Urban Conservation and Renewal at Lake Conestee, Conestee, SC.

Today we loaded up the vans and traveled to Lake Conestee, a highly polluted, eutrophic impoundment along the Reedy River just outside of Greenville, SC. We met up with Dave Hargett, an environmental engineer, toxicologist, and man of vision. Dave spearheaded the formation of a nonprofit organization, "The Conestee Foundation," that has purchased the lake with the purpose of rehabilitating it.

To learn more about this inspirational initiative, please read the following journal entry by Wofford College freshman, Chris Dawson:

11/20/01, Journal Entry 19: Lake Conestee Vision

"It is hard to imagine as I stand here looking at the swamp lake, but Dave insists that it is true. In two or three years this watery trash pit will be a park. These acres and acres of dirty water, bushes, briars, trees, and trash will be a place where families come to picnic. Every day people will come to throw the Frisbee, couples will take strolls holding hands, walkers will be dragged by their dogs, runners will fly past on trails sweating and breathing hard, bikers will push up hills and glide down them, and people who are stressed out will come and lose themselves in nature. All of these people will be coming to enjoy a lost paradise.
Lake Conestee was once a huge lake that people would come to from hundreds of miles away for boating, swimming, and fishing. But that was a long time ago. Since that time, the lake has become a collecting pool for every kind of pollution imaginable. All of the different chemicals, sewage, and heavy metals that were deposited by the heavy populations and abundant industrial sites up stream, on the Reedy River, washed into Lake Conestee and stayed there because of the dam. Now the lake holds enough waste to completely fill Eriksson Stadium, twice.
Needless to say the lake is not desirable property. It is much more of a liability than an asset. No one wants it. No one except for Dave. Dave formed a group to save the lake. They are a nonprofit environmental group that wants to turn the dump into a park and a classroom. They want to restore the lakes natural beauty for the community to enjoy, and they want to use the lake as a tool to teach everyone what not to do to lakes and rivers. They will study the science of the lake to learn more about the effects of pollution and ways to combat it. They raised enough money to buy the lake and they are raising even more money to transform it.

Now that is vision. Not many people look at trash dumps and see parks. Not many people look at huge loss and see huge gain. But more and more people are starting to. These people are trying to change the way Americans have thought about things for centuries. They want people to see that progress doesn’t have to come with a price tag of environmental damage. We don’t have to destroy nature to create jobs. We don’t have to sacrifice the earth to save ourselves. In fact the opposite is true.

But people like Dave are not just preaching to save what we have left. They are preaching to regain what we have lost. Just because a forest is cut down or a lake is dumped into, does not mean that the forest can’t grow back or the lake can’t be cleaned. It’s just a matter of making it a priority. Once people see that Lake “Co- Nasty” can be turned into a park they will realize that there are thousands of other areas just like it waiting for the same transformation, especially in urban areas. Once people realize that they don’t have to leave the city to enjoy nature’s beauty; that is when real change will begin. People everywhere will demand clean up and revitalization of nature. Just like there was a Reformation in response to the Renaissance, there will be a Reclamation in response to the Industrial Revolution. Dirty cities will become beautiful, high volume habitats.

I know it sounds really far-fetched, but I don’t see any reason why not. " -- Chris Dawson, class of 2005

Follow these links for more journal entries by Chris and the other students in "The Nature and Culture of Water" learning community at Wofford College.

For more on the efforts by The Conestee Foundation to restore Lake Conestee, see Dave Hargett's article in the Greenville Magazine, March 2001.

Our Visit to Furman and the Enoree River Basin's Initiative

On the same day, we also met with Dr. Brannon Anderson and Dr. Ken Sargent at Furman University. These scientists are heavily involved in the Enoree River Basin's Initiative. They provided us with an informative lecture and discussion about the early results from this important interdisciplinary initiative.