Stories Sustain Us #36 – From Environmental Law to Freshwater Advocate (Part 1)

Summary
In this conversation, Christopher Williams shares his journey from a childhood in Massachusetts and Washington State to a career in environmental law and advocacy in Washington DC. Williams reflects on his work with the Endangered Species Act, his time at the World Wildlife Fund, and his current role with the Anacostia Watershed Society, emphasizing the importance of environmental justice and policy advocacy. He discusses the importance of community engagement, the challenges of river management, and the organization's mission to restore the Anacostia River while addressing environmental injustices. This conversation delves into the complexities of river safety, pollution, and the impact of climate change on the Anacostia River. The speakers discuss the progress made towards making the river swimmable and the challenges that remain in achieving fishable waters. They highlight the importance of community engagement, individual responsibility, and the need for climate resilience in urban areas. The discussion emphasizes the significance of stewardship and collective action in ensuring a sustainable future for the river and its surrounding communities.

About the Guest
Christopher (Chris) E. Williams is the President/Chief Executive Officer of the Anacostia Watershed Society. Chris leads the implementation of the mission and strategy of the Anacostia Watershed Society (AWS), working with the Board of Directors and AWS staff to develop and implement watershed conservation and education initiatives, build partnerships, raise funds, and steward the resources and the long-term sustainability of the organization. 

Show Notes
Anacostia Watershed Society: https://www.anacostiaws.org/

Takeaways
•Christopher's journey began in Massachusetts and moved through various states due to his father's job.
•Growing up in Eastern Washington instilled a deep love for nature and wildlife in Christopher.
•He initially pursued a career in theater before shifting his focus to environmental law.
•Christopher's passion for civil rights and environmental issues led him to law school.
•His early career involved significant work on the Endangered Species Act in Washington DC.
•He was fortunate to start his career at the National Wildlife Federation right after law school.
•Christopher's work has focused on both wildlife law and broader environmental policy.
•He transitioned to American Rivers and then to the Anacostia Watershed Society.
•His experiences reflect the ongoing challenges and successes in environmental advocacy.
•Christopher emphasizes the importance of connecting personal passion with professional work in environmental issues. Christopher Williams transitioned from policy work to hands-on conservation.
•His work on the Rio Grande shaped his career in freshwater conservation.

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Transcript

Steven 
For the Anacostia River was considered one of the most polluted waterways in the United States, so contaminated that swimming in it seemed like a lost cause. But today, thanks to passionate advocates and dedicated conservation efforts, the river is making a remarkable comeback. The question is, can we restore this urban waterway while ensuring the surrounding community's benefit, rather than being pushed out? Hey everybody.

I'm Steven Schauer and welcome to Stories Sustain Us, where we explore the journeys of those working to make the world a better place. In today's episode, I'm thrilled to introduce to you Christopher Williams, a lifelong champion for environmental justice and freshwater conservation. Chris's path to leadership and environmental advocacy wasn't a straight line. Growing up in Eastern Washington instilled in him a deep love for nature, but he initially pursued a career in theater.

before shifting his focus to environmental law. From working on the Endangered Species Act in Washington, D.C., to leading conservation efforts on the Rio Grande, Chris has dedicated his career to protecting the places that sustain both wildlife and communities. Now, as president and CEO of the Anacostia Watershed Society, he's leading efforts to restore one of the nation's most historically polluted rivers.

His work is about more than just clean water though. It's about environmental justice, community engagement, and ensuring that conservation benefits everyone. Chris Williams brings a wealth of experience to his role as president and CEO of the Anacostia Watershed Society. With a background in law and environmental policy, he's led conservation programs across the United States and internationally at organizations like American Rivers and the World Wildlife Fund.

A native of Eastern Washington, Chris developed an early appreciation for rivers and the role they play in community health and resilience. Now, after nearly 30 years in the DC region, he's working to ensure that the Anacostia River, long plagued by pollution, becomes a swimmable and fishable waterway while, importantly, keeping local communities at the heart of the process.

Chris's career journey is so fascinating to me that I've decided to split this conversation into two parts. In today's episode, part one, we'll explore his personal path from his unexpected shift from theater to environmental law to his work on landmark conservation policies and river restoration efforts. Then in part two, airing next week on April 8th, we'll dive into his current work leading the Anacostia Watershed Society and the challenges and successes of urban river restoration.

Chris's story is a testament to the power of passion and persistence in making meaningful change. His journey from policy work to hands-on conservation shows how individual actions can have a ripple effect on entire ecosystems. Let's dive into this inspiring conversation here on Stories Sustain Us, where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Good morning, Chris. Welcome to Stories Sustain Us. How are you doing today?

