Beautiful, isn't it?

This is the Ohio River.

Want to hear something wild?

I love the Ohio River.

Yeah, all 981 miles.

From Pittsburgh to Cairo.

Cairo, Illinois, that is.

How do I love a body of water that some have called the most polluted in America?

Fair question.

Maybe the best way to answer is to first look at what made the Ohio the river it is today.

And now ladies and gentlemen, on this afternoon of October the 18th, we here on the upper deck of the flagship Cincinnati open the celebration of the canalization of this Ohio River with its series of locks and dam from Pittsburgh to Cairo!

The year is 1929 and this group of dignitaries is celebrating the completion of a remarkable engineering effort.

The Corps of Engineers constructed 52 locks and dams that they believe will help them control the mighty Ohio River.

Just listen to this: There is now a dependable channel nine feet deep from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Cairo, Illinois which will make possible low cost transportation, a valuable asset to industry.

Sure, they're happy.

And who can blame them?

Controlling the Ohio has been the goal since the first European explorers came upon it in the 1500s.

Of course, indigenous people had been living along the Ohio for many centuries and controlling it wasn't on their agenda.

They pretty much let it be, though, they fished from it and traveled and worshiped it and called it “the beautiful river.” They had no plan for controlling it, but the newcomers sure did.

Controlling the river is a very challenging situation.

I equate it to playing football and having to play varsity.

This job is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year.

The lock and dam system on the Ohio River is just incredible.

There's so many moving parts.

There's massive structures, thousands of barges moving every day.

And most of the time it all works perfectly.

You know, it's an engineering marvel.

And when it works perfectly, no one notices.

Nobody cares.

So only when it breaks down do people get upset and then they get really upset and then it gets in the paper.

Imagine you're managing a highway.

Oh, you have to shut a lane down to repair it.

That's normal.

There's a traffic back up.

Nobody thinks that much about it.

Imagine if instead of being a flat, static piece of concrete that highway is a pounding, gigantic river barely under control with hundreds of thousands of cubic feet per second of water filled with fish and endangered species.

I mean, the idea of trying to manage something like that as a reliable mode of transportation is really wild.

Tyler Kelley is an author and journalist, and from his writing, it's obvious he loves rivers, too.

His book on the Ohio and Mississippi considers how we have come to think of rivers, that's if we think about them at all.

In my mind, I see the Ohio River as an interstate.

It's very utilitarian, and my job is to make sure that commerce keeps moving at all times.

Compared to the roads which most Americans drive 11,000 miles on a year.

the rivers are really almost invisible.

Most Americans have very little interaction with the rivers, even people that live beside the river, they know there's a barge here and there, but they don't understand where the barge is coming from, where it's going, what it's carrying.

Not to mention everyone who lives inland, who, you know, probably thinks that everything travels on a semi-truck.

You are on a living river that really is not inclined to stay where you put it.

And so when you think about it like that, the fact that it pretty much does what we quote unquote, the American people, the Federal government, tell it to do most every day of the year is remarkable.

So I think the rivers do have a real kind of public relations problem.

In some places, they've been so industrialized, They█ve become a place that you don't go to for fun.

They become a place that you turn your back on because you're like, well, I'm not going to go back burning chimney over there.

I'm going to go to the park or something.

Go to the lake.

(Off screen) How far are you going?

Oregon.

To New York.

(Off screen) Oregon to New York?!

That's a big idea, yeah.

(Off screen) Oh, gosh!

Yeah fun stuff.

Here's someone who wouldn't agree that Rivers have a PR problem.

Neal Moore loves rivers, which is a good thing in that he is paddling the length of 22 of them while crossing the United States Why would he do such a thing?

These rivers represent life and to put yourself in a canoe or a kayak down at water level, you have nature literally all the way around you.

It's something spectacular to behold.

I think every river and waterway has its own personality.

The Ohio stands out as as one of the great rivers.

The river herself is something to be exalted.

It's something to bow down to.

It's something that is so big that it's almost impossible to describe.

And when you put yourself onto a river like the Ohio, it's a privilege.

What it does is scream to your soul and what it screams is: “Behold!

Behold the great Ohio River.” Neal Moore and Jay Rickman.

They both love the Ohio.

They just see it differently.

Can the two visions coexist?

