The mid-July heat already is steaming away the morning dew as Matt Hicks and I enter the Black Creek Wilderness area of the DeSoto National Forest just south of the U.S. Army’s Camp Shelby. Hicks wants to show me what healthy streams look and feel like before we go to the bad parts of our four-day journey through the upper Pascagoula River basin.

Still athletic at 33 and sporting a short beard, he is an old-fashioned naturalist who can identify just at any tree, bush or insect in Mississippi. After growing up in McComb, he earned a master’s in biology from the University of Alabama and worked for the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality, sampling streams for pollution and, in the process, learning how politics and regulation intersect. Last year, he went to work for the Nature Conservancy, a nonprofit national group that has helped preserve 50,000 acres in the basin from logging and development.

The basin’s tributaries resemble branches of a great tree. Because it drains one of the nation’s most rural areas, where row-crop agriculture gave way years ago to pine plantations, the river system’s biological diversity remains robust.

Yet rapid population growth along the Coast is moving northward, bringing trouble with it. Pollutants running off parking lots or seeping into the ground water from septic tanks often end up in the river. Meanwhile, some streams in the upper basin, from about
Hattiesburg north, already show heavy stress, as indicated from MDEQ’s sampling records.

Before joining Hicks for the trip, I talked with Phil Bass, the state’s top pollution officer at MDEQ in Jackson. He explained that the federal Clean Water Act, which Congress passed in 1972, has shut off most of the pipes dumping pollution directly into streams. The biggest problems now come from “non-point” sources such as improperly treated sewage or storm water laden with oil, grease or fertilizer.

Bass is particularly worried about sprawling development around Hattiesburg and Meridian and the failure in the upper basin to improve sewage treatment. “There is a disconnect,” he said. “People don’t stop and think that what they are doing could have an impact on the river.”

Meanwhile, there's another trend that bears watching: Big timberholding corporations such as International Paper are selling off hundreds of thousands of acres, much of it along or near streams. The new owners, many of them real estate speculators and developers, may not follow the same careful timber management that the paper companies have practiced in Mississippi since at least the 1930s.

The Clean Water Act doesn't touch timber-cutting. Owners can clear land right to the edge of the water, thereby
dumping tons of sediment into the public's streams without penalty.

States can close this exemption and many have, said Robert Wiygul, an attorney in Biloxi who practices environmental law. But in Mississippi, the powerful timber lobby has kept logging practices virtually free of regulation.

The state does hold out some carrots to induce owners to practice best management. Last spring, for example, the Legislature granted state tax credits to encourage owners to provide buffers along what are designated as "scenic streams" under a new voluntary program. Black Creek, a part of which already is under protection of the National Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, is undergoing review now for inclusion in the state's program.

A healthy stream

George Ramseur joins Hicks and me and is towing a 15-foot fiberglass boat. Already, I had been on the Pascagoula River several times with Ramseur, who along with his wife, Cynthia, manages the Nature Conservancy's coastal office at Ocean Springs.

He describes his organization as the "radical center" of the environmental movement. It prefers cooperation to confrontation in land deals. It also is willing to negotiate with owners who might want to hold out choice parcels for themselves while donating the rest for preservation - a tactic that helped bring the Conservancy some unflattering attention in The Washington Post.

As Ramseur backs the boat into Black Creek, swallowtail butterflies bounce around us, enjoying the morning sun. The motor pushes us upstream, and about 45 minutes later we reach the mouth of Beaverdam Creek. A man and a woman are fishing in a johnboat as we quietly slip by. Overhead, a canopy of trees and vines shades the tea-colored water.

We beach about a quarter-mile upstream. Hicks takes a canvas bag attached to a pole and runs it under the surface. He dumps a mass of decaying leaves and other debris into a plastic tray and begins combing for insects. Life in the water is delicately balanced, with the bacteria and algae at one end of the food chain and the fish that feed on insects and crustaceans at the other. The sample reveals a good sign of who's sticking around.

Hicks holds up an adult stonefly and nymphs from three other stonefly species. When the young ones mature, they will sprout wings. Because they are poor fliers, however, they will probably stay close to the home stream during their two to three weeks of life as adults. Insects from this order (Plecoptera) cannot tolerate low levels of oxygen. Their presence is a potential indication that Beaverdam Creek is "healthy" under standards set by the Clean Water Act.

JOHN FITZHUGH
A Palamedes swallowtail butterfly hangs pracariously onto a buttonbush bloom along the Pascagoula River in George County.

The law requires MDEQ to sample and grade such streams. But years ago, the Legislature didn't give the agency enough money to do the job properly, and MDEQ came under a court order, Hicks says. Now there are strict deadlines and huge costs involved with catching up.

"We put ourselves in that situation by not sampling as we should have been doing over all these years."