Christopher Williams
I'm doing great. How are you? Good.

Steven 
I'm doing well. It's an early,

early morning for me over here in Seattle. You're a few hours, I guess, ahead of me over in the DC area. So thanks for joining me on this morning.

Christopher Williams
It's my pleasure and it's a little Seattle-y in DC today. It's overcast and drizzly. I'm actually from Washington state, so I'm very familiar with Seattle weather and it's kind of Seattle-like in DC today.

Steven 
Is it?

Yeah.

Nice, we might, we're actually not having that rain today, so we might have kicked it your direction today, so. But yeah, I know you're from the Washington area. Would love to kind of jump into your history and learn a little bit more about that. So let's do it. So Chris, what's your story? How did you get from the Washington State area over to the Washington DC area?

Christopher Williams (00:54)
Well, my journey actually started in Massachusetts. I was born in Attleboro, Massachusetts. My dad was a, he was working for sort of defense contractors and then he was one of the early executives who moved nuclear power from military to civilian applications. So that required him to sort of move all over the country.

Steven 
Okay, wow.

Christopher Williams
So I'm from a family of eight kids and those eight kids have six different birthplaces. So that gives you a sense of how much we moved around. When I was very little, I was at Babin Arms actually, we moved from Massachusetts to California. I lived there until I was about five and then moved to Washington State. So I really did my growing up from about age five to adulthood in Washington State, in the Eastern part of the state actually. My dad worked at the Hanford Nuclear Reservation.

Steven
Eastern side of the state. Yeah, okay

Christopher Williams
for decades while I was growing up in Kennewick. And then I moved across the mountains to go to college in Seattle, went to the University of Washington, I'm proud Husky. And then lived in Seattle after college for six, seven years. I planted some pretty deep roots in Seattle. Then after a sort of random series of occupations, I...

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
really started thinking about, okay, what am I gonna do with my life? And I wanted to, and I was sort of passionate about two sets of issues. One was civil rights or racial justice issues, and the other was the environment. And so, because I was always sort of an outdoorsy kid and I had a love of wildlife and growing up in Washington state, there's, Washington state has a different ecosystem in every corner.

Steven 
It does, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
So it's

a really great state to grow up in, to be inspired to do conservation. And I decided for a variety of reasons to go the environmental route. But as you'll probably hear over the course of this conversation, that ended up taking me back to racial justice issues in a really interesting way. I kind of, in some ways, I fulfilled both of those ambitions. So anyway, I decided I'd go to Los

Steven 
Sure.

Christopher Williams 
because I wasn't a biologist, I wasn't a scientist. I thought that the contribution I could make to environmental conservation was through law and policy. And that's what took me across the country because I ended up going to Vermont Law School, which is one of the top environmental law schools in the country. And I was accepted there and I was very excited. I basically Beverly Hillbilly style, I loaded up the truck and I drove across country to Vermont.

Steven
Yeah, yeah.

Want to talk? Yeah.

Christopher Williams
and i went to law school in vermont and after i graduated

I started thinking, where's the best place to get an entry level job in environmental conservation? And Washington DC is sort of the obvious choice. It's where we keep the government. It's where many national and international NGOs that work in the environment are based. So I decided, well, I'm to move to Washington DC and that's where I'm going to get my career started. In some ways, I'm kind of the classic DC story in that I...

moved to DC and I thought, okay, I'm gonna get my first job here. I'm gonna live here three to five years and then I'm gonna go back out west. Well, here we are 35 years later. I'm still in the DC area. I met my wife here, here's my kids here. So while much of my heart remains in Washington state, I'm pretty dug in here in the Washington DC area.

Steven 
Yeah, that is kind of a common struggle. I've several friends in the DC area that have a similar story. They went there to get some, know, dive into the policy end of the, you know, deep end of the pool there in DC and found they loved it and stayed for their career. that is wonderful. Let me back you up in time a little bit to your growing up in Eastern Washington as a youngster with a large family. And you alluded to kind of having this

love of the outdoors kind of you know conservation ethic kind of grow on you at that early age tell me a little bit about that like what what was life like you go out camping or you know you know on the Columbia River I'm imagining out out in in the eastern part of the state you know what so what was like life like growing up there for you

Christopher Williams 
Thank

Yeah, well, you mentioned the Columbia River and when you live in the Tri-Cities, which is Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, I grew up in Kennewick. The river is sort of the center of everything. Now as an adult, I look back and the river is, essentially the river is the reason why Kennewick and Pasco exist because the only reason Kennewick and Pasco exists, or excuse me, Kennewick and Richland, Pasco was already there, but Kennewick and Richland were basically born when...

