JENNIE GARLINGTON: On this episode of Ecosense... MARK TAYLOR: What's happening up here in the mountains doesn't stay up here in the mountains.

BYRON AMOS: It was at this corner actually, Tyler and Walnut, about six feet of water.

If you can imagine, six feet of water in the middle of Downtown Atlanta.

STEVEN SATTERFIELD: What makes a weed a weed?

How is it different from other plants?

TAMA MATSUOKA WONG: That's the million-dollar question.

Because I think a weed is in your mind.

♪ ♪ JENNIE: Brook trout, North Carolina's only native trout species, has been there since millennia.

As threats to the species grow, conservationists have banded together to find creative ways to protect them.

♪ ♪ ZOE MIHALAS: Growing up I learned how to fly fish from my dad.

He taught me and my two brothers.

I started fishing as soon as I could hold a rod and stand up.

My parents would try and find all the pink fishing gear that they could find.

So, I had a pink vest and then my first fly rod that was my own was also pink.

My birthday present from my parents when I was 16 was a North Carolina lifetime fishing license.

MARK TAYLOR: I grew up waiting for my dad to come home from fishing trips.

I remember being a little toddler running out as soon as I would hear his car come in the driveway and asking him how he did on his fishing trip.

JACOB RASH: I love to be outdoors.

I'm also obsessed with the fish themselves.

To me, it's not about the catch, it's about the opportunity to be out there, to be in these places.

MARK: We're standing here in the Pisgah National Forest in North Carolina.

It's an amazing landscape with incredible high mountains and cold water streams.

We're not far from the hustle and bustle of city, and yet out here we're in the middle of nowhere.

Brook trout are special because they've been here for millennia.

When you see one up close, it's magical.

And they're also special because they're very sensitive.

They need clean, cold water to live, and if they can't survive, then we know something's wrong.

JACOB: They're gorgeous.

They look almost like a tropical fish.

They're so colored up.

They're our only native trout here in North Carolina.

MARK: In this country, we've spent a couple hundred years doing our best to make life difficult for native species, including brook trout with development, industrial scale, logging, mining, and we saw populations plummet.

A hundred years ago, this looked entirely different.

We came in and we logged the mountains down to nothing.

We clearcut them.

Building roads, roads are important, but there's sedimentation that comes from road building.

When we put a barrier on a stream, that means that trout can't reach important habitat for spawning, feeding, thermal refuge in the warmer months.

These streams have always gone hot and cold based on the seasons.

As our climate is warming, it's more important than ever that fish have access to these really cold headwaters that have the cleanest, coldest water in this landscape.

And if you put a perched culvert, or any kind of barrier in their way, they can't reach that.

That's gonna be damaging to the population.

There is no genetic diversity when you isolate a trout population to the top one mile of a stream.

Several years ago, Trout Unlimited organized a volunteer force that fanned out across this region to survey road-stream crossings.

And they helped the U.S.

Forest Service and Trout Unlimited identify crossings that were problematic.

Unfortunately, a lot of the culverts that were installed across our landscape and including the National Forest, were not designed for the heavy flows that we're seeing now due to our warming climate.

So, they're just round pipes that go under the road, and they're in many cases too small.

T.J.

HAWKINS: This was an area that could be prone to flooding, so when it constricts all that velocity, it's like a fire hose during a big storm event.

So, we've replaced them with larger structures that are bottomless.

It's got a reconstructed stream bed through the bottom, and it has no issues passing a hundred plus year storm event.

This structure, as you can see, is significantly larger, so we're at close to an 18-foot width here with our replacement that we put in.

Replacing these structures was important because we wanted the brook trout to be able to navigate back up to their spawning grounds, to their cold water refuges during the summer.

MARK: Brook trout are amazingly resilient creatures.

They've survived floods and fires and earthquakes, but there are some things that they just can't survive.

That's why we are out here using the best science available to identify and prioritize places where our work can have the most impact.

What's happening up here in the mountains doesn't stay up here in the mountains.