Returning down Black Creek, we see erosion along the shore, a problem that's grown severe farther north in the basin. Ramseur also spots a big patch of cogon grass, an invasive species that, like the Chinese tallow or "popcorn tree," thrives where native plants have been disturbed.

"That's not a good thing," he mutters. He spends a lot of his time fighting such exotic intruders on lands the Conservancy owns or helps manage.

Rusting legacy

The next day, Hicks and I launch the boat at Petal under the Mississippi 42 bridge, just below where the Bouie River joins the Leaf River. A sweat-soaked man is setting out hooks baited with goldfish. He's stalking the big flathead catfish, known locally as tabbies, which he calls the "ribeye of the river" for their delicate white filets.

We steer left up the Bouie and about a mile later encounter the first deep pit created by decades of mining for sand and gravel. This one widens the channel to about 60 acres. On the north side lie rusting pipes, cables and other debris amid a moonscape of sand dunes and what appears to be a wastewater pond. Several hundred yards away, heavy machinery is running.

BAILEY THOMSON
An abandoned pit and rusting equipment are scars left from decades of sand and gravel mining along the Bouie River north of Hattiesburg. Damming the river to cover such damage met with stiff resistance. Scientists say impoundment would block the migration of species such as the threatened Gulf sturgeon and change the flow of water downstream.

I already had heard about these pits from Chris Bowen, executive director of the Pat Harrison Waterway District, which shares jurisdiction over the Pascagoula basin with other agencies. The district emphasizes controlling floods and managing reservoirs, a mission that can bring it into conflict with scientists and others who want the basin's streams to remain free-flowing.

The fight over the Bouie's future is a case in point.

The plan met heavy resistance from conservationists and scientists such as Stephen T. Ross, author of the acclaimed book "Inland Fishes of Mississippi." He argued that besides interfering with the spawning of a federally protected species, the Gulf sturgeon, the proposed dam could affect the water temperature, vegetation and other qualities of the Pascagoula, which is the largest free-flowing river system in the lower 48 states.

In 1998, local governments asked the district to devise a plan to dam the Bouie. Along with recreation, they said, damming the river would provide needed water for growth, a claim that MDEQ did not support. The district produced a $65,000 study that proposed a 1,000-acre reservoir to cover the mining pits and connect these areas in a chain of lakes.

"To put a dam on (the Bouie) in the name of restoration is absurd,' Ross told the media. He and other opponents also suspected the proposal had more to do with real estate development than the stated purposes of reclaiming a river.

Bowen defends the proposal as sound conservation. Something has to be done to reclaim this river, he said during a conversation in his office at Hattiesburg. In some places, the mining pits are a mile wide and 80 feet deep. The company that is responsible for much of this devastation is not required to repair the damage because it occurred prior to federal reclamation laws.

He showed me on a large map where the proposed dam would go. If completed, it would form the 11th major reservoir or lake in the basin. While the Pascagoula River and its two main tributaries, the Leaf and the Chickasawhay, have no impediments to their free flow, dams do exist on hundreds of smaller streams within the basin. Much of the district's energy is devoted to managing popular water parks at eight such reservoirs.

Still, Bowen seemed resigned to the Bouie project's doom. There has been no meeting on plans for more than a year, he said, and no one is pushing the idea politically. The sturgeon's status on the federal endangered list appeared to be too big of an obstacle to overcome.

Whatever the future of the Bouie, the physical evidence along its lower part bespeaks of long neglect. As Hicks and I leave the gravel pits, we motor up to the Glendale Road bridge. Its predecessor lies in ruins around the foot of the new structure, blocking our advance with swirling, dangerous water. Hicks shakes his head at what he sees. "This just says they could not have cared less what they did to the river." Forced to head back, we explore along the shore.

A great egret fishes among the vegetation, and overhead an osprey watches us. We see a lot of tallow trees, a sure sign that cut-over land was not replanted properly, Hicks says.

Mysterious erosion

At the mouth again, we head up the Leaf River this time. I am eager to see the erosion I've heard about from Paul Hartfield, a veteran biologist with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Jackson. He has been working for the past six years to identify why the Leaf's banks are failing and its channel is widening all the way to its headwaters. Other streams within the basin show similar symptoms.

"There's been some serious degradation there," Hartfield told me. "When you see erosion moving as fast as this in a matter of years and decades versus centuries, then almost inevitably man has done something out there to upset the balance."

People who live along the Leaf and other affected streams are frustrated because they often can't get their boats in the water any longer. Some have insisted on dredging the Leaf and its sister, the Chickasawhay, or damming them. Such remedies would only worsen the erosion, Hartfield said, because they would encourage more sediment to collect.