Does the role of the Ohio as a major commercial route prevent it from being used for much of anything else?

Tough question that shapes the Ohio today, did so yesterday and certainly will tomorrow.

And let's be honest, when presented with hard choices, we tend to go to sleep.

(Snoring) And when we sleep, a certain nightmare keeps recurring.

♪♪ Ohhh, dying█s become so common and who knows why?

♪♪ ♪♪ We just want to prosper, yeah, swim and multiply.

♪♪ ♪♪ Why then does so many just up and die ♪♪ ♪♪ So we asked the River, ♪♪ ♪♪ and that old soul, she justed sighed.

♪♪ ♪♪ Are you really asking?

Can you truly not see?

♪♪ ♪♪ What they█ve been doing for all these centuries?

♪♪ ♪♪ They fill me up with poisons ♪♪ ♪♪ and they think they get off free.

♪♪ ♪♪ Oh, but it█s later than they think.

♪♪ (alarm going off) So then is this nightmare the Ohio?

Has commercial use made it nothing but a graveyard for fish and other wildlife?

Let's see about that.

Historically, the Ohio River contained about 160 species of fish.

Most of those species persist today.

Paddlefish, Shovel Nose Sturgeon, Freshwater Drum, Small Mouth Buffalo, Big Mouth Buffalo, River Carp Sucker.

High Fin Carp Sucker, Blue Sucker.

Alligator Gar, your Shortnosed Gar, your Spotted Gar, Longnosed Gar, Golden Redhorse River Redhorse, Silver Redhorse, Channel Catfish, Blue Catfish, Flathead Catfish, Northern Madtom.

You've got your Sturgeon, moving into some of your minnows and suckers.

Freckled Madtom, Logperch, Walleye, Sauger, River Darter, Shoal Chub.

Some of your small fish, little Madtoms.

There are so many different species that occupy the Ohio.

Well, obviously there is life in the Ohio, a body of water with an abundance of different species.

Why, it seems there are as many as there were before we began using it as a disposal.

And there are even a few newcomers that have moved in.

They aren't so welcome.

Thinking about, you know, a species that maybe we don't want to have in our water anymore, is that the Asian Carp species.

We had a ton of fish jumping all around us and one just hit me just right into my jaw.

It bruised the inside I looked like I'd been in a bar fight and it took a while to heal, but I just, you know, it's one of those fish stories that you take with you from your job.

That's a fish story that can be filed under “unintended consequences.” See, there are four different species of Asian carp that were brought to America in the sixties and seventies.

The thinking was they could be used in controlled situations as a food source and a way to reduce algae overgrowth.

Unfortunately, invasive carp caused serious damage to the native fish population.

Carp were also thought to lower water quality, which can kill off sensitive organisms like native freshwater mussels.

Fish and wildlife agencies up and down the Ohio Valley are committed to getting these so-called nuisance species under control.

For now, the carp seem to be winning.

While the Asian carp are definitely not welcome in the Ohio, they are at least the real thing.

In 1818, some fictitious species were introduced to the Ohio by none other than John James Audubon.

Yes, that John James Audubon.

Audubon lived in Henderson, Kentucky, and was hosting an eccentric European naturalist named Constantine Samuel Rafinesque.

Rafinesque was traveling the Ohio River chronicling wildlife species and native fauna.

He noted and illustrated his findings in a journal that would be the basis for a groundbreaking book he hoped to soon publish.

Audubon, sensing an opportunity to send this naive newcomer on something of a snipe hunt, shared with Rafinesque descriptions of 11 new fish species, all fictitious.

The phantom fish included the ten foot long Devil-jack Diamond fish, whose fierceness was amplified by bullet proof scales (gun shots) Audubon assumed his new friend would soon realize the discoveries were bogus.

Well, not really.

Rafinesque, ever eager to claim a new species, published his findings in his landmark book, Icthyologia Ohiensis or Natural History of the Fishes Inhabiting the Ohio River and its Tributaries Streams.

Some years later, scholars realized the prank and removed the fake fish.

(Erasing) (Typing) If only it were that easy with the Asian Carp.

Later, in the 1840s, Audubon, now recognized as an imminent avian expert, was astounded when a researcher assistant presented him with a new species of bird.

Audubon's elation faded soon thereafter, when he discovered the assistant had sewn together the head, body and legs of three different birds to make this new creation.

