Joe Schulman (2:48)

We all went through it.

Peter Biello (2:50)

Nobody wants to go through anything like that again.

Joe Schulman (2:52)

So in the time that's passed since then, technology has improved. We've got our resources, our veteran manager ready to go. We've been planning for this overnight.

Tanya Brown (3:03)

Temperatures are forecasted to be below freezing through Sunday. For GPB News, I'm Amanda Andrews.

Peter Biello (3:12)

As the world remembers former President Jimmy Carter, who died on December 29, lovers of Georgia's Ausabah island are celebrating his role in saving it from development. In 1978, then President Carter facilitated the sale of the undeveloped island to the state as a heritage preserve. The late Eleanor Sandy Torrey west was part of the family that sold the island to the state for a fraction of its value. She told GPB in 2000 that without the sale, the island was in danger of becoming an overdeveloped coastal resort not far from Savannah.

Eleanor Sandy Torrey (3:44)

Then Jimmy Carter came along and he sat on the floor at my feet when I was sitting in the picture window there and said, now what do you think Azaba should be? So I said, come and take a walk with me. So we walked all the way down to Cabbage Garden and back. And I said, asaba is a miracle. It's not only ecological miracle, but it's powerful. And it's just beyond price. I mean, it just simply cannot be ruined. And he thoroughly agreed.

Peter Biello (4:21)

Carter campaigned as recently as five years ago when state lawmakers proposed a bill that would have opened up state heritage preserves to private development. Ausabaw island today remains only accessible by boat and only for scientific, educational and cultural uses. It's managed by the Georgia Department of Natural Resources and the Ausabah Island Foundation. Former President Carter was known as one of the most conservation minded presidents. Carter biographer Jonathan Alter says his environmental ethic left a lasting legacy.

Jonathan Alter (4:55)

He doubled the size of the National Park Service, one of his many underappreciated accomplishments, with the Alaska Lands bill and many other things that he did environmentally. And then, of course, you know, the first fuel economy standards, the first toxic waste cleanup, the first funding for green energy. The list goes on and on and on of what he did for the environment when he was president.

Peter Biello (5:24)

Carter is being remembered as a protector of rivers. As Georgia governor, he canoed down the Chattooga river in northeast Georgia and was instrumental in its designation as a wild and scenic river. Buzz Williams is a former executive director of the Chattooga Conservancy and was active in the river's conservation when it was protected as wild and scenic in 1974.

Tanya Brown (5:45)

And they took Jimmy Carter down The river put him in a canoe, and of course, he immediately, like everybody, fell.

Joe Schulman (5:52)

In love with the Chattooga and came back the next year and ran it in a kayak.

Peter Biello (5:58)

In fact, Carter was part of the first team ever to go down the river's challenging bull Sluice rapid in an open canoe. Carter also canoed and protected the Flint river in Southwest Georgia. GPB's Grant Blankenship has that story.

Joe Schulman (6:13)

A little west of Thomaston is a place called Spruill Bluff. Face the water and hiking trails lace the hill behind you. Rising from the beach in front of you past shoals and a boulder people jump from in the summer. Jutting 500ft out of the water is the Spruill Bluff. West from the bluff, you'll find rare old growth longleaf pine forest a little north that blends with plants you'd find in the Appalachian highlands like mountain laurel. Spruill Bluff park coordinator Sarah Williams works in the camp store back up the hill. Williams loves this place as much as visitors, although she says they aren't always sure what they're seeing.

Janet Morgan Maple (6:54)

You know, we have people even call.

Joe Schulman (6:56)

This a lake down here.

Peter Biello (6:57)

We're like, no, it's a river.

Joe Schulman (6:59)

You know, the Flint River. And believe it or not, at one time, Spruill Bluff came very close to being the bottom end of a lake. If not for Jimmy Carter, Janet Morgan Maple remembers being excited about the idea of a new lake when she was a child.

Janet Morgan Maple (7:17)

I'm thinking water skiing. I think I had just learned to water ski and how nice it was when I'd go to lake, you know, and I didn't. I wasn't a part of dad's business, a part of the agriculture or whatever, but I was a part of hearing him so concerned.

Joe Schulman (7:32)

Tom Morgan was Maple's dad, and in the 1970s, when Maple was in the eighth grade, her dad was a farmer and ran a fertilizer business in the town of Woodbury. Maple says her dad was concerned because he loved, maybe even lived for the trips down the Flint river that started right out their back door.

Janet Morgan Maple (7:48)

We would just slide the canoe down.

Joe Schulman (7:50)

Like otters down the riverbank and off they'd go past Pine Mountain, dripping rock, Paisley shoals.

Janet Morgan Maple (7:56)

You've got the spider lilies down the way. You've got mussels, you've got the river show bass.

