Stories Sustain Us #37 – From Environmental Law to Freshwater Advocate (Part 2)

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
•The Anacostia River was once one of the most polluted rivers in the U.S.
•Community engagement is crucial for effective river conservation.
•Environmental justice is a key focus for the Anacostia Watershed Society.
•The organization aims to restore the river while preventing gentrification.
•Education programs are vital for fostering stewardship in local communities.
•The Anacostia River's health impacts the broader Chesapeake Bay ecosystem.
•Progress towards a swimmable Anacostia River is being made, but challenges remain.
•Public involvement in conservation can change perceptions and drive action. Rivers contain bacteria, making safety standards crucial.
•Post-storm events can spike bacteria levels in rivers.
•The Anacostia River is swimmable many days of the year.
•Progress has been made in river cleanliness over the years.
•Fishable waters require extensive restoration efforts.
•Sediment pollution remains a significant challenge.
•Climate change poses risks to urban river systems.
•Community engagement is vital for environmental stewardship.
•Individual actions can collectively impact river health.
•Hope and stewardship are essential for future conservation efforts.

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Transcript

Steven 
Hey everybody, welcome back to Stories Sustain Us. I'm your host, Steven Schauer, and today we continue our inspiring conversation with Chris Williams, President and CEO of the Anacostia Watershed Society. In part one, Chris shared his fascinating journey from going up in Eastern Washington with a deep love for nature to an unexpected career shift from theater to environmental law. We explored his work on landmark conservation policies,

his time at organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and American Rivers, and the pivotal moments that shaped his commitment to freshwater conservation. Today, in part two, we dive into his current work leading the Anacostia Watershed Society, where he and his team are restoring one of the most historically polluted rivers in the US. But their mission goes beyond just clean water. It's about environmental justice, community engagement,

and ensuring that conservation efforts benefit everyone, not just a select few. Chris's story is a powerful reminder that real change happens when we connect passion with purpose. So let's get into it here on Stories Sustain Us, where we are inspiring action through the power of storytelling.

Steven 
Let's get into what you're doing now and you use the acronym AWS, but just so folks understand it's an Anacostia Watershed Society.
What is it? What do do there? And you're doing some amazing work there. And so what is it? And how can people eventually learn about it and help you?

Christopher Williams 
Well, I have the honor of being the president and CEO of the Anacostia Watershed Society. We were founded in 1989 with a mission to protect and restore the Anacostia watershed for all who live here and for future generations. The Anacostia watershed is a 176 square mile watershed that consists of parts of southern Prince George's County, Maryland, part of Montgomery County, Maryland, and about a third of the District of Columbia.

So it's a relatively, it's a small river. It's about eight miles long from where two tributaries come together to form the main stem. Flows about a mile in Maryland and about seven miles across the District of Columbia. So it's very much, it's on the southwestern side of DC. If you picture DC in your mind and it's this, know, DC is like this half square that sits against the Virginia border, right?

Steven 
Yeah, it's on that eastern side of DC for folks who might be...

Southwestern Side of D.C.

Christopher Williams 
So here's the square, it goes like this up towards the north, then it comes this way in the southeastern direction, then back down this way. Right here in this corner, and then this part of the district right here, that's where the Anacostia watershed is in D.C., so the southeastern part of the district. So it's, I have a bit of a bias when I say this, so forgive me, but the Anacostia River is really D.C.'s river.

Steven 
Yeah, southeastern corner, right, right.

Christopher Williams 
People think of the Potomac. And the Potomac is the nation's river, I give it that. It's an important river and it's important to the district, but it flows for many miles before it gets to the district and many miles after it leaves the district. The Anacostia basically flows right through the heart of the district and it really is the district's river, even though it's been largely forgotten in many corridors. But then that main stem is where 176 square miles of wetland and water habitat.

flows. I mean, you know, for rivers 101, a watershed is a geographic area where all the water in that area flows to one central feature, which then flows some way, someplace else. So all the water in this 176 square mile area flows eventually to the Anacostia, which flows to the Potomac, which flows to the Chesapeake. So we are a tiny part, but a part with sort of outsized influence because we're in the nation's capital.

Steven 
One point. Right. Right. Right.

Christopher Williams 
but we're a tiny part of the Chesapeake Bay one.