These challenges that are affecting brook trout, they affect people well beyond the borders of the Pisgah National Forest.

♪ ♪ Anglers want a lot of brook trout out here because we like to fish for 'em, and we wanna have a chance at catching more fish, but we also know that they indicate a healthy environment, and that's good for us too.

JACOB: Bulk of folks that are fishing for brook trout, they're mostly catch and release.

But there are a lot of folks that do enjoy harvesting and eating brook trout.

And that's a longstanding tradition that goes back for many, many generations.

ZOE: Oh, a nice one.

JACOB: And that's part of what we do to make sure that that's done in a sustainable way that's healthy for the population and doesn't hurt them.

♪ ♪ ZOE: Growing up, I was really involved with Trout Unlimited throughout my entire life.

I now get to run and help those youth programs that I was involved in when I was a kid.

It's super important for youth to be involved in our conservation work as well as fly fishing because they are the next stewards of these rivers and the sport.

Once you spend time in nature, there's no way to get around wanting to conserve it.

♪ ♪ JENNIE: This historic Atlanta neighborhood was always so special to so many families.

When a catastrophic flood changed everything, the community came together to rebuild in a way that benefits the entire city.

JAY WOZNIAK: Vine City has one of the most rich histories in terms of the Civil Rights Movement across America.

This neighborhood in the 50s and 60s was really the hotbed of activism.

Dr.

King and numbers of other Civil Rights leaders lived only one block away from Cook Park.

BYRON: Growing up, I heard many stories about Vine City from parents and from grandparents.

My elementary school was actually 500 feet away from my front door, so when you talk about the perfect neighborhood, that's what Vine City was.

Vine City was that place you could raise your family.

JAY: In the 1930s, when the Vine City neighborhood was actually being developed, Proctor Creek was buried, and plenty of dirt and other fill was brought on site to level it out for homes.

This part of Atlanta is one of the lower topographic points of the city.

And as more development occurred, it actually began to outdate the stormwater and sewer infrastructure here.

BYRON: If you look where we are now, the topography puts us at the bottom of a bowl.

And if you look up outside of the bowl, it's no retention pond, it's all concrete.

So where do the water go?

Downhill.

Where is downhill?

Here.

Unfortunately, the facts are backed up by lower wealth communities not receiving the same attention when it comes to the infrastructure.

If we are allowing anyone to build upstream, with no retention pond, we have to understand that water is going somewhere.

CARRIE SALVARY: The systems throughout the city of Atlanta have not been kept up the way they should have been kept up.

And I would agree that, particularly on the west side and the low wealth neighborhoods, it hasn't happened.

JAY: In fall of 2002, a tropical depression was passing its way over the city of Atlanta, like we still experience today from the Gulf of Mexico.

The amount of rain that came from that storm overwhelmed this neighborhood's combined sewer system.

And so, stormwater and sewage started backing up out of the combined sewer and flooded out the homes in this neighborhood CARRIE: On the night of the flood on September the 26th, I was away from my home.

And so when we arrived back at that point, it was raining.

And I got home and my son was standing in the driveway.

He said, "Ma, you better get in your house because there's a lot of people in your house."

I said, "Okay, what's happening?"

Then I saw all the water and it was a cascade of water running down through there.

It was just, water was absolutely everywhere.

I think they came to my house because I was active in the community.

And at that particular time I was building some homes out here as a community developer, and I think they felt safe, you know, being around my house.

BYRON: I was actually the Vine City Civic Association president, and I remember that night being at home, getting the phone calls, the neighborhood is flooding.

It was at this corner actually, Tyler and Walnut, about six feet of water.

If you can imagine, six feet of water in the middle of downtown Atlanta.

There was two beams of light that was coming out of the water, and no one knew what it was.

After the water receded a little bit, because we was down here all night long, we realized it was an automobile that had floated up and was standing on its tail and the lights were on, and you couldn't even see the car itself because of the water.

Hearing people that were still stuck in their homes, hearing that, you know, our elderly people could not get out.

