RIVERKEEPING

Our rivers reflect our relationship to the world we live in  more than any monument, artistic or architectural achievement. They are our source of life acknowledged and reflected in the sacred rituals of all religions. In the past they provided us with the food and water we needed - the only cost-our labor and a relationship of respectful interdependence. Perhaps, the sign "Gone Fishing" is but a dim reflection of that primal relationship. Northeastern American rivers abounded with fresh water mollusks. Shad in the spring and eel in the fall sustained for millennia. Within one century those rivers became so polluted and altered these species have nearly vanished.
If there is any single signal to be read throughout the world, if there is any single unifying cause everyone can agree on - it is the need to nurture our rivers back to health and so insure our own. If the river has so recently lost its ability to sustain what lived there for millennia - how much longer will we be sustained by its water?
Our bodies are 60% water, our brains 70%, our lungs 90%, our muscles 75%, our blood 83%. The quality of the water we drink is the quality of our lives. 
For the past quarter century a local nonprofit organization has labored to insure the restoration of the river.

"Streams play a critical role in the quality and supply of our drinking water by ensuring a continuous flow of clean water to surface waters and helping recharge underground aquifers. In the continental United States, 357,000 miles of streams provide water for public drinking water systems. Of that total, 58 percent (more than 207,000 miles) are headwater streams. Approximately 117 million people– over one-third of the total U.S. population – get some or all of their drinking water from public drinking water systems that rely in part on these streams."
quote about U.S. streams from the EPA website section on streams