boats and boaters: on the water

Cyrus Buffum is ready to take on big business and the legal system to keep our waters clean.

How did Cyrus Buffum go from studying astrophysics to becoming the pollution watchdog for Charleston's waterways?

Easy. At just 24, he understands that old adage about doing what you love and loving what you do.

For his college senior project, Buffum joined forces with a local engineering firm to study patterns of waves on beach erosion. That's when he realized he wanted to be working on the water - and for the water - so after graduation, he started looking into coastal engineering graduate programs.

"That's when I came across the Waterkeeper Alliance," he recalls. "It was through reading a couple of books on Bobby Kennedy Jr. that I learned of his affiliation with it, and I thought, man, Charleston could really benefit from having something like this."

NAME: Cyrus Buffum

AGE: 24

HOMETOWN: Barnstable, Ma. (on Cape Cod)

EDUCATION: Bachelor's degree in physics with a minor in math from College of Charleston, '06

WERE YOU ON THE WATER A LOT IN COLLEGE?

Back home I had been teaching sailing for about seven years, so when I came down here, every summer I either worked on the water or taught sailing. I taught sailing up at Hobcaw Yacht Club up on the Wando River for two years, was a boat carpenter for a summer, and then I went back home for one summer and taught there.

And I participated in CORA - Charleston Ocean Racing Association. I raced with CORA, so I was on the water the majority of the year at least once a week. Especially during the summer, when I was on the water seven days a week, I started really learning the ins and the outs of Charleston's waterways, and started gaining huge familiarity with everything.

After I graduated, I went abroad for a couple of months and then came back and started teaching for Ocean Sailing Academy, a sailing school around Patriots Point. I ended up not really having a game plan once I came back to the states. But while I was teaching sailing, I started looking into graduate programs, and that's when I came across Waterkeeper Alliance, which was about this time last year.

SO YOU CHOSE THE WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE INSTEAD OF A GRADUATE PROGRAM?

Yeah, you know, after really researching the organization, I found that it really fit all the criteria that I was looking for in a graduate program. It had the coastal aspect - you know, the water aspect - it had the science aspect, and it had the community advocacy aspect. So it was a perfect fit. I kind of look at this opportunity as the equivalent of a graduate endeavor.

TELL ME ABOUT THE WATERKEEPER ALLIANCE AND HOW YOU GOT STARTED.

It's an international nonprofit organization, and there are 182 Waterkeeper programs that make up the Waterkeeper Alliance. I thought Charleston would be an incredible place for one, so I contacted the Alliance and they said you've got to do X-Y-Z - actually it was more like A all the way through Z; it was a huge check list.

I started working on that about a year ago and this August I submitted the proposal to establish Charleston Waterkeeper. On Sept. 16, the Waterkeeper Alliance Board of Directors unanimously approved the establishment of Charleston Waterkeeper. So that gave me the green light to start it.

YOU'VE BEEN AT IT FOR ABOUT TWO MONTHS. WHAT ARE YOU FOCUSING ON?

Well, the overall mission of the organization is to improve the water quality in Charleston through hands-on community involvement, scientific monitoring and legal action. There are certain issues that degrade our water quality and contribute to pollution and nastiness in the water, and that's everything from community ignorance - the majority of us, myself included, are somewhat ignorant toward our rights with regards to clean water, with regards to our waterways and this public trust, toward the whole process of preserving and protecting our waterways and about how our waterways become dirty.

So combating that through education, through getting citizens engaged and getting them involved, whether it be in water quality monitoring, taking samples, patrolling waterways in their own boats, picking up trash - all that stuff engages the community to a point where people begin to become educated about issues surrounding our waterways.

WHAT HAVE YOU FOUND TO BE THE BIGGEST PROBLEMS AFFECTING THE WATER IN THE CHARLESTON AREA?

The most obvious one would be industry. But industry is, in theory, regulated by certain permits and they must abide by those permits. Now, there are federal and state agencies that are in place to establish what those regulations are and to create permits to allow these industries to basically discharge X amount of pollutants a day or a month or a year.

So that is a somewhat regulated process that definitely needs more citizen engagement because if community members are involved, we can say, "No wait, that permit allows way too many pollutants to be discharged," and things like that. But a huge, huge contributor to water pollution is just runoff, stormwater runoff.

Basically, whenever it rains, that rain collects anything in its way, whether it be gasoline, oil, pesticides, fertilizer. Anything that's on the ground that the water hits, the water will take it, bring it down the storm drains and it will go down to the under water systems and then dump right into the harbor here.

It's a bit of a sleeping beast because we don't think about things like how all of our roads don't let anything to seep into the ground and naturally get filtered.

This might be kind of gross, but take dog poop for example. There are huge traces of fecal coliform bacteria in our waters, and that's primarily a result of not only runoff from animals, but also the wastewater treatment centers. They go through a process of filtering all this waste, but there are better technologies out there and there are more advanced ways of doing it, so that when they finally discharge what is left, there should be a lot fewer traces of all that stuff.