Steven 
this larger system, sure.

Christopher Williams 
The Anacostia, when our organization was founded in 1989, the Anacostia was considered one of the 10 most polluted rivers in the United States. It was a dying river. And our founder, Robert Moon, in 1989, recognized he was a kayaker and a local activist. And he used to kayak on the river. And he had the vision to see that it didn't have to be this way.

The Anacostia River didn't have to be essentially an open sewer, which is largely what it was used for back in the day. In fact, it was actually officially part of the DC sewer system for many decades. That's where the sewage goes. We just dump it in the Anacostia. But he saw that it didn't have to be that way, that through everything from local action to action by local government, the Anacostia River could be protected and ultimately...

Steven 
Sure, that's common 20th century use of rivers.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
be restored. So he founded the Anacostia Watershed Society with that mission. So just to sort of parse out our mission statement a little bit, we are, working in the Anacostia watershed, so it's the whole watershed, not just the river. We work to protect and restore. So our goal is not only to stop the degradation of the Anacostia River, but to restore it to some semblance of health. We recognize that it's never going to go back to what it was like in 1612 when Captain John Smith first sailed up it.

But what we are, what we do believe we can do is we can bring it back to a place where it's a healthy, thriving river ecosystem within this urban context. So we're always gonna be in the middle of a city. So there's always gonna be a lot of issues involving recreation, involving economics, involving social justice, racial justice, poverty alleviation, job creation, all of that comes into play when we're thinking about how to...

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

all of that's intertwined and connected.

Christopher Williams 
restore this river so it is again a sort crown jewel resource for the District of Columbia and this part of Maryland. So we're protecting and restoring. We're doing it for all who live here. And when we say that, mean, you know, we're conservationists and tree huggers, of course. So we are very concerned with the wildlife and habitats and all that sort of stuff. But we're also very concerned about the people. And this is where my career took a turn back toward.

environmental and racial justice that I talked about at the beginning of our conversation was the story of the Anacostia River is largely a story of environmental injustice inflicted on the people who live along the river who are largely African American. So there has been a history of policies and practices that have inflicted

Steven 
Yeah, yeah, yeah, at the beginning. Yep.

Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
either by design or by happenstance, injustice, environmental injustice on these people who live along the river. So as we restore the river, we want to do two things. We want to make sure that those environmental injustices are stopped and reversed. And just as importantly, we want to make sure the very people on whom this environmental injustice was inflicted won't be pushed out once the river comes back to health. Exactly.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Right. The gentrification once the,

you get it all nice again, that the folks who were living there for decades when it was a open sewer now can't afford to stay there because taxes go too high or whatever. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Sure. Sure. That's a very common problem that you get.

Christopher Williams 
Exactly. Right.

That's exactly right. And we've already started to see that a little in parts of the river that are coming back to health. So, right. So, you know,

we are a, a smallish, but very determined conservation group. So, you know, we are certainly not a lead player in that effort, but, but we need to do what we need to do to make sure that that, you know, second wave of injustice doesn't happen to these folks as they live along the river. And then the last part of remission statement is for future generations. So we are.

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Sure, you have a role to play.

Right, Absolutely.

Christopher Williams 
We're concerned with the now, but we're also concerned with the stewardship of the river in the long term and preparing the community through policy work, through education programs, through outreach to act as stewards for the resource going into the future, know, long after you and I are gone. So that's what we're about. And we do that in four basic ways. We do a lot of different stuff.

Steven
Yeah.

Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
but it can be basically put into four categories. One is conservation field work. We're very active actually on the ground doing projects to restore wetlands habitat, store wildlife habitat, clear invasive species, do what we can to make the natural systems of the river as healthy as possible through on the ground field work. We have a very active policy program working at all levels of government. And because Anacostia River is in the district, even though it's a tiny little river,

Steven 
Sure. Okay.

Christopher Williams 
There's a lot of federal level work, there's district level work, there's state level work in Maryland, there's county level work at Prince George's in Montgomery. So we work at all levels of government to advocate for policies that promote water quality, improve water quality, and promote investment in restoration projects. The third leg of that stool is education. We have a really active education program, something we're very proud of.

Steven 
federal.