Steven 
Sure.

Sure.

Christopher Williams 
the government decided to move a big part of the Manhattan Project to Hanford. And the reason they moved that big project to Hanford was because of the Columbia River, because the Columbia River provided electrical power and water, two things you really needed for a major construction project, particularly when you're building a nuclear facility. in a very real sense, the Columbia River, including the fact that it's a, the Columbia River in Kennewick is flowing through a desert, but the

The Columbia is an absolute gusher of a river. mean, in terms of the cubic feet of water that flows through a river, there aren't many rivers in the world bigger than the Columbia. So in effect, you have this tremendous water source right in middle of the desert. And when you mix plentiful water with desert soils, you get tremendous agriculture. So southeastern Washington is a tremendous agricultural area as well as this sort of center for energy because of the nuclear industry.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
Um, so I sort of grew up along the river and not just the Columbia, you know, the Columbia was known as the big cold river. Um, just up river from where I grew up, the snake enters the Columbia and the snake is the warm, um, more friendly river. So I spent a lot of time on the snake, um, uh, doing everything one does around the river, fishing, boating, tubing, uh, swimming, hanging out.

Steven 
Snake Rivers here? Yeah, yep.

Christopher Williams
The river was the Columbia and the Snake and the Yakima, which also flows into Columbia at that point, are, were sort of, that is, when I've envisioned my childhood, I envisioned hanging out on one of those rivers. And as I got a little older, so when I was a little kid, it was just sort of playing on the river bank. But as I got older, I started doing a lot of hiking and camping. As I mentioned before, Washington State has something for everyone. You know, it's got rain sp-

rainforest in the northwest corner, desert in the southeast corner. It's got these dry forest ecosystems around Spokane that are very different. And then you've got the Washington coast, which is this sort of wonderland of tidal pools and haystack rocks and stuff like that. so, and I enjoyed all of it when I was growing up. And it was, and it was there where I developed my love for the outdoors, particularly for wildlife. became

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
kind of a wildlife, not, I grew up reading books. I would read books about otters, for example. And one day I'd be reading a book, just sort of a non-fiction book about otters. And then the next week I'd be reading a novel where the otters were the characters in the novel. I don't know if this kind of fiction is at all being produced these days, but back in the 60s, 70s, 80s, when I was young, a lot of people were writing books about

the Adventures of Animals. There was a book about cougars called Yellow Eyes, which was one of my favorite books I ever read. I read a book about a family of otters. I read a book about a family of beavers. And these weren't Disney characters. They didn't talk, and they behaved like animals. But the narrative of the book told their stories. And I love that stuff. And when I think about the books I read as a child, those are the things I think about. So all that together.

You know, books I was reading, the kind of life I was living outdoors really instilled in me this passion for the environment, the outdoors, and for wildlife in particular. And so when I went off to law school, I essentially studied wildlife law as my concentration. I started out in my career doing some legal work, but it was largely legislative policy work on the Endangered Species Act.

Steven 
Okay, yeah.

Christopher Williams
Clean Water Act. So I started my career really working directly on the sort of issues that I was inspired to go after by all the things I did as a kid.

Steven
Yeah, I love all that and the whole what you just described about Washington so vividly. Thank you for that. That's, you know, I'm approaching three years out here and that's everything you described is why we moved out here, frankly, is to spend this part of our life enjoying all of those different ecosystems and being outside. I can imagine growing up here as a child just

be almost impossible not to absorb all of that and to have it impact you at a deep level like you described it doing for yourself. So thank you for sharing that bit of your childhood with me. And so did you know, I guess, when you came to Seattle for your initial year undergrad, if I'm looking at your bio correctly, you were going to look like a different direction. Wasn't necessarily the natural.

world. I think your bio talked about a history undergrad. So kind of what's that journey from, you know, Eastern Washington to UW doing history that then eventually getting to Vermont, you know, how did that journey happen for you?

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, I ended up

Yeah, it's a circuitous route for sure. When I left high school and went off to college, my ambition was to be an actor and a director. I was very involved in theater when I was in high school, very involved in community theater when I lived in the Tri-Cities, and that continued when I was in Seattle. And so when I first started going to school, I was thinking that

Steven
Sure, sure.

yeah.

Yeah.

Nice.

Christopher Williams 
I was going to pursue a career in the theater. Somewhere along the way, I made the decision that I didn't want, I love doing theater, but I like doing it as an avocation. I didn't want to do it as a vocation. I didn't feel like, well, for one, just didn't want to go star in the actor room. I just wanted to go direct and be in plays. didn't want to wait tables and wish for auditions and stuff like that. I just wanted to do it.