Hearing that the water was just not rainwater, but sewage water.

So, it was a lot taking place that night in the middle of a metropolitan city.

So how do we mobilize?

Who do we mobilize?

Just the sense of urgency to make sure everyone was okay.

So, by the grace of God, there was no loss of life, but there were several people, tens of people who actually lost everything except for the clothes they was wearing.

JAY: There was about 60 homes that were destroyed.

After that event occurred, the city of Atlanta and a number of other folks became focused on relocating residents out of this site and finding a better use for this property because obviously building homes here was not the best decision.

BYRON: There was never a commitment to rebuild down here in Cook Park because we knew it was in a floodplain.

We knew ultimately it would happen again.

And that's why it stayed vacant for so long until we came along with the idea of Cook Park JAY: So, from 2002, when that horrendous event happened, up until about the time 2014, that Trust for Public Land became involved, there was a number of ideas that were floated in terms of what could happen with this site.

There was a park system master plan that was developed by a local Atlanta nonprofit called Park Pride.

That park system plan looked at how can parks on the west side of Atlanta, along the historic Proctor Creek, actually manage stormwater.

One of the main reasons that Trust for Public Land was brought into this project was based on our experience with engaging the community in all the projects that we work on.

BYRON: The community was supportive of creating this park because we thought it was a wonderful idea.

CARRIE: There was no objection to this park.

Trust for Public Land worked with the community, probably for about a year, to come up with what people from this neighborhood and surrounding areas want to see here in this park.

JAY: So, parks are important everywhere across the country, but they're most important in urban environments.

Because of the density of development, it's important that people have those special places to escape to, places to play, places to meet others, and really enjoy the outdoors.

So, there's three statues in Cook Park right now that honor Atlanta's luminaries from the Civil Rights Movement.

That includes Ambassador Andrew Young, that includes Congressman John Lewis, and of course that includes Dr.

Martin Luther King Jr.

BYRON: The functionality of Cook Park is very important because it's just not a park.

Most people think, park, come lay back, leisure time.

But this park serves a better function.

JAY: Not only is it this incredible collection of active recreational elements, but it also serves this purpose of managing stormwater.

And it's critical.

If this park was not here, there would continue to be rampant urban flooding here.

And so, this park, from the beginning, was engineered to be able to manage 9 million gallons of water.

That allows the park to reduce flooding in the neighborhood and make sure that residents aren't affected down the road like they once were.

This 16 acre Cook Park site has the ability not just to store the water that falls on its 16 acres, but it's actually collecting water from the 160 acres around the site.

And so the best way to describe the volume of 9 million gallons of water is thinking about a football field from end zone to end zone, sideline to sideline as a swimming pool.

Now picture that football field as being 28-feet deep.

A 28-foot-deep swimming pool.

That's 9 million gallons of water.

And we've seen the park hold 9 million gallons of water twice since it's been open in the past four years.

There's terraced fountains that collect water and bring oxygen to the water before it makes its way into the pond.

So, this whole system is set up to continue water circulating and really make it a really nice attraction visually and serves the purpose of managing stormwater and becoming an attraction for wildlife.

The pond in the middle of Cook Park has become quite an attraction.

Yes, it serves the purpose of managing stormwater.

It's become an incredible venue for, not just the kids, but also the adults in this neighborhood to see wildlife in an urban setting.

Water for so long had damaged this community.

Now, we've been able to capture water and use it as an amenity.

There's a lot of thought and design that went into what you see above ground, but also what's underground as well.

There's no better example than the Great Lawn here.

The Great Lawn is about the size of a football field, and it's used for picnics, it's used for festivals, but, what's really exciting is what's underground.

Underground, it's a network of pipes and engineered soil that allows water to make its way back into the ecosystem.

CARRIE: This park and the infrastructure within this park, is a great start, and we're hopeful that we will see additional infrastructure programs on the west side, and on the south side so that all of our communities can be made whole.

JAY: Great parks respond to the context of the neighborhoods that they're in.

