or lake and spend a day picking up trash, most of it in the form of litter that starts in a city or community and eventually washes into our lakes and rivers.”
Churches, civic organizations, even prisoners participate in the program, which has resulted in 14 million pounds of debris removed from all participating areas through the years.
Two educational components to NHLA activities include the Message in the Bottle, which is part of the Renew Our Rivers program, and the Water Festival held each year at Gadsden State Community College.
Message in the Bottle was named after a 19-year-old “message” found in a plastic bottle during the 2001 Renew Our Rivers event. It involves schools in Etowah County, and more than 10,000 students have participated.
The Water Festival highlights the importance of clean water and the detrimental impacts of pollution. The festival provides a learning experience that utilizes instructor-led, basic laboratory demonstrations and subsequent discussions for fourth-grade students in Etowah County.
“Every four or five years, we coordinate with APC to approve a scheduled maintenance drawdown of the lake,” Tumlin says. “They drop it low, and people know about it ahead of time, so they get their boats out and line up contractors to repair piers and seawalls. The last one was about four years ago, and we hope to have another drawdown scheduled within the next year.”
Tumlin underscored the importance of the drawdown in maintaining structures along the lake. He was in his boat when the last drawdown took place. He looked back at his boathouse and noticed one of his pier pilings was rotted. “I got a piece of wooden pilingthat had floated down and washed ashore and made the repair,” he says.
Projects for preserving, protecting
The association has placed fishing-line receptacles near boat-launch areas on the Neely Henry in Calhoun, St. Clair and Etowah counties for collecting and recycling used fishing lines. “These lines are hazardous to many species of birds and aquatic and semi-aquatic organisms, as well as boat propellers and motors,” the NHLA brochure states.
Since 2005, members of the NHLA have worked with Alabama Power personnel to place hundreds of Christmas trees at various locations in Neely Henry to serve as fish habitats. The trees are secured to the bottom of the lake with concrete weights. Floats are attached to the tops of the trees so they will remain upright, and they are placed in deep water to prevent a safety hazard to boaters, swimmers and skiers.
An ongoing project has been facilitating the discussions about the 30-year-old “Water Wars” between Alabama and Georgia. “The NHLA is working with Alabama state agencies, local, state and national political leaders, other lake associations, environmental and angling associations, civic organizations and concerned citizen groups in an attempt to prevent future major water losses to Alabama,” according to NHLA literature.
The crux of the Water Wars is that Georgia continues to request and obtain more and more water from the Alabama, Coosa, Tallapoosa (ACT) Basin and the Apalachicola, Chattahoochee, Flint (AFC) Basin. The NHLA is concerned that Georgia has plans to take even more water than the amounts they are currently taking, which could have an immense environmental, economic and recreational impact on Alabama.
“Georgia continues to request (from the Corps of Engineers) and obtain more water from the Etowah River, which reduces water flow to the Coosa,” an NHLA white paper states. Much of the battle has been fought in court, but Alabama has come out on the losing end of these court battles in part because it has no comprehensive water management program, according to Tumlin. “That’s something the association is pushing for,” he says.
Their newsletter on their website (neelyhenrylakeassociation.com) and Facebook page contains a Call to Action section that the association uses as an informational platform. “When someone brings up an issue, like the recent Corp of Engineers proposal that would lower Neely Henry more frequently and more significantly, we research it and may put out a Call to Action to make people aware of what’s happening,” Tumlin says. “This allows our membership and the public to get involved and communicate their opinions to elected representatives and/or the appropriate agencies.”
Another example of A Call to Action involves the animal rendering plant that is being proposed for Etowah County. “Things could happen, such as settling ponds overflowing and draining into creeks, then the lake,” says Tumlin. “Neely Henry is one of only a handful of lakes along the Coosa that does not have any fish-eating restrictions, and we want to keep it that way.”
Three years ago, Jacksonville State University, sponsored by the lake association and Greater Etowah Tourism, did an Economic Impact Study on the Coosa River that included all of Etowah County and parts of Calhoun and St. Clair counties. According to Tumlin, they found that the total economic activity in these areas comes to $570,663,000 per year. They found a direct impact of $12,000,000, but additional impact comes from home values, restaurants and other businesses.
Tumlin says there are very few open lots left along the lake and estimates that 95% of the people who live on its shores are full-time residents. “We care about this lake.”