Christopher Williams 
Prince George's County, Montgomery County, and district schools, working with school kids. We actually have a program that's actually been, and this is sort of techno-nerdly unless you're in the education world, but we actually have one of our education programs that has been adopted into the curriculum, the biogeoscience curriculum of Prince George's County. So it's taught in every high school classroom in the county, which is pretty remarkable. We just achieved that milestone about two years ago.

Steven 
Yeah.

That's a big deal. Yeah, that's a big deal. Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
we're still really excited about. But then in addition to our work in schools, we also have work with youth outside of schools, things like our Saturday Environmental Academy that brings together middle schoolers who have an interest in the environment for eight weekly sessions on Saturday afternoons. And we're starting a summer environmental academy now for some place that parents can send their kids in the summer to learn about the river and the environment.

Steven 
Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
And we have a set of adult education programs that educate adults about the ecology of the river system and its conservation. And also one of those programs is directed at community leaders, seeing armed community leaders who have a passion for this work to get the job done. And then the fourth set of programs are volunteer and recreation, which sort of goes back to our original, to our founder and his original vision.

Steven 
important yeah

Yeah, get them the education that they need that... Yeah.

Christopher Williams
the first thing Robert Boone realized was if people don't know about it they won't care about it, if they don't care about it they won't do anything about it. So he started trash cleanups and kayak trips and boat tours and then volunteer opportunities of all kinds to bring folks down to the river to not only experience the resource what it is now what it could be again but also to become active in its conservation. And that's

Steven 
Right. Exactly.

Christopher Williams 
spirit, that sort of DNA still runs through our very extensive volunteer program. We bring people out to do basically all the conservation work I just described. There's a role for volunteers in all of that. And then we do boat tours, do canoe and kayak adventures, we do bird walks, we do wildlife, we do like this nighttime wildlife walk that's really awesome. Just to get folks to interact with the resource and understand how

Steven 
Yeah, absolutely.

Christopher Williams 
how important it is and what an important thing it is to the community.

Steven 
Yeah, all of that is so incredible and something I can relate closely with to my 15 plus years at the San Antonio River Authority and all of those mechanisms and means of communicating with the public and engaging with policymakers. All of that is so critically important and the message about getting people out there, your founders message that if you get people

onto the river, even if it's seeing the mess that it is, you can still generate that passion, generate that care. If they can't see it, if they can't enjoy it, if they can't engage with it, like you said, they're not gonna care about it. So all of that's so important.

Christopher Williams
Exactly, exactly. And that's something that

I learned very early in my career and that lesson keeps being reinforced through my entire career is if you get people out on the water or get people down to the river, it changes the whole nature of the conversation. You can have a conversation about river conservation in a conference room in the Capitol building somewhere that's going to be very different if you have that same group of people out in kayaks.

Steven 
It changes them, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
or out on a, know, doing a float down the Grand Canyon. You know, one of the highlights of my career back in the day was I did a float down the Grand Canyon with a bunch of, there was like a US Senator on the trip. There were a couple of folks from Interior. There were a couple of leaders of the local Indian tribes. were, and it was just a remarkable experience because the conversation that we had in those rafts at the campsites along the Rio, excuse me, Colorado, along the Colorado River.

Steven 
Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
You just couldn't have had those conversations in a conference room or over a Zoom call. And I always remember that when I'm talking to local leaders now or city officials or whatever and say, hey, come on down to a boat tour. Let's have this conversation on the boat. And I'm thinking, A, you're going to have fun because you're out on a boat, but I'm also going to be thinking, you'll be much more receptive to my message if you're out there on the river with me than if we're on Zoom call.

Steven 
Right, right.

Yeah,

yeah, 100%. That's such a great strategy. You know, it's like getting people outside in general, just getting people out in nature. It changes their perspective and that's, know, so yeah, that's wonderful. I wanna ask you, have on your website a very ambitious, what I think is an ambitious goal, knowing what I know about urban rivers around the world and the challenges that they face with...

stormwater pollution and bacteria levels and other challenges. have a making the river swimmable and fishable by 2025 on kind of plastered on your homepage. Love that ambition. How close to that is a reality for all the hard work that you're doing? I know that it's a giant.

Christopher Williams 
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Steven 
Mount Everest style hill to climb for urban rivers, particularly the swimmable part. The fishing part is more easier to attain often, but because of storm water pollution and the ease of bacteria to shoot up and making it little unsafe for human contact, are you guys getting there? Are you close to it? Are you gonna get it?