Steven 
Sure, sure, sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
So I decided that that itch could be scratched by extracurriculars. And then I could, as a career, I decided to pursue my other passions, which we just talked about, nature and the outdoors and stuff like that. And also, again, I was very concerned and passionate about, we called it civil rights back then, 30 years ago, now later we call it environmental justice. But basically,

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep.

Yep.

Christopher Williams 
you know, or excuse me, social and racial justice. But that very much concerned me, and that's when I started thinking about the law, because the law is often where you address those issues most powerfully, particularly back in the, you this was back in the 80s, when both on the environmental justice front and in the environmental front, there were major legal battles being fought over, you know, statute and policy, et cetera.

Steven 
Social justice, yep, yep.

Christopher Williams 
And so that's when I started thinking about going into law. And so when I found myself in school and I thought, well, know, for law, can just get a liberal arts degree, which I love because I'm a reader and I'm a history buff and all that. So I can pursue a liberal arts degree and then can go to law school. So that's when it all sort of clicked. And so I decided, well, I love history.

Steven 
Perfect.

Christopher Williams 
I love studying history, reading about history, so I'll be a history maker. And so that's where I ended up working out, because here I am. So that's sort of how I made that journey in terms of deciding to go to school and what to study at school, cetera. There was a brief flirtation with a teaching career, but I decided not to go that route and instead pursue this path that would eventually get me to a legal education.

Steven 
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.

Yeah, thanks for connecting those dots for me. That makes a lot of sense.

Christopher Williams 
So after I graduated from the University of Washington, I got out of school and I worked for a few years. And then I decided, okay, I'm gonna do it. I don't have any money, I'm not sure how exactly I'm gonna do this, but I'm gonna do it. So I applied for loans, did everything everybody does to get themselves into law school. And lo and behold, in about 19, this was about 1990, I found myself driving across country with my rented truck.

Headed off to law school.

Steven 
Nice. So your time then in at Vermont and you wind up then in DC starting your career. know there's a few things on your bio that I definitely want to jump into that probably didn't happen first. So what were kind of some of your first work experiences in the DC policy arena before you eventually got to the American rivers part of your

Christopher Williams 
Yeah.

Steven 
journey in the World Wildlife Fund, which definitely want to dive into your work with those two organizations before we get into your present job. But what was your journey to get to those big, large national and international NGOs?

Christopher Williams 
Sure.

Well, that story actually starts in Vermont in law school. Vermont law has a whole bunch of really awesome programs. I would be happy to spend some time doing a plug for Vermont law school. a great institution.

Steven 
Great. Yeah.

Yeah, it's a wonderful,

wonderful reputation for law school, particularly with its environmental focus issues. absolutely.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah.

And one of the things that it had that was so great was it had the regular, you know, Juris Doctorate curriculum that you do from August to May. And then in the summers, they had a program where people could come and study for a master's in environmental law. And so I decided to do a dual degree. So I decided to get my JD at Vermont Law and also pursue this master's in environmental law.

Steven 
Yeah,

yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
And that summer program is really wonderful because they staffed it with working professionals that they would bring in during the summer. And it was a great deal because they made contact with some lawyer in DC and they'd say, hey, you want to come up to Vermont for two weeks? You teach a class in the morning and in the afternoon you can just sort of enjoy Vermont. And they put them up in this beautiful cabin or something. was an amazing deal for the teachers. So it attracted really great people. And one of those great people

Steven 
Yeah, sounds like it.

Christopher Williams 
was an attorney who at that point worked for the National Wildlife Federation. He came up and taught a wildlife law class. And based on what I told you over the past 25 minutes, of course I was going to take a wildlife law class. And he ended up, that professor ended up being a mentor of mine through my entire career. And it started with that class. And then the following year, another great program

Steven 
Yeah, was, yeah, yeah, right up your alley.

Okay, that's great.

Christopher Williams 
Vermont law had was a semester in practice program, which I thought was the best deal ever because you get full credit for a semester in law school, but you don't have to actually be at law school. You can actually go work somewhere and kind of learn how it all works. So this professor from NWF invited me to come down and do a semester in practice at the National Wildlife Federation in DC. This was my second year of law school. And it was an absolutely tremendous experience because I essentially got

As a second year law student, got thrown into this effort at the time, this was in 1992, 1991, 92. So it was, and at that time, the Endangered Species Act, which, you know, being a wildlife guy, was with Hashima, was under blistering attack. were attempts to repeal it and basically amend it out of existence. And so I came down to DC and immediately became a foot soldier in this fight.

to protect the Endangered Species Act. And that involved doing a lot of actual lobbying legislators, but it also involved developing with a whole bunch of other folks a whole set of policy prescriptions for making the Endangered Species Act work better. The theory being, if it works better, it won't invoke such hostility from the other side. And also it would work better, which obviously is a reward in itself.