Oh my, my, my!

That's right up my alley.

I love talking about birds.

Reverend Lee Payne is a bird watcher extraordinaire.

He is president of Louisville's Audubon Society and is a director of the Beckham Bird Club.

Reverend Payne never passes up an opportunity to share his love for birds and the Ohio.

The birds that are drawn to that river are amazing.

I mean, it's good for birders.

And to see all of these birds from around the world showing up just to go to our river, to rest or to fuel up.

That noise we█re hearing.

those are Redwing Blackbirds.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I they keep making that noise.

Every bird has its own little story.

I love how Mother Nature has made colors on these birds.

Colors that I can just imagine that you can't even see on a painting.

I mean, some of these birds have some beautiful colors on them that are just magnificent.

Can we go so far as to say the Ohio is a bird magnet?

It is thriving.

Without a doubt.

There's always a new species of bird showing up at the river all the time.

I believe they up to 200 and probably 250 species of birds if that, if not more.

I mean, it is thriving when birds, I assure you that.

So much life along the Ohio.

Fish are thriving.

Birds are thriving.

Nature seems to be resisting our efforts to foul this nest we depend on for drinking water and so much more.

Life and beauty.

Those are storylines we don't always hear about the Ohio these days.

This wasn't always the case.

In an earlier time, one man helped tell a different story about the Ohio.

In the 1700s and 1800s, the Ohio was the beautiful and wild road west, the highway to places of great possibility and even greater mystery.

People of that time were hungry for any vision of that highway.

and what lay beyond.

An artist named John Banvard created artwork that gave the people what they wanted.

And by some accounts, his work made him the richest and most famous artist in America.

Get this.

In 1842, Banvard floated down the Ohio to the Mississippi and then spent two years sketching scenes along that great river.

In 1844, he returned to Louisville, built a large barn on the outskirts of town, and converted his sketches into a magnificent panorama.

Banvard produced a remarkable number of paintings, stitched them together, and then attached his stream of images between two large cylinders.

Scrolling the river scenes between the two cylinders while throwing in some lively narration, Banvard's River story came to life.

It was sort of like going to a movie today.

Now, Banvard claimed his panorama was 12 feet high and three miles long.

In reality, it was about a quarter mile long.

Still, that's a lot of river.

Never one to be shy, the artist proclaimed, “It is the largest painting the world has ever known.” He debuted the work in Louisville.

Opening night, not one person showed up.

But then the audiences began to grow.

And as his success grew, Banvard took his show on the road to Boston, New York, and eventually to London and Buckingham Palace.

Queen Victoria was very favorably impressed.

The day of the panorama has pretty much passed, but I believe a variation can be seen on the floodwalls that protect many communities along the Ohio today.

These images give a sense of the history of these communities, how they came to be.

Who was there before European settlers.

The glories and the heartbreaks, the industries that spurred growth and those that went away.

One man, Robert Dafford, has led a team of artists to create the great majority of these murals Being aware of the history and why these towns and cities evolved the way they did, was because of the river.

That was the highway.

You couldn't get through Kentucky you know, until, well, mid 1800s.

Knowing all of that, I think would give people a deeper appreciation for where they live and how it got to be the way the it is, and a little more respect for nature and the river.

I figured out one time, I've painted something like the equivalent of six or seven Sistine Chapels in my lifetime.

Stories of communities and really of the American dream are all here testifying to beginnings and endings, visions of prosperity and loss.

Well, I don't know the count now, well over a million people have come to see these projects.

A lot of these river towns are suffering from all the steel business, shoe business, everything went overseas.

Corporations moved all their labor and outsourced all materials and left these places.

Over generations of unemployment going way back there's a develop of a lack of pride in who we are and what we are.

And these things are about restoring our pride and who we are and what we are, and what we did, and all the history that took place here.

And here, it's it's not just about the glorious leaders.

It's about us, the people who lived here.

And I think when they see themselves writ large it's a satisfying and a pleasing thing, it's a good thing.

And then several decades of people coming from all over the country to see you, well, you have a realization that maybe we were important.

We did something important.

We are important.

Well, look at this.

Did you know Portsmouth once had an NFL franchise, but lost it to Detroit?

One mural tells the story of enslaved people making their way north across the Ohio.