I think many would agree that you can't fight mother nature.

Instead, you have to understand her, and work with her, so that you can respond to the conditions that she provides us and hopefully make something special out of it like we have here.

♪ ♪ JENNIE: Before you pull up those weeds, you might want to watch this.

They could be the most nutritious and delicious plants in your yard.

♪ ♪ STEVEN: So Tama, what makes a weed a weed?

How is it different from other plants?

TAMA: That's the million-dollar question, because I think a weed is in your mind, it's an attitude.

STEVEN: One man's weed is another man's dinner?

TAMA: But I like weeds.

I like to look for things that people don't want or they waste, but they're actually amazing.

STEVEN: They think they don't want it.

TAMA: Yes.

They think they don't want it!

STEVEN: Is there a particular time of year that is best to forage, or do you find that you can do it year-round?

TAMA: I can forage year-round, except when there's snow and ice.

I think there's a myth that foraging is a spring thing, and it is true that a lot of foraging starts way before the farm stuff is out.

For me, some of my most enjoyable foraging is the summer and the fall.

STEVEN: So, you have a top ten list.

TAMA: Dandelion is one, yellow wood sorrel is one, chickweed, purslane, lamb's quarters.

Nettle.

STEVEN: How did you start supplying foraging goods to restaurants?

TAMA: It was not planned.

I ended up doing this book called Foraged Flavor, which was nominated for a James Beard Award, and then people started asking me for stuff.

Foraging had just become of interest in the culinary world, and they wanted people that were doing this in the United States.

STEVEN: Yeah.

TAMA: Then I did another one on Scraps, Wilt and Weeds, which is again about waste and how much we waste in food and all the parts of the plants we don't use, including the weeds.

STEVEN: You're speaking to my heart.

TAMA: Yeah.

STEVEN: I'm all about using every part of the plant, more with cultivated fruits and vegetables, but, like, educating people about how to use stalks and leaves that are attached to roots or fennel fronds or, you know, whatever.

Are we looking at this as survival mode if things get really rough?

TAMA: These are life skills that you can take wherever you go.

'Cause once you learn to sort of understand plants and identify plants, and you know, you know, which are in certain families you're gonna be able to feed yourself in a way you didn't before.

But a lot of people that I meet are intimidated about not being able to identify plants.

"How do I start?"

You know, "I don't want to feel bad after I eat something."

So, my advice would be even though there's thousands of edible plants, just start with one.

Start with one or two that's right off your porch or someplace and you can watch that plant and get to know it at different times.

It's a great way to start.

STEVEN: These weeds or foraged plants, how do we see that, like, transforming into everyone's everyday life?

TAMA: I do think there's a place for weeds in our future.

I think that we've lost confidence in ourself, in our own power, to feed ourselves.

And we're very dependent on things that are coming in a package.

Weeds are survivors.

They're gonna be here even long past we've done things to ourself and the planet.

♪ ♪ I just wanna point out that nature is everywhere, and you can find nature right outside your step.

So, I would say there's the top ten.

Like, everybody that I know likes this and I never have enough.

And you may be surprised by what some of them are.

The second would be tastes good, but too much trouble.

And the third would be edible, but tastes like cardboard.

And then another would be toxic, where you may vomit or have a bad reaction, but you're not going to be in the fifth category, which is poisonous, which you could die.

And then some things can move from edible, merely edible to delicious after you're working with it to extract deliciousness from it.

A lot of gardeners are trying to pick this out.

This is common chickweed right here.

It's really delicious, it's really mild, it's healthy.

It's Stellaria media.

It's also one of the precious herbs of spring for Japanese.

You make it and you cook it and put into a bruschetta or a classic Japanese thing would be a little bit of soy and sugar.

So, it's a very green, mild taste.

And a lot of times when I eat something in the store now that I get that's been packaged, it just tastes like, it's just a texture.

It doesn't even taste like that green.

I feel like foraging is the gateway to nature.

So, you can just take something really easy, and you immediately have to engage with it.

