Caloosahatchee Riverwatch joins Waterkeeper Alliance

For more than two decades, Riverwatch has championed the Caloosahatchee: organizing cleanups, educating citizens and advocating for the region's troubled river.

There's been plenty to do. Since Riverwatch formed, the Caloosahatchee has been plagued by polluted flows from its watershed and Lake Okeechobee that have contributed to create toxic algae blooms, diseased fish and wiped-out seagrass.

Now the grassroots group is poised for powerful change.

Allying itself with the Waterkeeper Alliance, the all-volunteer nonprofit is now an affiliate of the respected organization guided by Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and best-known for protecting New York's Hudson River.

Becoming a Waterkeeper Affiliate brings lobbying muscle, organizational experience and international reach to the Caloosahatchee and its watershed, from Lake Okeechobee to the Gulf of Mexico. Though the Caloosahatchee's ills ebb and flow like the river's own tides, they've crested in recent weeks as one of the wettest dry seasons on record led water managers to release polluted torrents from the lake into the Caloosahatchee.