The river was the boundary between inhumanity and the possibility of freedom.

The desperation and bravery necessary for such a journey can only be imagined.

The flight to freedom is now commemorated by this public art memorial on the riverbank at Louisville.

Some names are known at least the first names.

Others are not, lost to history.

John Banvard's panorama is also lost to history.

Some say it was cut up and used for insulation.

Robert Dafford can take comfort in knowing that his canvases are more durable, but he also understands their primary purpose is to control the Ohio.

♪♪ How high█s the water, mama?

Two feet high and risin█ ♪♪ So this is Portsmouth's original flood defense.

♪♪ She said, it█s two feet high and risin█ ♪♪ It was defeated, shall we say, in 1913.

After that, they raised it by this much.

♪♪ Two feet high and risin█ ♪♪ By the time you get up to 1937, this is the flood defense in Portsmouth, and it's more than four feet lower than the biggest floods on record.

Ultimately, 1937, overtopped it by 12 feet.

And so after 1937 and the passage of the Flood Control Act in 1940, we got the big new flood wall, 75 foot approximately, designed to hold back the flood of 1937, plus three feet.

Let's face it.

Floods are a way of life when you live by the river.

But 1937... now, that was another beast, altogether.

In the early days of settlement, a flood of the different sort was caused by a simple but very effective form of transportation.

It was the flatboat that created the American economy that we know today.

What?

The flatboat?

It is the vessel that created America.

Wow, I would not have thought that.

But Rinker Buck makes a strong case for his statement by putting his boat where his mouth is.

In 2017, he had a flatboat built that he named “The Patience” and then spent four months traveling on it from Pittsburgh to New Orleans.

Rinker Buck is a storyteller who likes adventure and a challenge.

Prior to his flatboat voyage, he had a covered wagon built and retraced the Oregon Trail.

The flatboat adventure yielded yet another bestselling book.

And the flatboat basically involved a simple technology, basically a wooden box you were building.

It was like a big old log cabin that was floating down the river.

A 40 foot flatboat could carry 40 tons.

They carried draft horses, pigs, goats, a family of five or whatever.

All their furniture that they jammed into a little cabin, plus their plows, their harvesting machinery, etc..

There was one Pioneer journal that I read where the guy said, “We carried everything but the stone walls.” A person today can't help but wonder why so many people would uproot their lives and cast their fate with the river leading into the unknown.

The only certainties the Ohio offered were unpredictable currents, impenetrable forests on either bank and native people who were not at all thrilled with the prospect of giving up their homes.

So why would you do that?

Ohio, which referred to the Ohio River Valley, generally could be translated directly as “get rich quick”.

Everybody heard that everybody else was getting rich and they got to join the crowd.

That's what Ohio Fever was.

♪♪ Oh, river take me on to Kentucky ♪♪ ♪♪ Where her blue eyes are waiting for me ♪♪ There are as many as 10,000 flowerpots in the Ohio River space a year.

Maybe about half of those were commercial, meaning they were carrying product down to be sold in New Orleans for world markets.

And the other half were what they called arks because they look like Noah's Ark with all the farm animals on and everything.

There were store boats.

There were people called colporteurs.

A colporteur was a Bible salesman.

There were distillery boats, they were called.

There was a lot of drinking on the river.

Not too different from today.

Blacksmiths.

They had a forge right on the boat, and they whatever broken your boat they could fix.

There were barber shops and there were whorehouses.

The ingenuity, the energy, the racousness of American culture was there.

There were 20,000 boatmen a year who worked on the river carrying cargo to New Orleans.

And that's a big market.

It was a big market.

And and they got paid for the week.

Well, they went out, spent it.

You know, it was gone by Monday.

They were gambling casinos and just everything they needed from bibles to prostitutes and liquor.

It was a mall.

It was an American mall floating down river.

So it was this very American place.

This contradiction that I think early America was and indeed America is today.

Beauty mixing with commerce.

Beauty mixing with human greed.

Beauty mixing with pollution, you know, all the time.

That's that's how America began.

And we're trying to graduate from that today.

But who knows how good a job we're doing.

♪♪ fourteen days I took a barge with a load ♪♪ ♪♪ up to Pittsburgh where it was sold ♪♪ Soon to join the flatboat was the steamboat.