Steven 
Yeah.

Sure, sure.

Christopher Williams 
And in that experience, I not only worked at NWF, but I got to work with every other professional seemingly in DC that was working on wildlife law and endangered species legal issues. An absolutely great experience for a young would-be lawyer. So that's what started it because I did this internship at NWF. So fast forward to my graduation.

school. I get out of law school, I'm a freshly minted lawyer, I'm out in the job market and I'm thinking as I've been advised by many people what I'm gonna have to do is I'm gonna have to I'm gonna have to toil in the vineyards as my old friend used to say I'm gonna have to go get a job in a law firm, I'm gonna have to make a bunch of money, pay off my student loans and then maybe later in my career I can move to the job I really want which is doing wildlife law or working in an industry or whatever. But I was

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Christopher Williams 
incredibly lucky that it didn't turn out that way at all. Because when I graduated from law school, about the time I graduated from law school, my old mentor, who I was telling you about, who was at National Wildlife Federation, he left and he went to take another job. And what that, what that, the effect of that was, NWF lost its chief lobbyist on the Endangered Species Act right in middle of the fight. And so, and this is, this also is a classic PC story.

So I heard later that there were several conversations in backs of cabs and things like that where people were saying, what are we going to do to fill this gap while we look for another person? Because all this stuff's happening right now. And somebody somewhere said, you know this Chris Williams guy, he was here for a semester in law school and he was working on all this stuff with Bob. He knows the issues, he knows the players. Yeah, he's totally wrong in experience, but we need somebody right now to just sort of keep this thing going until we can get a permanent person here.

Steven 
Yeah, you can't let it

Christopher Williams 
One thing led to another and I was hired at NWF on a three month contract to sort of mind the store on their Endangered Species Act lobbying efforts until they hired a permanent replacement for Bob, for my old professor. So again, an incredible opportunity for a brand spanking new lawyer to be right in the mix of

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

What an opportunity. Yeah, what an opportunity. Yeah.

Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
of a really important national policy issue. So I mean, I couldn't have asked for a better start to my career. So my three month contract expires. They bring in a new person who I sadly helped him move into the office I was using and I figure, okay, I'm in the wind. You I got to go figure out what I'm going to do now. And then the person at World Wildlife Fund who did endangered species ecolobe left World Wildlife Fund and he went off and took another job.

Steven 
Absolutely. Yeah.

Yep, you're out. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
another set of conversations in the back of cabs. know, there's this Chris Williams guy who did this at NWF. Maybe he can come into WWF and he can sort of run this program, this lobbying program around the ESA for a few months while we hire a replacement. So, WWF contacts me, I get this contract at WWF. So, again, I'm happy as a pig in mud. You know, I'm doing this great work that I love so much in DC. I'm getting to work with

Steven 
That is... Yeah.

Sure.

Christopher Williams 
all these people on the hill and in the business and in NGOs and in the private sector on endangered species issues, which is exactly where I wanted to be. And then my contract at WWF, it's three months, then it's amended to four months, then it's amended to five months while they're looking for the replacement. And finally, my boss there says to me, you seem to be doing a good job and we're not really finding the right fit for this, so why don't you just do it?

Steven 
Yeah, do you want the job?

Christopher Williams 
And that's how I got the job at WWF and I ended up having an 18 year long career at WWF, which was absolutely remarkable.

Steven 
That's amazing. Yeah.

That is. That's a great story of right place, right time, and your hunger, and clearly doing it. I mean, if you weren't doing it.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, so I got to skip all of the working in law firms

and things that were doing work I wasn't really that interested in and got right into the heart of what I... Yeah, so I used to tell people in law school, because I started law school a few years later than a lot of folks, so I was a little older than a lot of my fellow students. And as a result, I used to tell people, because I was studying wildlife law and knew exactly what I wanted to do, I used to tell people, you know, I'm the only person I know in law school who knows exactly what they want to do after they get out of law school.

Steven 
Yeah, right into the meat of it. That's amazing.

Christopher Williams 
Because I'm here to tell you a lot of people go to law school and they have no idea what they're going to do next They just go to law school And then you know what after I got the job at Debit of the F. was telling people you know I'm the only person I know who graduated from law school and went right into their dream job like right out of the gate So you know so I consider myself extremely lucky that I not only that I got into this business, but that I got into it

Steven 
because

Sure, yeah. Absolutely.