Like, we can't just be like "There's a chickweed, there's a chickweed," we're running off someplace else.

We have to, like, look at it.

We have to smell it, we have to maybe taste it if we know what it is, and we're examining the plant in much more detail so that we end up, you know, really understanding it.

GRANT WALLACE: Yeah and I think it's fun too, when you go on those hikes and you start to identify them and it's like you just keep testing yourself and then it's like, you know, I'm gonna get that value over and over again once you identify it.

TAMA: This is an interesting one.

It looks like this is lemon balm.

GRANT: Dead nettle.

TAMA: Oh no, it is.

I could smell it.

See, smell.

I could tell.

GRANT: Smell TAMA: Dead nettle.

So that is definitely a weed, usually in the spring, but it's coming up here.

That's wild.

GRANT: Are you able to sell dead nettle to any of your chefs up there?

TAMA: Some people were making a wild kind of stuffing thing for a wild ravioli.

GRANT: Yep.

TAMA: This is one of the top, top, top, top ten.

Never have enough.

This is yellow wood sorrel.

It has a lovely lemon flavor.

It's beautiful.

It's not a clover.

So, when I talk to third graders, I say, when you look at the clover, they're both three-leaved, the clover, each one of these is a little round circle.

Each one of these is a heart.

And so, kids love it.

Think about a little lemony tart thing on top of smoked salmon, or in a tea sandwich, with cucumbers.

Or you could -- This is a thing you could put in a salad.

It is a native plant, so I do not pull it out by the roots.

I just take little bouquets off, and I let it go to seed.

People know this as foxtail millet.

This is actually a millet.

This is the grain that feeds more people, I think, on this planet than other grains.

You have to examine it.

'Cause if you just cut it, these little seeds may have fallen out already.

GRANT: Okay.

TAMA: But if they haven't, then you just stick them all head down into a big paper bag, let it dry at a nice, not humid place and the seeds will all fall off like this.

This is a true pure grain.

It's not been processed by anything.

Dandelion, the middle leaves are the best, the most tender, they're light.

Sometimes people say, "I don't like dandelion because it's too tough and bitter."

That's because they're probably taking it at the wrong time when it's the outer leaf that's like all bitter and fibrous.

Oh, I see you've got mugwort.

GRANT: I sure do.

Yeah, we mowed it down recently so we've got the fresh growth now.

TAMA: Artemisia vulgaris.

This genus has a lot of medicinal and edible properties in it.

And in the spring, see this is still very light.

When it gets more mature, it gets really strong and it does get more bitter.

So, at this time there's almost like a white button mushroom like flavor to it, so you can make a really nice soup with it.

This is lamb's quarter, Chenopodium, related to quinoa.

If you go into a market in Mexico City, they have tons of this all over and they use the seed a lot.

GRANT: Similar like how we're talking about with the millet, where they'd use it as a grain or more like quinoa, I guess?

TAMA: No, it's more like a texture additive, so it has this kind of corn popping thing that they're using, like a texture, to a soup on the top.

GRANT: People sometimes say to me, it's like, "Grant, you're a lazy gardener," or, you know, because they see what my fields look like, right.

But to me that just vibes better with my soul and what I want to do.

Do you feel like that too since you're into the foraging?

TAMA: Totally.

I mean, I actually would go further.

Instead of saying I'm a lazy gardener, I'd say I'm a failed gardener.

I'm better now, but when I tried to plant things, they would die.

And so then I started looking around at, "Well, what else is there?"

And once you start to look around, you realize some of the stuff that you didn't plant is beautiful.

People always feel like they have to plant everything.

And instead of looking and seeing what they already have, they're trying to plant things in the way -- where they think it should be, according to their own design.

I think you should pay attention to what's there first, the weeds, 'cause the weeds are what we don't plant, and you may end up having a more sustainable and a more delightful place.

GRANT: Yeah.

Like, it's hard to compete with nature.

TAMA: Yes, yes.

In the end it's probably gonna go back the way it wanted to be.

♪ ♪