SATILLA RIVERKEEPER
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  • Home
  • About us
    • Our River
    • Our Team
    • What We Do
  • Urgent Issues
    • Report a Problem
    • Stop the Landfill
    • Sunbelt Fish Kill
  • Volunteer
  • Events
    • Water Quality Training
    • Fishing Tournament
    • Satilla Riverkeeper Gala
    • Cleanup
  • Satilla River Water Trail
    • Water Quality
    • River Gauges
    • Fishing
    • Paddling & Safety >
      • Interactive Map
      • Get Involved
  • Membership
    • Georgia Gives Day!

About the Satilla Riverkeeper

The Satilla Riverkeeper is a 501c3 nonprofit organization, founded in 2004 to protect, restore, and educate about the Satilla River, its tributaries, and watershed. 
We are the eyes and ears of the watershed and estuary.

Our Purpose

Board of Directors

Chair: Jim Cottingham - Coffee County
Vice Chair: Wilton Deloach - Ware County
Treasurer: Clay Montague - Camden County
Secretary: Kellie Parr - Glynn County

Ron Easton - Brantley County
Terrell Lee - Ware County
Guy Moorman - Coffee County

George Varn Jr. - Charlton County
​Jessica Deal - Ware County 


ABOUT OUR RIVERKEEPER - Chris Bertrand

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I am honored and excited to serve you as the Satilla Riverkeeper. I grew up in Alpharetta, Georgia, splashing around in backyard creeks. My passion for protecting the environment began in the Boy Scouts where I had an opportunity to explore Georgia’s wild spaces. During college, I worked at the Chattahoochee Nature Center as a canoe instructor and an outdoor adventure guide. My interest in protecting clean water and wild places drove me to attend law school at UGA.
    I focused my law school education on environmental law, and I sought out internships that gave me real-world environmental law experience. I started by interning at Georgia Sea Grant, which is affiliated with NOAA. Georgia is just starting to expand its regulation of oyster aquaculture, and during my internship, I had an opportunity to work on the forefront of the new regulations.
    Next, I interned with Chattahoochee Riverkeeper where I was able to help the Riverkeeper in its pursuit of coal ash legislation and in identifying a potential lawsuit under the Clean Water Act. My next internship was with the Southern Environmental Law Center where I assisted attorneys with litigation. Afterwards, I worked at EPA Region 4 where I experienced how lawyers guide decision makers on legislative and regulatory issues to effectively protect the environment.
    I am a passionate conservationist, and I am dedicated to protecting the Satilla River. The Satilla River is an amazing resource and together we can ensure that it can be enjoyed for generations to come.

 Our Water Quality Coordinator - Trish DuBose

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Trish DuBose came to coastal Georgia just after graduating from Wesleyan College with a degree in biology and a minor in chemistry to take a quality control laboratory technician position with Union Carbide (aka Rhone Poulenc, Bayer).  After five years of quality assurance with products such as Sevin, Temik, and Amiben, along with the birth of her daughter, Trish entered the world of education.  During those years as a high school science teacher Trish established the oceanography curriculum and introduced students to the Adopt A Stream program. Students monitored chemical parameters of  the creek on campus as well as at Crooked River State Park and the St. Marys Waterfront. Additionally, the students explored salinity gradients, phytoplankton monitoring, and the movement of sand over time.
     After several years of administration duties, Trish looked to return to these field experiences and citizen science opportunities for the community.  As water quality coordinator for the Satilla Riverkeeper organization, Trish is a certified Adopt A Stream trainer for chemical and bacterial monitoring and trains citizens in the Adopt a Stream protocols along with reporting chemical and bacterial data from the landings along the Satilla River Water Trail.       Trish and her family continue to fish and experience the wonders of coastal Georgia.  Trish can also be found cheering the Atlanta Braves, Georgia Bulldogs (baseball as well as football), and behind her Nikon camera capturing the beauty of the Satilla River watershed.

​Our Administrative Advisor - Lex Bowick

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I am absolutely ecstatic to be able to serve as the administrative advisor for the Satilla Riverkeepers! I grew up in Waycross, Georgia, exploring the beauty of the Satilla River as a young child. I’ve always had a fascination for nature and all the different critters that inhabit it. I remember being a small kid playing with the rolly pollies and chasing the little green anoles around the pecan orchard. I spent a majority of my childhood summers camping, swimming, and fishing on the lovely Satilla that I now get to protect and preserve. 
      I graduated high school in 2019 and started working at a wastewater testing laboratory shortly after. While working there, I was able to obtain both the Wastewater Laboratory Analyst and the Drinking Water Laboratory Analysts certifications as well as gain tons of experience operating in a lab setting. The amount of knowledge and exposure that I gained from working in the lab, and with the people surrounding it, helped me reawaken that passion of the environment I had as adolescent. I now enjoy spending my free time learning how to forage in our environment, creating all sorts of artworks depicting the natural beauties we have in the area, and collecting all sorts of oddities on my explorations. 
      I’m so grateful to have the opportunity to learn and protect the Satilla River. It genuinely is such a natural wonder, and I hope to aid in the preservation of it so that many generations after me can also appreciate and call the Satilla their home.

Our Beginnings

In 2000, a passionate Satilla River loving group of individuals, saw that their beloved river was being threatened by a multitude of polluters and joined forces to do something about it. They felt that the Satilla was a beautiful but forgotten river. Some of these individuals had worked diligently on solid-waste issues in Waycross, bringing a lot of press and pressure on waste generators to slow down or stop the tremendous amount of garbage and trash washing into the river. The momentum was slowly building to do great things for the Satilla. Read more about our history.

The Satilla Riverkeeper organization became a fully licensed 501© 3 organization in July of 2004. The first director and Riverkeeper, Gordon Rogers, was a child of the Satilla. He had caught his first fish in her waters, canoed her streams as a youth, conducted scientific research in her estuaries, and had lived near her for the better part of a decade. Gordon would soon make the Satilla Riverkeeper organization a thriving and common place name in environmental activism in the Satilla watershed, serving as a watchdog for pollution problems on the river. Satilla Riverkeeper, an official effort dedicated to the expensive and time-consuming business of conserving and restoring our precious river, still remains strong today.

​Satilla Riverkeeper is a grassroots organization, but membership must be paid for, because effective, professional keeping is expensive. We hope that you will join us in our efforts to PROTECT, RESTORE and EDUCATE about our beautiful Satilla! 
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Satilla Riverkeeper
5700 Okefenokee Swamp Park Road, Waycross, GA 31503
(912) 421-8972
riverkeeper@satillariverkeeper.org
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