Joe Schulman (8:01)

Up on the bluff, there are endangered red cockaded woodpeckers and Bachmann sparrows. There are coral snakes. But back in the 1970s, politically powerful entities, including the ironically named US House member Jack Flint wanted the dam. Tom Morgan would tell anyone who would listen to oppose the project of the Army Corps of Engineers. That would have drowned the lilies, the shoals and would have left a lake lapping at his door.

Janet Morgan Maple (8:28)

If he was going to give a speech, he would practice at home and I would hear him.

Joe Schulman (8:32)

The allies he won often shared traditions of farming and outdoor life. And luckily for them, one of their own was in the Governor's mansion.

Janet Morgan Maple (8:40)

A lot of other outdoor people were involved in even getting Jimmy Carter to get on the river and go down it and just see before you make any decision, see what you are going to be destroying.

Joe Schulman (8:57)

That's what Governor Jimmy Carter did. I personally canoed down the river twice. Carter writes in the preface to a 2001 book by Fred Brown and Sherry Smith called A Recreational Guide to the Flint River. And Carter was really taken by the beauty. He saw the wildlife that exists in that river corridor. He wrote otter, fox, muskrat, beaver, bobcat, you cannot describe it. On the other hand, Governor Carter was a businessman who had a responsibility to consider the economic impact a new lake might make. Martin Doyle is a professor of environmental science and public policy at Duke University and an expert in US water policy. He says this is where another, more fundamental side of Carter came into play.

Martin Doyle (9:42)

You know, Carter was an engineer. I think he was a nuclear engineer from annapolis in the U.S. navy.

Joe Schulman (9:47)

And so Carter the engineer, the way.

Martin Doyle (9:49)

That he seems to make sense of it is, is I gotta go and look at these numbers myself.

Joe Schulman (9:54)

By numbers, he means the cash benefits the Army Corps of Engineers said would flow into communities around Spruill Bluff after the dam was done.

Martin Doyle (10:02)

And Carter kind of dug into him and he said, well, number one, I think that they're overestimating the benefits.

Joe Schulman (10:08)

Carter was far more blunt. He called the Corps of Engineers economic projections, quote, a complete passel of lies. So Governor Carter vetoed the Sproul Bluff dam. He ended it later. President Carter remained convinced he'd found a pattern of over promising around federal dam projects. He would veto projects across the country.

Martin Doyle (10:30)

And that that pivot in particular sets the dam building industry back on its heels.

Joe Schulman (10:38)

Some got built anyway. But Martin Doyle says before he left office, Carter left behind some of his way of thinking about dams and how they should be built. And it had to do with who was paying.

Martin Doyle (10:49)

If the federal government was spending, was paying for 100% of the cost, there's no reason for a congressional representative or a senator or the local community to not want a project.

Joe Schulman (11:01)

Or as Carter wrote, one of the congressman's goals in life was to have built in his district a notable dam at federal government expense that created a lake that could be named for him. For Carter, this was the very definition of pork barrel politics.

Martin Doyle (11:16)

And what Carter started was what was called a local sponsorship that the local benefiting community had to put up about 25% of the costs of a dam.

Joe Schulman (11:25)

And once the people in town, like at the Chamber of Commerce or in the grocery store, were told to dig into what felt like their pockets for millions of dollars, they'd have to ask themselves, how much do I really want to water ski?

Martin Doyle (11:37)

Exactly right. And do you? Do you value it that much?

Joe Schulman (11:40)

It was a fiscally conservative move.

Martin Doyle (11:43)

In this way, he was Reagan before Reagan was Reagan.

Joe Schulman (11:46)

Under President Ronald Reagan, the mandated local buy in for a federal dam would ramp up to 50% of the price tag. Doyle says that plus a general lack of easy places to dam meant half as many new projects in the decade after Carter left Washington. Jimmy Carter apparently never quit caring for the Flint River. As recently as 2008, Georgia politicians again floated the idea of a Spruill Bluff dam, this time to satisfy a thirsty Atlanta. Carter, by then a Nobel Peace laureate, spoke for the river again and the idea faded away. Lakes and dams are everywhere, carter said in the preface to that 2001 guidebook. But to experience something that is undisturbed and has its natural beauty, he asked you hope and pray that it will be there a thousand years in the future, still just as beautiful and undisturbed. For GPB News, I'm Grant Blankenship in Upson county.

Peter Biello (12:50)

And that's a wrap on this edition of Georgia Today. Thank you so much for tuning in. We remember you can always find the latest updates on our news stories@gpb.org news and remember to subscribe to this podcast. We'll be back in your podcast feed tomorrow afternoon with all the latest news and you won't want to miss it. Subscribe and we will pop up automatically in your feed. If you've got feedback, send an email to us. Our address is Georgia todaypb.org I'm Peter Biello. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you tomorrow.

Chase McGee (13:23)

We could all use a little help navigating the news these days. The Consider this Podcast wants to give you a hand. Six days a week will help you make sense of the day's biggest news story and what it means for you in less than 15 minutes. Listen now to the Consider this podcast from NPR.