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Members of White River Rescue 2000 talk with Gov. Frank O'Bannon following the settlement announcement. Clockwise from the top are John Bundy, Gov. Frank O'Bannon, Don Watson, Valerie Bundy and Steve Schwartz. The private group raised $140,000 to purchase fish to help the DNR stock the river while the state pursued the legal case against Guide.
Shortly after the July/August issue of Outdoor Indiana was printed, Gov. Frank O'Bannon called a news conference about a subject featured in that issue of the magazine --- the White River.
Because we have covered the White River so much in Outdoor Indiana, we'll give this column the final word for now.
Gov. O'Bannon announced that the Guide Corporation has agreed to pay nearly $14 million and plead guilty to seven federal criminal charges in connection with the December 1999 chemical release that killed five million fish in the White River from Anderson to Indianapolis.
It is an excellent agreement that doesn't stop with the fines and restitution Guide will pay.
Six million dollars from Guide will go into a trust fund so that we can improve water quality, protect riverbanks, develop more habitat for wildlife and create more opportunities for Hoosiers to enjoy the river for recreation.
The announcement came just 14 months after the governor and representatives from two federal government agencies filed a lawsuit against Guide.
That's lightning speed; in a case this large and complex, the legal process can take a decade or more to complete. In the life of a fish, those 14 months were long enough for the juvenile catfish that we stocked in the river in April 2000 to grow from 5 inches in length to about 10 inches.
The $6 million trust fund will help a partnership that has developed between state government and private citizens continue to speed the recovery of the fishery and protect a beautiful resource for more people to enjoy and for wildlife to thrive.
I look for changes in the river as I float along in my canoe. And on each trip, I find one or two.
There are more fish this year than last; and there are more great blue herons and kingfishers that depend on the fish for a meal.
A few more anglers are coming back to the river and more people are catching fish. They aren't catching many fish yet, but they pull in more than they did a year ago. Of course, it will be a few years before the fishing is as good as it used to be --- but things are moving in the right direction.
I couldn't begin to count the number of hours I have spent during the past year-and-a-half talking about the White River with news reporters, anglers, environmentalists, all sorts of scientists, lawyers, fellow river rats and concerned citizens who have no particular label.
For many of us, the story of the White River has been a major life experience --- the kind that causes us to search for some kind of meaning. I'm not a fatalist who believes that things happen for a reason, but I do believe that challenging events help shape who we are and what we believe.
More people in central Indiana today are paying a little more attention to their waterways and reporting and asking questions about environmental concerns. And it seems that the news media are providing coverage to environmental-related issues that they probably would have ignored a couple of years ago.
When he announced the settlement, Gov. O'Bannon said that we have sent a message that Indiana's rivers and streams belong to its citizens and that ownership may not be stolen by a thoughtless or deliberate polluter.
If, in a generation or two, the news media, the citizens and their government continue to believe in and live by these words, then perhaps that message will be the legacy of the White River.
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Stephen Sellers, editor