Right into it. Yeah. Yeah

Very fortunate.

Christopher Williams 
so effortlessly compared to a lot of other folks who really work hard to get eventually the kind of job that I got right out of the gate.

Steven 
Yeah. Well, that's an amazing story and thank you for sharing that with me. And as you were telling your early 90s DC story fights, was kind of connecting to where I was at that time. And I was an undergrad in the early 90s and I was paying attention to some of the fights you were talking about. There was endangered species issues in San Antonio. That's where I was at the time in Texas.

with the Edwards aquifer and there was an endangered salamander there that there was a big fight for to protect the, know, so that was very front and center for me at that time, paying attention to what was going on in my community. the ex ex on Valdez, you know, accident in Alaska and the Rio summit down in Brazil, all of these things kind of happening at that timeframe. And, and it's all those things that switched my career path. Cause I, at the time I was a.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah. Yeah.

Yep. Yep.

Steven 
you know, chemistry major, pre-med, my ambitions I guess was gonna go to become a surgeon. I don't know, that was kinda what I was thinking at the time. And doing the chemistry background as my way, kinda you did the history to kinda get your into law school path. I was like, well, I'm gonna do a kind of a science kinda thing that'll help open the door to get me into med school. And all of these environmental things that were going on at the time.

that you were involved in, is fascinating to me, is what grabbed my attention. I like, I don't want to actually go to med school. I want to get involved in these policy issues. That's what I want to do. And so I changed into an environmental science degree at the time and eventually found myself at the LBJ school to get my public policy degree. here we are all these years later chatting, but the...

Christopher Williams 
I that.

Thank you.

Steven 
It's fascinating to me the very things that you were fighting for, thank you by the way for fighting to save that important legislation, are kind of the same things that were touching me at that time and putting me on this path to eventually 30 years later talk to you about it. So that's wonderful.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah,

the early, you know, some of the, you know, greatest hits from the early nineties were the, the Northern Spotted Owl. Remember, I mean, that was the huge ESA controversy that was going on at time. did a lot of work on a lot of legal work on the Spotted Owl case. The Mount Graham Red Squirrel. The,

Steven 
Yep. Yep. Absolutely. Yep.

Christopher Williams 
There was a fly, I wrote a meekest brief about a fly that was on the endangered species list, which it was a fly, so it wasn't like your charismatic megafauna, but it triggered this whole argument about whether the ESA applied to critters that were found only in one state. So it was a tiny little animal, but it had huge implications for the...

Steven 
Right, right.

Christopher Williams 
for the implementation of the Endangered Species Act. So all that really exciting stuff that sort of went to the heart of the act's reach and jurisdiction was happening while I was a young lawyer in D.C. So was really an exciting time.

Steven 
Yeah, our little blind salamander.

Yeah, that's the, you we got, know, the San Antonio Aquifer thing was a blind salamander that to my knowledge only exists there in the karst limestone caves of the Edwards Aquifer there in central south Texas. So definitely big fights. Thank you for fighting them. Those were, that was it. Nice. So.

Christopher Williams 
Deli Sam's Flower-Loving Fly. That was the fly.

Steven 
Tell me about then the transition to American Rivers and then the transition to where you are now with the Anacostia Watershed Society so that we can then start talking a little bit about what you're doing now because you're doing some incredible things there in DC still on the local watershed there. So how did you get then from your 18 year career and then moving on to American Rivers it sounds like for a bit and then where you are now?

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, well, the evolution of my career is, much of it is the story of the way big environmental groups tend to reorganize every few years. As I said, I started out at WWF and spent the first five, six years of my career at WWF essentially as a straight up ESA and Clean Water Act lobbyist. So again, I spent a lot of time on the Hill. I spent a lot of time sitting around with lawyers and scientists and

Steven 
Sure, sure.

Christopher Williams 
engineers trying to figure out how to make the ESA work better and how do you identify a wetland so the Clean Water Act has jurisdiction over it, all that sort of stuff.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah,

still fights being fought over that. Yep. Right. Yep.

Christopher Williams 
Exactly. And none of those fights are over, amazingly.

I mean, you I did a lot of work on the ESA that I'm very proud of in my career. But the fact of the matter is that since the early 90s, now the ESA has not changed at all, which is a success in that we protected it from damaging amendments. But we also didn't make any progress on improving the language of the law itself. But I guess Dale made it about as best we could have hoped for. Yeah.

