Table of Contents

• Disaster Preparedness and the Road to Resiliency
  by Barb Horn, Colorado Parks and Wildlife and Nicole Silk, River Network
• Crisis as an Opportunity for Transformation
  by David Lillard, West Virginia Rivers Coalition
• Using a Watershed Planning Approach for Oil and Gas Disasters
  by Emergency Response Unit to the US EPA, Region 8
• SIDEBAR Lessons Learned from the Silvertip Pipeline Breach
  by Emergency Response Unit to the US EPA, Region 8
• The Day My River Turned Orange
  by Barb Horn, Colorado Parks and Wildlife
• How FEMA Funding and Bioengineering Can Help Communities Recover
  by Jeanine Petterson, Federal Emergency Management Agency
• Western Lake Eerie Algae Blooms: No Safe Drinking Water for Toledo
  by Howard A. Learner, Environmental Law & Policy Center
• Colorado’s 1,000 Year Flood – Supporting Community and Watershed Health
  by Chris Sturm, Colorado Water Conservation Board
• SIDEBAR: A Changing Climate Means A Changing Society:an interview with Harriet Tregoning, HUD’s Office of Economic Resilience

In This Issue

Pick up a newspaper and on nearly a weekly basis you’ll find a story about a disaster where water plays a lead role. From the contamination of drinking water due to lead pipes in Flint, Michigan, concern somewhere in the west about why creeks turn orange and what to do about acid mine drainage, to the massive dam failure in Brazil whose toxic mud engulfed downstream communities and cut off water supply, disasters are everywhere.

But when disaster strikes close to home, the experience is completely different. You feel it viscerally, personally, emotionally, and economically. It stops you in your tracks and rearranges your priorities. And if the disaster is related to a climatic event, you may stand back in wonder as your normally placid local stream becomes a frothy brown torrent of trees, cars, and parts of roads. With all that power moving downstream, who or what lies in harm’s way?

As the articles in this issue of River Voices explain, we can do more to prepare for disasters and build resiliency into our ecosystems to help protect people from danger. We can also build resiliency into the social systems that we need to recover more quickly. Both investments are crucial to building a more sustainable future for people and nature. If you haven’t done so already, now is the time to build your own disaster response plan, to identify who you will work with to assure your river is restored after disaster strikes, and to help engage your community in this rebuilding process.

As with all issues of River Voices, we hope these articles inspire you to explore further. Thank you contributors!

– Nicole Silk, President