The steamboat changed life along the Ohio River dramatically.

And for many who love River life, these were the glory days.

Nicholas Roosevelt built the very first steam powered boat traveling on the Ohio River.

It was launched in the fall of 1811.

It took just a few years for that first trip to be changed into a boom industry.

By the 1850s, it was the second largest industry in our country.

So the steamboat became this invention that people had been waiting for, Not just for shipping, but for people transportation as well.

The steamboat made every difference at a time when the only natural highways were the rivers.

Roads were incredibly hard to build, it was all manpower.

Railroads hadn't been invented yet.

This is opening up our country to things it had never imagined to see before.

And one historian has said that the river made Louisville, Kentucky, a town.

The steamboat made Louisville, Kentucky, a city.

And that happened at every location, towns and cities everywhere the length of the Ohio and, frankly, the length of the Mississippi River, as well.

But let's assume anywhere from about six to 10,000 boats were operating during the middle of the 19th century.

That's a lot of boats.

I've known rivers.

I've known rivers as ancient as the world and older than the flow of human blood and human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

With the advent of steamboats and the need to transport commerce, there was a need for hard labor.

And that was done through roustabouts and chambermaids on the Ohio River.

And these men and women worked very hard upon the the rivers, loading freight cleaning rooms, doing all these different tasks.

With hard labor comes a yearning for release.

And so roustabouts often sang to lighten the hard labor.

♪♪ My mother, mother waitin█ for me.

♪♪ ♪♪ My mother, mother waitin█ for me... ♪♪ The Ohio River is a great avenue for movement of not just commerce, but ideas and cultural things as well.

And we see this in music.

Fate Clifford Marable was born in Paducah, Kentucky, in December of 1890.

He started taking music lessons at a young age.

So legend has it that Fate one day in 1907 is having pie at a local establishment in Paducah, and he hears the calliope play on one of these boats and runs down to the river.

and he's hired on the boat.

And this begins a somewhat 50 year career of him performing on riverboats up and down the American inland waterways.

So Fate hires an amazing band.

Some of these people that he begins to hire go on to be what we think of as the greatest jazz musicians to have ever lived.

You have Fate Marable, growing up here on the Ohio River, collecting all of these pieces of music along the way.

The ones that he heard in New Orleans, the ones that he heard roustabouts performing.

There was this continuum of music.

along the river towns, what was happening in New Orleans.

What█s happening in Cincinnati, what█s happening in Saint Louis, what█s happening in Pittsburgh.

I always say that the rivers were the information superhighway.

Marable is one of those foundational figures.

He started something that echoes still into our culture today.

So we feel it.

It's had an impact on us, but we forgot where that original signal came from.

♪♪ Imma travelin█ on... ♪♪ ♪♪ I█m travelin█ on... ♪♪ I've known rivers, ancient dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep, like the rivers.

So many small communities along the Ohio grew and prospered because of steamboat traffic.

Many others faded when trains and automobiles brought an end to the steamboat era.

Traveling the Ohio, There are many questions.

Pickleball?

And on a more serious note, What can we learn from the indigenous people who were once here?

So much of what we think comes through stories told primarily by the settlers who were seizing the land.

In recent times, studies have shown how complex the indigenous cultures were.

So much has been lost.

The remnants of these people entice, mystify and sadden.

Their example of living in harmony with the great river they called “Beautiful,” is worth celebrating.

As far as emulating this attitude... well, let's see about that.

In navigating the Ohio today or in the past one thing remains true.

Flatboats, steamboats and barges all have to deal with the Falls of the Ohio.

Now, when one says falls, certain images do come to mind.

Well, the Falls of the Ohio were quite that grand.

When European settlers first confronted them, these falls amounted to about two miles of very treacherous rapids.

They were so treacherous, they were seen as the only major obstruction in the entire Ohio River.

It took a skilled and experienced pilot to guide a boat through the Falls.

Wrecks and loss of life were common.

Obviously, no one would even dream of swimming through them.

That is, until Paul Boyton became the first.

Paul Boynton was born in 1848, near the banks of the Allegheny River, very close to where it flows into the Ohio.

Paul loved the Ohio River.

Truth be known, he loved all water almost as much as he loved adventure.