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, yeah.

Okay.

We are, we're making good progress and I'll give you the details. But first I just want to say that when I was talking about the four areas that we work on and I was talking about restoration, I didn't talk much about water quality, which was sort of an important omission on my part because the first mission of this organization, which we realized from the start, was to clean up the water quality, was to improve the water quality of the river. Because nothing else I talked about is possible unless you,

Steven 
That's wonderful. Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
We on water quality. So we've been working for many, many years, again, at the sort of big picture policy level down to local cleanups to improve the water quality of the river, to reduce the levels of fecal matter, to reduce industrial pollutants, to get rid of trash and garbage. The Anacostia River was and is still one of only three bodies of water in the country that is regulated by the federal government for trash.

That's how bad the trash problem was and is here on the Acosta. So water quality is a huge part of what we do. And that was embodied in that battle cry that we started using about 10 to 15 years ago, which was fishable, swimmable by 2025. The underlying rationale behind that is there's a set of pollutants that keep the river from being swimmable. And there's different set of pollutants that keep the river from being fishable. So if you get the river to fishable, swimmable,

Steven 
Wow, yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
you have achieved tremendous progress in cleaning up the river. You're not at the goal line yet because there was a lot of water quality issues that still exist even if a river is fishable or swimable, but you've made tremendous progress. So, important announcement, we are not going to make it by 2025. Your listeners may know that it's already 2025 now and we are not ready to declare the river fishable or swimable.

Steven 
Amazing progress, yeah.

Of course.

Christopher Williams 
But we have made tremendous progress toward that goal. And actually we have hit a milestone in 2025 in that as of this year, according to EPA water quality standards, the river most days of the year in most places is swimmable. Again, if you're going by that technical definition. Now, does that mean that people can run and jump in the water right now anytime they want?

Steven 
Yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams
No, because there's a lot of other issues that go into swimming, including making sure that there is a system in place so that people know if there's a day or a time or a place when it's not safe to swim. We don't have such infrastructure in place. I mean, it exists, but it's not readily accessible. There's no physical infrastructure for swimming right now. There's no docks or swimming holes or places where lifeguards are on duty or places that are roped off for swimming. We also have a community along the river.

that hasn't been allowed to swim in it for 50 years. That prohibition's been in place for over 50 years. So a lot of the local communities, when we started talking about, when we and some of our partners started talking about a fishable anacostia, they said, even if that resource exists, we can't access it because we don't have a culture of swimming. Many of our kids don't know how to swim. So there's all sorts of issues that go into writ large making the river swimmable. But again, as a technical matter,

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
many days of the year at many parts of the river, it is swimmable. And that sounds a little weasely, and it is, but you couldn't say that a few years ago. A few years ago, it would be folly to say, yeah, it's safe to swim in here today. So it actually represents tremendous progress.

Steven 
Yeah.

It does and I understand the language and the nuances because of my freshwater background and everything and for those listening or watching who might be like, well, what does that mean? It's sometimes when it will not and correct me if I'm off base here, Chris, but generally the way bacteria readings are done, there's this.

kind of weird mathy geometric mean kind of thing that's put into it. so yes, on most days you can have a river that has, know, rivers are always going to have bacteria in it. any rivers, it's good advice to wash your hands and not, you know, rub your eyes and drink the river untreated, you know, even under the best of circumstances. Cause there's always going to be some degree of bacteria in there. So, but you know, what has been deemed kind of the

Christopher Williams 
Mm-hmm. Yep.

All right. Yes, Jack.

Excuse me.

Exactly.

Steven 
the level of safe for human recreation or not safe for human recreation, you can have a river meet that most days, technically, but because of a post storm event when storm water comes in and washes all kinds of other pollutants and that's when bacteria levels shoot up and those bacteria levels can spike so incredibly high that they then throw off the geometric mean.

for the remainder of the year. So even though most days it's fine, you're technically not meeting that standard because of those incredibly high spikes following rain events. So that I think for maybe the non river nerds like me and Chris listening or watching, if you're wondering how is that possible, it's really also an indicator of the significance of treating stormwater and making sure that what we let run into the rivers

Christopher Williams 
Right.