A three-year study funded by several public agencies is under way to finger the culprit, if there is one. Hartfield wants to take a closer look at the sand and gravel mining. Efforts to restrict or ban this practice have met resistance in the Legislature and from MDEQ, based in part on a lack of documentation, he said. Yet such mining has been identified with erosion in other states.

The Leaf's channel is indeed wide but deceptively shallow. Our propeller strikes the bottom, shaking the boat and forcing us to find a deeper, swifter part of the current. Washed-out trees indicate the unstable banks continue to give way.

The Leaf River receives effluent from Hattiesburg, which uses an aerated lagoon system to treat 10 million gallons of wastewater a day. Bennie J. Sellers, director of public services, remains sold on his city's method as the most effective and economical way to dispose of sewage. "I don't think we are affecting the quality of the water downstream at all," he said, adding that his department regularly tests the discharge into the river to assure it meets current federal standards.

Bass of MDEQ doesn't dispute Hattiesburg's compliance. But that performance may not be good enough in the future as standards rise, he said. Many communities in Mississippi built lagoons in the 1960s, and improvements such as aeration have stretched the technology's lifespan. Still, investment has to continue to stay abreast of expectations for clean water. Bass pointed to nearby Laurel as a case where a city had to make a costly upgrade to a state-of-the-art mechanical process for treating wastes.

Storm water can be rough as well on streams, a fact the Clean Water Act recognizes. This year, phase II of federal regulations require MDEQ or local governments to monitor runoff from developments as small as one acre. Yet the state agency received no additional funds to do the job, meaning its enforcement staff of six people will have a lot more to work.

Indeed, some branches and creeks in urban areas become virtual conduits for storm water and industrial wastes. One of these battered streams, Gordon Creek, flows only about 60 feet from the popular sandwich place where Hicks and I stop for lunch in Hattiesburg. Concrete and stone have made a ditch of its channel, into which flow fertilizers from yards and automotive gunk from parking lots.

We follow the stream's course through neighborhoods, both modest and upscale. We see few if any signs of buffers to protect the Gordon. "It looks like a bowling alley, and that's not natural," Hicks says in one area where the creek has been forced to flow along a new expressway. Normally, 70 or more species might live in such a stream. Hicks doubts whether more than 10 can survive there now.

We see an even harsher example the next day in Meridian. The Sowashee Creek flows through the city close to Interstate 59. Actually, the water now rushes along the designated channel, carrying pollutants with it. "This stream is being hit by just about every stress you can throw at it," Hicks says as we explore along the shore.

Worse, the Sowashee's problems flow down the basin, eventually reaching the Pascagoula and the Mississippi Sound. "Just imagine how many smaller streams are carrying pollutants," he says. It's all additive, which means you have to fix the branches and creeks before you can preserve the river.

A good example is where the Sowashee's storm water and wastes hit the Okatibbee Creek, which joins the Chunky River near Enterprise to form the Chickasawhay.

At Old Arch Street, about 10 miles above the confluence with the Sowashee, the Okatibbee appears to be healthy with diverse wildlife. In fact, it registers a respectable score of 75 of 100 on MDEQ's biological health scale. Below where the Sowashee enters, however, the score for the Okatibbee plummets to 45, which is well below the minimum score to be considered healthy.

Yet nature tends to heal itself if damaged places are restored and left alone. The problem, of course, is money. It would cost a fortune to fix the Sowashee or the Gordon, Hicks says. Who's going to make that decision? Wouldn't it be better, he asks, to put more energy and thought into planning for growth - or at least to protect areas in the basin that haven't been degraded?

To make the point, he shows me a stretch of Bouie Creek, where it crosses U.S. 49 west of Hattiesburg just before it joins with Okatoma Creek to form the Bouie River. Launching the boat at an isolated landing, we encounter a clean, pleasant stream far above the mining's devastation. White oaks, tupelo and magnolia mix with other hardwoods lining both sides of stable banks.

We travel several miles upstream through flat, stilllooking water. Only occasional houses peek through the foliage, and in a bend above some shoals we pass a swimming hole with a swing hanging from a high branch. Several miles farther up, we beach at a sandbar and Hicks, wearing his customary T-shirt and shorts, plunges into the water for samples.

He finds graceful damselflies, with elongated bodies, emerging from the larval stages. Adults lay their eggs in the water, which sink to the bottom. The larvae can be ferocious predators of other insects until they mature and float to the surface, ready to mate and renew the cycle of life.

Hicks declares the river at this point to be "very healthy" because of the diversity of aquatic insects he finds.

I am already convinced of the fact from the soft gurgling of the water and the sunlight bouncing across its surface in the cool of the late afternoon. I am reluctant to climb back into the boat and leave.

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TIM ISBELL
The sandbars along the Pascagoula River provide popular camping locations.