So in 1872, when he came upon a breakthrough invention, he recognized a tool that combined both his loves, and it had the potential to save many lives.

The invention was a pants and tunic made of highly vulcanized rubber.

The outfit keeps the wearer afloat and weighs about 35 pounds.

The wearer would propel himself in the water with a double bladed paddle six feet long.

If a ship went down, this rubber suit could be a lifesaver.

Well, Boynton took to the invention like a fish to water, and quickly became expert in using all the accessories that came with it.

And there were quite a few of these.

Boynton's first major exploit in the suit was to float across the English Channel, the first person to do so.

Yes, it took him three tries to do it but he finally made it in 23 hours.

Boynton soon became the toast of Europe, floating parts of the Rhine, the Danube and the Seine, among others.

His fame grew with each triumph, as did his desire for new challenges.

The Falls of the Ohio at Louisville was just the sort of challenge Boynton relished.

In 1876, he decided to become the first person to deliberately swim over the Falls.

Thousands of spectators gathered on the shore to watch the attempt.

The Louisville Courier-Journal told the tale: “River men advised the man-fish Boynton, not to attempt descending the whitewater rapids while the wind was high.

When he arose.

a wave crest tumbled him over in a back somersault, a mishap he had not met with on the ocean or on other rivers.

Fortunately, he missed the rocks that might have ripped open his suit and killed him, arriving in New Albany at last, exhausted, but unmaimed.

Paul Boynton, the hero of the Tigris, the Tiber and the Blue Danube, took his life in his hands at the Falls and demonstrated beyond all question the ability of man to make the water is home.” Boynton may have felt the water was his home, and he did survive the Falls, but they continued as an obstacle to year around river traffic.

The Corps of Engineers was called on to manage the falls as well as much of what happens along the Ohio.

From the time of Paul Boynton to the present day, this role often causes the Corps to be criticized... a lot.

The Corps of Engineers is a really interesting agency, and I got to know them very well.

I think better than most people over the course of this project.

Remember Tyler Kelly?

He wrote that fine book on the attempts to control the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers.

He has also done in-depth reporting about infrastructure along America's rivers and the Corps role in implementing it and maintaining it.

The Corps mostly does what Congress tells them to do, and I think they are usually maligned.

And I don't think it's always or even often merited.

The people I met, especially the lower level on the ground, lock workers and kind of levee riders I thought were fantastic, dedicated people working really, really hard to do a really tough job.

I think often the environmentalists sort of carry the day when it comes to the narrative on the Corps, and they accuse the corps of, you know, ruining the river and destroying the floodplain and harming the wildlife and, you know, being at the beck and call of big agriculture.

And I don't think any of those things are true.

The sort of mid-level Corps of Engineers people I would meet were stuck with a really tough job, because they have all these environmental mandates and then they have all these commercial mandates and they're trying to sort of satisfy both of these interest groups, which very much is impossible.

And so they're really getting squeezed and they're really in a tough spot because, again, over in D.C., you can pile on all these mandates and you can say “and protect the endangered species and make all the barges flow and stop the flooding,” and they just throw it over to the Midwest and have these guys over here on some river deal with this.

And they just send law after law.

And then these people are here like, “we can't stop the floods and keep the barges running and save endangered species.

What are you talking about?” And so they're really stuck and no one seems to really care.

And you can see the stress, the anxiety of these guys getting squeezed with all these things they're supposed to do with these rivers.

You can't save the endangered species and the environment and have flood control and have navigation and shipping and commerce.

It's impossible.

So I wish someone would realize that and give these guys a break and say and women, too, and say, you know, “here are the rivers that we just want to be canals for barges, and let's not worry about endangered species.

Here, are some rivers that we can let go of the barges because it's economic and not important, and let's wor hard on ecosystem restoration, endangered species over here, and not try to have everything be be both.” I think that's impossible and had proven to fail.

So is the Ohio a beautiful river or simply a barge canal?

I think there's nothing wrong with being a highway for barges.

And it's interesting, actually, you talk to people at the Corps of Engineers.

They say, “well, people in different regions have different priorities.

They have different values.

People up in Minnesota, in Wisconsin, the upper Mississi they really value the ecosystem, the wildlife, the nature.

So we're building them back, their ecosystem, wildlife, and nature.” People on the Ohio, they don't care.

Just make it a canal.