Mm-hmm.

Steven 
while it's raining that we're doing what we can to polish that and clean that. I know your organization is doing a whole lot of stormwater work as well, which is really impressive. I think I saw 2.5 million square feet of green roofs and bioswales and things like that have been implemented over the time of your organization's life. So that's impressive work to try to deal with that stormwater runoff as well.

Christopher Williams 
Right, yeah.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah,

that's a really helpful explanation that will really help your listeners understand what I'm talking about. And the thing that I would sort of re-emphasize to sort of cap off the swimmable conversation is, again, the fact that the river is swimmable many days of the year at many places on the river represents a tremendous change from 10, 15, 20 years ago.

Steven 
Huge.

Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
when, you back in the day, 20 years ago, we weren't talking about swimmable fishable. We were talking about boatable, swimmable fishable, because the river was so polluted that you didn't want to get it on your skin for any length of time. We don't talk about boatable anymore, because we've gotten to the point where the water quality has improved to the point where you don't have to be afraid of getting a rash or getting sick if you fall off your paddleboard or out of your kayak or something like that. So in terms of from where we started,

Steven 
Sure.

Your kayak, Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
the progress towards Swimable has been tremendous. And Swimable is just a few years down the road. I'm very optimistic. On the subject of fishable, again, different set of pollutants. We're not gonna make the fishable goal in 2025, largely because that really requires a very expensive, very engineering heavy restoration effort. Because those pollutants,

Steven 
incredible.

Yeah, it's attainable. Yeah.

Yeah, different chemical issues.

Christopher Williams 
that are rendering the fish toxic to eat, which is really what we mean when we say it's not fishable. We mean you don't want to eat the stuff that you catch because there's a lot of nasty pollutants bioaccumulating in the tissues of those fish. And the reason that it's happening is because pollutants that are in the riverbed, that are the legacy pollution of gasification plants, coal-fired power plants, munitions works, cement factories,

Steven 
Right, right, right.

heavy metals and yeah.

Christopher Williams 
and all sorts of other industrial concerns that were along the Anacostia operating for 200 years. Most of those are now abated. You don't have many of those pollution sources left. There are some, but only a few. But the pollution in the sediment remains. Right, so in order to get the river to swimable, you need a restoration effort that's either going to cap, treat, or dredge those polluted areas.

Steven 
sediment of the riverbed. Right? Right.

Christopher Williams 
AWS and a lot of other partners lobbied for the D.C. Council to pass a law, which they did in 2014, saying, okay, we're going to clean this up. And now in 2025, we haven't gotten to fishable yet, but we have reached an important milestone in the probably in late 2025, maybe early 2026, after years of studies and records of decision and evaluations and partnerships among agencies.

people are actually going to get in the river and start cleaning this up. So we're going to see tangible progress in cleaning up these pollutants as soon as 2026. And that's going to be a long effort. That's going to take a number of years, but we're going to take a giant leap toward fishable in the next 10 years or so. So we didn't make the 2025 goal, but the progress is remarkable.

Steven 
Wow, another great success. Yeah.

absolutely remarkable that cleaning up a sediment of a riverbed is incredibly technically difficult and challenging. So yeah, it's definitely gonna be multi-year process, but the fact that you're even on a path to doing that is in and of itself an incredible bit of progress and success. So congratulations. Speaking as someone who's kind of in your world, I understand that is a giant milestone.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, it's huge and it's going to be...

Steven 
So congratulations on getting to where you are and how exciting that they're.

Christopher Williams 
Yeah.

And it's going to be,

we pull this off, and when I say we, it's obviously not just us, it's the DC government and it's a lot of other players. If we pull this off, this will be a national model for cleaning up a polluted urban river from the river bed up. So it's very exciting.

Steven 
Sure, big collaborative effort. Right. Right.

Absolutely. Yeah, I don't

Yeah.

Yeah, it is. That's fantastic. Well, Chris, we're a little bit over an hour and I want to be respectful of your time. I keep talking with you all day. This is fascinating to me, but I want to be certainly respectful of whatever you may have going on next on your schedule today. Is there anything else going on at the Anacostia Watershed Society that we haven't talked about that you really want to make sure the audience learns about?