Steven 
some of these votes, yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
But anyway, so I was doing this work as a lobbyist and then WWF reorganized and the leadership decided that rather than focus on these policies, we're not going to ignore them, but we're going to shift our focus from sort of a whole miscellany of conservation projects and objectives to focusing our work around large geographic areas where we want to do conservation scale.

Long story short, through a series of events, I went from being an ESA and Clean Water Act lobbyist to co-managing a large geographically focused conservation project in the Chihuahuan Desert of southeastern US and northern Mexico. So, and I worked in partnership with an opposite number who was based down in Chihuahua City. And we did large scale work to protect habitats and wildlife.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
that in Chihuahua. There's a really remarkable part of the world and really remarkable project and a great set of activities. And that really, that stage of my career got me my head out of the policy cloud, although not completely because I'm always in there somewhere, and actually working on the ground and in particular places with particular stakeholders, working on particular resources. One of those

Steven 
It is, yeah, yeah.

Sure, sure.

Christopher Williams 
was the Rio Grande, Rio Bravo River, because you can't work on nature conservation in the Chihuahua Desert without working on the Rio Grande. So the Rio Grande is where I really started my journey to become a freshwater conservation specialist, which is sort what I consider myself to be now. And the Rio Grande issues were everything from preserving, or rather Chihuahua Desert freshwater issues were everything from preserving, you know,

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
desert pupfish who live in one puddle in the middle of desert, two vast projects to try to restore flow to the Rio Grande, Rio Bravo river system. So it was a great education in river issues and freshwater issues and river conservation issues. International, exactly. was a transboundary thing, which is a huge part of it. was a, you know, the Rio Grande, basically the Rio Grande,

Steven 
and yeah, international treaties on water rights between Mexico and yeah, yeah, it's a giant, giant issue.

Christopher Williams 
the way it's evolved is now two rivers. It's one river that runs from its source down to about Albuquerque and getting to the Albuquerque, Las Cruces, El Paso area. Then there's this huge stretch that's basically decimated. And then the second part of the river is where the Rio Conchos meets the Rio Grande and flows from the sea. So it's basically a US river and a Mexican river that to some extent happens to run along the international border, which creates all sorts of management complications.

Steven 
Dry, right?

Yep. Yeah.

Right. Yeah.

Yep. It is. Yep.

Christopher Williams 
fascinating set of issues to work on.

And then you're going to hear echoes of an old theme here. While I was doing the Rio Grande work and Chihuahua Desert work, the person who was doing international river work for WWF International left. Yes. And they said, you we need someone in the network because WWF is a network of organizations all over the

Steven 
Yeah, surprising.

Christopher Williams 
and they're largely independent of each other, they're tied together by a secretariat in Switzerland. Anyway, they said, we really need someone who can come and do this river management stuff for the network while we find the permanent replacement. And so I heard about this and I went to my boss and I said, things are going pretty well in the Chihuahua Desert right now. My partner, who is based out of Mexico, sort of has his handle on things.

What would you think about me going off and doing like a two to three months of convent at WWF International to work on, to fill this need that the network has?" And he said yes. By the way, at the time, my boss at WWF was the same person who was my professor back at VLS back in the day. So it's all, it's all interconnected. So anyway, I went off to, it was a great experience. I got to do what turned out to be a four months of convent to the Netherlands where the International Freshwater Program was based.

Steven 
interconnected, yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
And it was one of those, it was kind of a dream scenario because I came in and they said, okay, you need to run this program for a few months. And oh, by the way, we just got this huge grant from the Netherlands government, their equivalent USAID, to do river basin conservation. So here you go. And they dropped like tens of millions of euros onto my desk, figuratively speaking, and said,

Steven 
Yeah. Good problem

to have, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
You know, go

work with the rest of the network to figure out how WWF is going to invest this money in river conservation. So it was amazing. People, people listen to you a lot more closely when you call them, when you have a bunch of money you could potentially give them. Yes, exactly. So I found myself having really outsized influence for a person. So anyway, to try to shorten this story a little bit. while I was at, and again, you'll hear an old theme here. While I was on my secondment and international,

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Sure, got money at the table. It brings you a little bit more attention.

Sure, yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
WWF US started a reorganization again. And so they were sort of reorganizing out of the work I'd been doing on the Chihuahuan Desert. So I went to my boss at International and said, hey, could I throw my hat in the ring for this job permanently? And he said, sure. So I became an applicant for that job and I got it. so I became for about, I guess it was about six, seven years,

working with WWF International's freshwater program as the head of their river basin management. So I sort of took the experience I learned in river basin management on the Rio Grande Rio concho so I applied it. And it was really fun. I got to work in rivers all over the world from the Mekong to the Mara in Africa to the Danube in Europe to the Orinoco in Latin America. Just an incredible, incredible run. And then about, you know, I'd been at WWF for about 18 years and I was thinking this is great work. I love it.

