While rain plays a critical role in the water cycle, inevitable development and human activity in our watershed has drastically changed how stormwater influences the ecological health of the Cahaba River. Impervious surfaces have replaced forests, increasing the volume and velocity of stormwater reaching the river. The result: increasing erosion, pollution and dramatic hydrological change, which have severely degraded aquatic habitat.

Siltation, or the excessive accumulation of sediments, is a primary driver of habitat degradation in the upper Cahaba watershed. This impairment is the result of irresponsible development, poor regulatory oversight, and deforestation associated with inevitable land disturbance in our watershed. Siltation is a factor for the declining abundance of the majority of threatened or endangered aquatic species in the Cahaba watershed.

The development and use of chemical compounds we rely on in modern society has quickly outpaced our understanding of how those chemicals affect the environment and human health. In Alabama, inadequate funding for environmental protection has meant that we have limited information about the prevalence of these compounds or how they reach our waterways. Compounding the problems, some of these compounds like PFAS (sometimes called Forever Chemicals) don’t readily break down in the environment, meaning their impact on both aquatic systems and human health persist for generations.  

While the Cahaba River is world-renowned for its amazing aquatic biodiversity, there has not been widespread recognition of the declining abundance of aquatic species. Like all life, aquatic species depend on the abundance of other living organisms for a variety of reasons and the loss of any species can have devastating consequences for aquatic ecosystems. Despite the global significance of the Cahaba River, inadequate research funding has resulted in the loss of species that we now know will inevitably lead to even more extinctions.