Another thing, look at the downtown area. You've got surfaces that won't allow any moisture, any rain, any water to absorb into the ground. The earth is an incredibly good filtration system. If it rains, and that water picks up pollutants or contaminants, if it has the opportunity to settle through the different layers of earth, by the time it eventually reaches groundwater, it's been filtered through layer after layer.

But if you've just got concrete and roadways, there's no chance for that stuff to get filtered, and it immediately goes from the surface to the water.

SO WHAT CAN BE DONE ABOUT SOME OF THESE PROBLEMS?

There are a couple of initiatives. There's the Charleston Green Committee, which right now we're drafting up recommendations for the city and we're going to submit them to Mayor Joe Riley and his constituents. They're basically recommendations to try to create a - well, it's a bit of a buzz word - but to create a greener Charleston.

I'm spearheading the water aspect, so some of my recommendations include having surfaces that allow for drainage.

DOES THAT MEAN MORE GREEN SPACES?

Green spaces, yeah. But there are some bricks and forms of hard surfaces that are more porous and allow for water to drain through that we could be using.

HOW WILL CHARLESTON WATERKEEPER GET THE COMMUNITY INVOLVED?

Mainly through the Community Watchdog Program, which we're establishing right now. Essentially, that will mobilize all of the volunteers, all of the eyes and ears that are already on the waterways, and try to create a network of watchdogs, where they are updating Charleston Waterkeeper on every little thing that happens on their waterway.

What we're creating is an online networking program of sorts, where you'll see an aerial photograph of the Charleston area, and on that photo you'll have markers on every waterway. We're trying to assign to each waterway a group of volunteers that either live there, fish there or frequent that area. And each water body, each group of volunteers, will have its own page where they can upload photos, updates, comments, exactly what they see, stories.

Eventually, we want to get to a point where - and this crosses over into the focus on scientific monitoring - we are providing the volunteers with testing equipment to be able to take water quality samples in their designated creek or marsh or river, bring those samples back to us and then we'll publish them online.

This program will be a one-stop shop for anyone to figure out the health of any single waterway in the Charleston area. It will be very visual and will encourage participation, so it's a way to encourage citizens to take pride again in their waterways, and for all of those who are taking pride to be connected.

WHAT DOES CHARLESTON WATERKEEPER DO AS FAR AS LEGAL ACTION GOES?

What sets the Waterkeeper program apart from other environmental programs, and what they really take pride in, is the enforcement of environmental laws. There's a handful of environmental laws that the Waterkeeper programs uses as its artillery, and the biggest one is the Clean Water Act of 1972.

The Clean Water Act allows for the citizen to sue. So if a citizen of an area sees that a party is in violation of the Clean Water Act - polluting, in violation of their permit, blatantly contaminating the water - they have the authority to file suit against that party. So it's an incredibly powerful statute that allows for a huge amount of checks and balances with regards to our water quality, and it's something that isn't taken advantage of often enough.

The Act also has a whistle-blower clause, so any employee of a facility, factory or whatever can come forward with any information about violations of the Clean Water Act and not be punished, and if they are punished, they're protected.

The beauty of an organization like this is that once we start establishing a membership, we're establishing representational standing among the community that we're claiming to represent. So in the event that we find out that a facility, or a city, or even a county, is violating the Clean Water Act, Charleston Waterkeeper as an organization can file suit against the responsible party. But in order to be a valid suit, we have to prove that we represent people that are in direct harm of that violation.

HAVE YOU TAKEN LEGAL ACTION AGAINST ANYONE YET?

Well, there's a lot of potential stuff. But, to be honest, for the past two months, I've been focusing a lot on just getting the organization up off the ground - everything from filing to be legitimate in the eyes of the state and the IRS and stuff to launching our membership campaign to raise funds, which is a bit of a daunting task for one individual to juggle everything. But once we get off the ground, gain some footing, we're definitely going to start going after the lowhanging fruit, the stuff that's just obvious, that agencies or individuals or companies that are just blatantly in violation of the Clean Water Act.

WHAT ARE SOME OF YOUR LONG-TERM GOALS FOR CHARLESTON WATERKEEPER?

Eventually I'd love to have a riverkeeper for the Cooper, a riverkeeper for the Wando and a riverkeeper for the Ashley. I guess a five-year goal, or eventual goal, is to include all the waterways within Berkeley, Dorchester and Charleston counties, minus the Santee area, because the Berkeley-Charleston-Dorchester Council of Governments is who establishes certain regulations for our waters, so they're the ones who come up with certain policies, certain strategies and management plans for our water quality.

And I really encourage people to go onto our Web site (www.charlestonwaterkeeper.org) and become a member, because the more members we have the stronger this organization will be. And the more eyes and ears we have out on the water, the better off our natural resources will be.

Reach Tideline writer Abi Nicholas at 843-958-7375 or abi@tidelinemagazine.com.