Steven 
Wow, yeah.

Sounds amazing. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
But I want to, my path to sort of the upper echelon of WWF was not clear to me. And I wanted to look for, I really wanted to be, my sort of career ambition at that point was I wanted to move into a position where I was really central to sort of strategic discussions and decisions of the organization as a whole. Exactly. And that's when American Rivers came on my radar, because they were looking for a,

Steven 
Sure, Natural progression of your career path, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
they were looking for a senior vice president for conservation. So I basically get to run the conservation programs and be a part of the leadership team of this national river conservation organization. So that started a 10 year run at American Rivers, which again was wonderful. I had a great time working. I'd gone from international, because even the Rio Grande do Bravo was a very international project. So I went from there to the W-W international to American Rivers and got to work.

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah, great organization.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
on rivers right here in my own country. And actually rivers in my own backyard because one of the priority rivers and one of the really exciting projects that American Rivers was doing was on the Yakima, which is one of the rivers I grew up on. And I didn't think anybody east of Idaho had ever heard of the Yakima. So I was really excited. So I had a great run there and

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah, yeah.

New of it sure yeah

Christopher Williams 
And my career progression had gone from international, huge scope, working with the UN and with all sorts of bi and multilaterals and national governments. And it was great work. I loved it. And then I moved to the national where I was working on the national level, rivers all over the country. Could bark me a little closer to the ground, but I was still pretty much, you know, at the 30,000 foot level doing great work. I got to work with

Steven 
Sure. Yeah.

Christopher Williams
communities sometimes in both jobs, but I was never of the community where I was working. And then this opportunity came along, which to be the CEO of an organization, which I eventually again, in terms of career progression, I wanted to get to that point. But also to work in the very river basin where I live was really exciting. And from a kind of professional slash intellectual standpoint,

Steven 
Yeah, what an opportunity. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
It was a, I really enjoyed the challenge of moving from the international to the national to the very intensely local. Right. And it's been really exciting. Cause I never worked with like local government in my job. I'd never worked with, I'd never sat in meeting rooms with people who were, you know, petitioning their city council members or whomever for changes that would affect the river. I'd never, I'd sat in community meetings where I was a member of that community.

Steven 
Yeah, down to the local watershed, yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
So getting a chance to do that here at AWS while still working in the realm of river conservation and wildlife that I've always loved since the beginning of my career has been, it's just been a great next step in my journey.

Steven 
Yeah, I could continue to dive deeper into all of your past work and the Chihuahuan Desert is one of my favorite places. The Big Bend National Park is just, I love that, yeah, it's really phenomenal.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, yeah, there's no place like it.

And Big

Band National Park, that isn't the kind of place that you just drive by and go, hey, let's go there. You have to set out for Big Band National Park. And so that's one of the things that makes it special.

Steven 
No, yeah, yeah. And for a

long time it was kind of a hidden gem because I used to go on like week long backpacking camping trips out there by myself and I could go days without seeing anybody. It's gained in popularity now. It's getting a little bit, which is good. I mean, I'm glad people are using it, but it was a, because you had to like make an effort to get to it, it was kind of this giant place that you could also be by yourself there out in the desert and

Christopher Williams 
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Yep.

Yeah,

yeah, yeah. And it's an incredibly important place because it's one of four protected areas in the US and Mexico that taken together is the largest, basically the largest contiguous area of relatively open habitat outside of Yellowstone. I mean, it's just amazing.

Steven 
or up in the mountains there. It's... yeah, yeah.

Right. Yeah,

it is. It's so I continue to chat with you about that for hours, but let's jump into and maybe we'll do a whole second episode with you sometime.

Christopher Williams
I would love that.

Steven
What an incredible conversation with Chris Williams. His journey from theater to environmental law, from policy work to hands-on conservation is truly inspiring. But we're not done yet. There's still so much more to explore. Be sure to join us for part two of this episode, where we dive into the groundbreaking work of the Anacostia Watershed Society. From restoring one of the nation's most polluted rivers to ensuring environmental justice for the surrounding communities.

Chris and his team are making a real difference. You don't want to miss it. So part two of this wonderful conversation with Chris Williams drops on April 8th. It will be available at storiessustainus.com, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for being here today. Your curiosity, passion, and commitment to making the world a better place mean everything. Keep taking action, keep telling stories, and keep believing in the power of change. Till next time.

I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.