They just want the commerce and economy.

They want the barges.

So it's funny, but it's almost like if the people in the Ohio somehow professed or expressed a desire for ecosystem restoration, there█s a lot of it being done elsewhere.

It should be noted that Tyler is from the upper Midwest, so that may influence his findings somewhat.

And while Tyler has done high quality reporting, I have found many people along the Ohio who do care about it passionately.

They have a different story to tell.

And so I always sort of cringe when people say the river is this or the river is that.

It's really reflection of us.

To understand that.

it gives us insight on who we are as a society.

Dr. Chris Lorenz directs the Environmental Science Program at Thomas More University.

The Ohio River is an ecosystem, which means we study the habitat, we study the chemistry, and we study the biology of that area.

His classroom is a former lockhouse located on the banks of the Ohio.

There were once 52 such lock houses located from Pittsburgh to Cairo.

As the nature of river traffic changed, the old locks and dams gave way to today's larger versions.

Most of the old lockhouses are no longer in use, either being torn down or becoming derelict.

And many of them are sitting vacant, deteriorating, a few of them, or in use like ours for different uses, whether it's tourism or a bed and breakfast or ours as scientific.

Dr. Lorentz realizes that few lockhouses will be transformed as Number 35 was by Thomas More University.

But he believes that almost every existing lockhouse could be adapted to help address a longtime challenge facing those who simply want to get closer to the Ohio.

So it's easy to see the river from the car, but when you go to try to get to the river, get down close to it, there's very few, surprisingly few safe, accessible public access points.

And I really see that as a big value in raising, you know, just the use of the river and from uses all sorts of benefits cascade, Having restrooms, having a parking lot, having a boat ramp, having a kayak launch site, those provide value along the way.

And if that's all they are, I think they're still useful and still worthwhile and worth pursuing.

There's so many positive aspects of the river today with so many benefits in the future, if we can make a concerted effort together.

We really need to rally around the river.

The Environmental Protection Agency has helped many areas rally around their endangered waterways with a special fund.

This is essential funding for an urgent need.

What a great idea.

ZERO?

That can't be right.

Sadly, it is.

The Ohio River is the largest body of water in America that doesn't receive funding for this essential EPA program.

Fortunately, the EPA isn't the only source of funding for waterways projects.

Frances Kern Mennone is affiliated with The Ohio River Way and is focused on helping communities find funding sources to increase their engagement with the river.

The way our communities have developed themselves is oftentimes we're looking down on the river, but in order to be able to see it from the river's perspective, you have to get on it.

When you're that close to the water, it's a completely different perspective.

So the river can very much be an asset.

Waterfronts can be an asset versus a detriment.

You see your community and the world around you from a totally different standpoint.

Francis takes her message from conferences and boardrooms to the river itself.

I'm sure there's stretches of the upper midwest that have a better relationship with their waterways, but there are certainly a population of folks in the Ohio Valley that do care about the Ohio River and want to resurrect it.

It's safe to say that Frances Mennone is one of those people.

So we recently got the unfortunate designation of being an endangered river.

The Ohio River was second on the list of ten.

I think one of the drivers of why the Ohio River is endangered is its perception.

It's far cleaner than people realize.

Yes, it could be a lot better, but it is far better than it was several decades ago.

The Ohio River needs a voice.

It really doesn't have a voice, and it's easy to forget about it.

Now is the time for the Ohio River.

Neal Moore completed his cross-continent paddle and he would agree that now is the time for the Ohio.

Neal is an optimist by nature, but nevertheless, in his time on the Ohio, he saw stories that broke his heart.

On this river I saw countless people who have thrown refrigerators into the Ohio River.

You see ovens, you see shopping carts.

of course.

You see cars.

If one looks carefully, fossil beds are also visible, remnants from another age, 390 million years ago.

Along that same shore, the artist, Al Gorman tells an Ohio River story with remnants of our age.

The Ohio is my collaborator.

And it's a really important part of what I do.

What Al Gorman does is create art from materials found along the Ohio River.

He recently had an exhibition of some of his work.

I kind of approach things a little differently.

I kind of take the things that I receive from the river.

With those materials, I try to tell stories about the river.

So it is an active collaborator.

I do try not to change to any great degree the materials I receive from the river.

This is an absurd figure.

