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River
Currents Newsletter - May 2009 |
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PLEASE
JOIN US
At the
National River
Rally in Baltimore,
Maryland, America's
Waterway and America
Speaks will hold an open
dialogue about efforts
to engage River
residents to build
unified approaches to
the character, condition
and future of the
Mississippi River.
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WHO:
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America's Waterway &
AmericaSpeaks |
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WHAT: |
The Potential of Civic
Engagement for the
Mississippi River |
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WHERE: |
Hyatt
Regency Baltimore
300 Light St. Baltimore,
MD 21202
Room to be posted. |
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WHEN: |
5:00
pm, Saturday, May 30 at
the River Rally |
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Is the
Mississippi "Too Big to Fail" or is it in
danger, too?
This seems to be the year of "too big to
fail." First it was old and highly regarded
investment firms. Then it was insurance
companies and banks. Now we are focused on
big American car companies.
There are more than enough lessons being
learned in this life-changing economic
crisis. But one of the important lessons is
the one about institutions that were thought
too big to fail, who are, after all,
vulnerable. A second lesson is that
stakeholders and their political clout count
for a lot.
America's Waterway seeks to engender a sense
of stakeholder significance for the
Mississippi River. Here we have the second
longest river in the U.S., with the third
largest drainage basin in the world that's
the source of the nation's most productive
agricultural and industrial regions. Yet the
public perception of its significance to the
nation is miniscule in relation to its
actual size and importance. If the
Mississippi River was a financial
institution, it would be deemed "too big to
fail". As a natural resource, it appears to
be forgotten, at best, and snubbed at worst.
Part of the reason for this is its sheer
geographic spread. Because of its size,
single agencies in a pre-information-age
couldn't be organized to address all its
aspects. This resulted in its resources
being addressed by divisions of agencies,
splintered by states and its water quality
left to the work of an assortment of
jurisdictions and authorities. Because the
nature of organizations is to keep operating
the same way until challenged, the
Mississippi River has been a victim of
geographic perceptual differences and
organizational territories.
Now is the time for the challenge. It's time
to tap Internet resources and social
networking applications to build a unified
Mississippi River community. In these days
of Twitter and advocacy software, it's
possible to envision that the whole
Mississippi River could indeed have a
motivated and politically active
constituency on its behalf. Its also
possible to envision comprehensive
whole-River approaches to more than just
water quality at one location, or community
development in one city at a time.
America's Waterway is seeking
partners and funders who agree that tapping
the Internet and other forms of electronic
technology is the way to build these unified
approaches. For starters, we'd like to post
your name or logo on our Web site and
connect our two Web Sites. We'd love to hear
from you.
Hydrokinetic Power on the Mississippi
 Free Flow Power is testing hydrokinetic
power generation at several locations on the
Mississippi River. To find out more about
the process and the locations of the tests,
click on the logo. A questionnaire for
Mississippi River stakeholders can be found
by clicking here.
America's Waterway to Exhibit at Great
River Gathering in St. Paul
If you're planning to attend the St. Paul
Riverfront Corporation's annual celebration
of the Mississippi River on May 14 at the
St. Paul River Centre, stop by our table.
We'll be exhibiting from 4:30 to 6:30, prior
to the dinner, in the RiverWork Exhibit.
We'd love to tell you all about America's
Waterway. |
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For more information please email:
www.americaswaterway.org |
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