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| When Jeff Turner saw an unknown substance pouring out of a drainage pipe leading into the Blackwater River, he made a series of phone calls from his drifting boat. Above, he takes a photo of the substance pouring out of the pipe.
(Stephen M. Katz photos/The virginian-Pilot) |
By AARON APPLEGATE
The Virginian-Pilot
Audio slide show: Riverkeeper
FRANKLIN — The cloudy brown plume in the river caught Jeff Turner’s eye. He angled his fishing boat for a closer look. A pipe from the nearby sewage treatment plant was dumping something weird into the Blackwater River.
“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Turner said last week, grabbing his cell phone.
From his drifting boat, he made a series of calls. He finally got the sewage plant superintendent, who vowed to look into it.
He got what he wanted: a response. He almost always does, though.
“If I see something wrong, I’m going to ask about it, and they’ve found out around here that I ain’t going away,” Turner said, “and you might as well get square with me. And if you piss me off, I’m going to hand it over to someone who can hurt you.”
Mess with Turner at your own peril. He can’t bust you, but he’s got a direct line to those who can, usually a state or federal agency.
A blend of folksy river ranger and river rat environmentalist, Turner, 47, heads the Blackwater Nottoway Riverkeeper Program, a local chapter of Waterkeeper Alliance, which is a national environmental group led by Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
Instantly recognizable for his wafer-thin frame, ponytail and Fu Manchu mustache, he spends 90 days a year on swampy, cypress-lined rivers looking for anything that might harm them. He reserves a special hatred for helium balloons tangled in trees and a herd of beef cattle that bathe and excrete in the river just outside Franklin.
He’s hounded city officials into installing grates to filter trash out of the city’s drainage system that would otherwise end up in the river.
He also has helped the state Department of Environmental Quality catch a car wash and peanut processor illegally dumping tainted water.
Turner’s vast river knowledge has earned him a seat at the table when local politicians gather to discuss the Blackwater, which they do a lot now that it has flooded Franklin twice in eight years – most recently in October.
“You can say he’s a positive thorn in the side,” said Bucky Taylor, Franklin city manager.
Turner fights to protect the river because, in a way, the river saved his life.
In 1977 , when he was 17, Turner was walking down a road in Franklin when some drunken friends pulled up and offered him a ride. He got in.
They crashed.
The accident broke Turner’s neck, leaving him paralyzed. Slowly, life returned to his limbs, but the left side of his body never fully came back. Depressed and bitter, he spent his insurance settlement money on alcohol, drugs and a fast car, a 1978 Chevrolet Camaro Z28.
“I loved to get drunk and go racing,” he said. “Most people said, 'Damn , you got paralyzed by a drunk driver and now you’re racing around.’ I didn’t have an answer for it. I don’t know if I had a death wish. I just didn’t care.”
His money was almost gone when he got a job in a drug store and started going down to the Blackwater River, where as a boy he had fished and hunted snakes with his father and grandfather. He found it peaceful and nonjudgmental.
“Therapy. That’s what is was,” said Dr. Robert Edwards, a retired Franklin dentist and a member of the Riverkeeper group.
One day while fishing from his boat, Turner came around a bend and saw trash strewn across the water. He learned that hard rains had flushed the trash into the river from the city storm drains.
It made him mad, he said.
“Maybe this is something worth preserving,” Turner remembers thinking. “That was kind of finding my religion, finding myself and getting my head back together.”
He saw something on TV about a riverkeeper program. He called the state. Officials told him to call the Waterkeeper Alliance. He did, and they sent him a bunch of paperwork.
“I got this big package,” he said, “and it said fill out all this, and I said, 'C’mon, can’t I just get a cap that says Riverkeeper?’ ”
Turner quit his job at the drugstore to learn about 501(c)(3)’s, boards of directors and fundraising. Since starting the group in 2001, The Blackwater Nottoway Riverkeeper Program has grown to 136 members.
“Probably the last thing in the world Jeff thought about when he was going through his accident and questioning his self-worth was finding self-worth in the river,” said the Rev. Ben Duffey, a friend.
Turner did get the Riverkeeper cap. And the Riverkeeper vest, and the license plate and the decals for his pick up and boats. He doesn’t get paid, but Franklin, Isle of Wight and Southampton counties are working on a plan to get him a small salary. He gets by on disability and Social Security.
When he’s not prodding businesses and government types, he’s winning friends for the rivers, sometimes through the telling of fantastical, but somehow believable, stories.
“People look forward to his folksy way of turning a phrase,” said Carter Nettles, a friend and a member of the Riverkeeper group. “He says what pops into his mind, and it’s all relevant. Even if it’s a story about Moonpie.”
Moonpie is Turner’s 14-year-old dog. She’s Turner’s partner on the river and almost as popular as he is. Don’t ask him what kind of dog she is, though. He’ll hold up his hands, two-feet apart, to indicate she’s a small dog. That’s what kind.
He recently posted on the Riverkeeper group Web site a story about catching a 23-pound, 40-inch blue catfish, with Moonpie’s help, during a late March camping trip on the Nottoway River.
That day, Turner was doing a kind of fishing called “limb-lining,” in which you tie a jug to a tree limb. The jug functions as a bobber. The tree limb is the fishing pole. After a stern warning about checking the laws in your area on limb-lining, Turner told this story:
“I grabbed the jug and could feel a fish on it, but it was hung up. I messed with this for some time and was about to give up and cut the line when Moonpie said, 'Whoa, my gosh, what’s that?’ The high velocity of the water had caught the fish just right and lifted it to the surface. It was huge and so with renewed vigor I began to working the fish again… I was having a terrible time trying to hold the boat in the fast water… Plus I had Moonpie yellin’ and hollerin’ giving me directions on how to do all of this. Finally, with my arms on fire from the strain of holding the boat, I made one more attempt at the giant fish and this time it went into the net tail first and I had it. Moonpie ran to the front of the boat and got a hold of my belt with her teeth and together we pulled the monster catfish in.”
Back at home the day he saw the cloudy liquid coming out of the sewer treatment plant pipe, Turner fired off an e-mail to the plant superintendent, a guy named Donnie Cagle.
It included a list of questions he wanted Cagle to answer. He mentioned he saw DEQ officials on the river that day.
About an hour later, Cagle responded with a detailed explanation.
During maintenance, some treated wastewater escaped, he wrote. The overflow was unplanned but within the plant’s state discharge permit, Cagle said. Just to be safe, he hand-delivered a letter to DEQ officials that day so they’d know about the incident.
Cagle said Turner’s call about the river discharge pipe was unusual.
“That’s the first time in eight years I’ve been working here that that’s happened,” he said.
He’s never met Turner.
“As far as I know, he’s a great guy,” he said. “I’ve never had any problem with him.”
 Jeff Turner, a blend of folksy river ranger and river rat environmentalist, is head of the Blackwater Nottoway Riverkeeper Program |
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Someone special
I would like to make a comment regarding the riverkeeper. Although you suffered an injustice in your own life, the river is suffering an injustice with pollutants. Keep up the good work. As for the state, getting this man a small salary to look out for the rivers and streams would be a wonderful gesture. Hope to see him out on the river sometime. Thanks
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Every single one of us makes a difference. One man's determination will affect thousands. Thank you!