I call this guy Peter Cottonwood.

And again, he's just made with found river materials, mostly Styrofoam sticks and a little bit of plastic.

These are all the shapes as the river has given them to me.

And all I've essentially done was poke holes in things.

And that's kind of how I like to describe my art as absurd, which to me is a combination of tragedy and comedy, right?

And somewhere between the two is where my art lives.

Mudlarking is a river pastime.

It's really kind of started more along the Thames and the estuary there.

When the tide is out, you're allowed to walk certain places in the city that are exposed to the water and you never know what you might find.

It might be a Roman coin, it could be a pilgrimage badge from the Middle Ages.

There's a whole community of people around the world who are into finding things of all kinds in all kinds of environments.

I'm sort of unique in that I'm not finding anything valuable, I█m finding plastic and Styrofoam.

This is what find on my river.

But in your river, you can find these other things.

I'm sure the river, you know, shapes us.

But since we're all different materials, it probably shapes us many different ways.

Yeah, the Ohio River, it's like all water.

It's life.

The river was seen as just an available sewer for pollution and for chemical waste and a lot of factories, a lot of industry located near these waterways because it was just seen as a convenient place for the waste to flow.

Cincinnati was built where it is, Louisville was built where it is precisely because the river ran through it.

And you know, water is accessible to people and you've got the ability to move stuff up and down the river.

Rob Bilott is an acclaimed environmental lawyer who has brought attention to the dangers of pollution in the Ohio and its tributaries.

Eric Thomas is the manager of a river and rail terminal who provides services to agricultural, manufacturing and chemical industries shipping products on the Ohio.

Protecting the Ohio or using it for commerce.

This recurring story of different agendas could be seen in conflict, yet these two men want the same thing, responsible use of this resource so important to us all.

The dirtiness of the river comes from human existence, truthfully We're a country of 350 plus million people and it it takes chemistry to to have to live.

Our our world revolves around chemistry and such.

I mean, the clothes that are on my back, the car that I drove to work today, all of the materials that go into that require chemistry.

And so you've got to be able to get the chemistry to the right place.

So the question is, how do you do that responsibly and how do you do that safely?

And, you know, frankly, moving goods on the river system in particular is the safest, cleanest, greenest way to move cargo.

From an environmental perspective, river transportation is the single most efficient way to transport bulk commodities.

Every time that you see one single 15 barge tow going by, each barge on that tow can hold the same amount as 70 semi-trucks.

One 15 barge tow can carry the s amount as 1,050 semi-trucks.

You know, we live and work on the Ohio.

We've got businesses, but we also want to enjoy recreationally the river.

And we have to work together to preserve the river and make it available for future generations to enjoy, live and work.

Rob Bilott has taken on large, powerful corporations, but he emphasizes that like it or not, the ultimate responsibility comes back to us.

And I think a lot of folks don't realize how interconnected all of us are individually to what happens in the river.

You know, and particularly in an area like this, you know, in the Cincinnati area where, you know, even when it rains, when there are heavy rainfalls, all of the water that flows into our sewer systems, you know, a lot of these sewer systems are pretty old and a lot of that water ends up into the river.

You know, a lot of what we're doing in our own homes, you know, what we spray on our yards or what we use as fertilizers or for lawn care.

All of that eventually makes its way down to the river with rain flow and with the streams and the creeks all interconnecting, eventually making their way back to the river.

People need to know if you live in the vicinity of the Ohio River or if you live in the vicinity of any of the tributaries that lead into the Ohio River you have a personal responsibility to do your part to keep the river clean.

Geologists have this favorite qu that “civilization exists by geologic consent, subject to change without notice.” I think it speaks to human arrogance of this idea that we can destroy the earth.

We can certainly render it uninhabitable for ourselves and for many species.

But, you know, as a geologist, one thing we look at in the geologic record is that following every mass extinction, there's a great proliferation of life.

We've heard many stories.

What will our story be?

One thing's for sure the river will endure for this is the Ohio, the Beautiful River.

Major funding for this program made possible by Ursuline Sisters of Louisville Ministry Fund Christina Lee Brown Envirome Institute Thomas Bradshaw Clark Kentucky Waterways Alliance Ohio River Way Falls of the Ohio Foundation Louisville Audubon Society and Friends of Ironton.