Christopher Williams 
Yeah, that's good question. The thing I'd really like to highlight that we haven't discussed yet is climate change and the impacts that climate change are going to have on the Anacostia and the work that we and a lot of other folks are doing on climate resilience. Because even though the Anacostia River is somewhat inland, it is a tidal river. at high tide, it's not a brackish river.

Steven
Sure.

Sure.

Christopher Williams 
No salt water gets into the Anacostia, but it is affected by the tide. So at high tide, generally the water level in the Anacostia is about three feet higher than it is at low tide. And one of the impacts of climate change is that because of the melting of the ice caps, you're to get sea level rise and those high tides are going to get higher. And there's a whole set of scenarios that have been done by outfits like the Climate Center in New York and the

Steven
the influenced. Sure.

Sure, that makes sense.

Christopher Williams 
the International Climate Change Panel that's looking at various scenarios of sea level rise across the world under different scenarios for temperatures rising. There's a one degree centigrade scenario, there's a 2.1, there's a 2.5, there's a 3.5, all of which get progressively scarier and worse as you go along. But no matter what happens, even if all greenhouse gases stop being belched into the environment today, we're still gonna deal with the temperature

Steven 
Yes, yeah, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
changes that have been wrought already. So, and of course, we're not going to stop burning fossil fuels today. In fact, globally speaking, this is a subject for another podcast, but globally speaking, the progress we're making on keeping the temperature down is flailing. But here on the Anacostia, we're dealing with the very real scenario that our river levels are going to get higher. And what impact is that going to have on our past conservation work, on our future conservation work, on the...

Steven 
Correct. Yeah.

It's not, yeah, we're not hitting the targets we wanna hit.

sure.

Christopher Williams 
flood security and water security of local communities. This is a big issue for the Anacostia. So integrated with and layered on top of everything I just described in terms of work that we do is an eye toward climate resilience. And we are, became, you we've been thinking about climate for a long time, obviously, as everybody else, but in this current strategic plan that we're operating under now, a big focus is to

secure our conservation gains and secure our local communities from the impacts of a changing climate, which largely means sea level rise. That's obviously not the only impact. There's going to be impacts in terms of heat and how local communities are going to deal with excessive heat events. How are they going to deal with the aggregated air pollution that happens when you have these heat events? There's all sorts of climate change issues. Rainfall patterns, exactly.

Steven
Yeah. Yep.

rainfall patterns are changing everything.

Christopher Williams 
frequent and intense rain events interspersed by times of drought, which we're in right now. You don't really think of the Mid-Atlantic region as an area that's vulnerable to drought, but we are actually in a minor drought right now in this region. So essentially the rules that the sort of natural rules that have governed the behavior of the river for millennia are changing, like they are in rivers all over the country. And so working to ensure that

Steven 
Yep. Yep.

Longer drought, yep.

Same in the Pacific Northwest, right?

Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
that our systems are, both our neighborhoods and our natural systems are climate resilient is a big focus of the work that we're doing. of course, the number one, anytime you talk to a climate scientist, they say the number one thing you need to do to insulate your natural systems from climate change is make sure they're healthy as possible. So we've added to our arguments the fact that, you know, if we want to hang on to the natural resources we have, we have to make them as resilient and as healthy as possible. But also things like,

Steven
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
There's very real things we can do in terms of the real secret to, the not so secret secret to ensuring a healthy river system in the face of climate change is to make sure that river has room to roam, make sure the water has places to go during high water events. And there are opportunities as we're thinking about natural resources conservation, about management of parks and open spaces, about development and redevelopment decisions that can very much be influenced by

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
how climate resilient do you want to make this area? And right now, all up and down the main stem of the river, there are stakeholder driven processes going on right now to determine the future of parks and wetlands and natural areas, all up and down the system. And so we're working to ensure that as those decisions are being made individually and collectively, they are taking into account a river that might at high tide be three foot,

five foot, six foot higher than this today. So some of this is nature conservation. Some of this is just sort of nuts and bolts civil engineering. know, how are you going to manage your urban scape in the face of the fact that these rivers and these streams are rising. And there's all sorts of strategies, which we don't have time to get into today, about how you do that. But that's become very much central to our thinking in a way that it probably wasn't.

Steven 
Yeah. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
10 years.

Steven 
Sure, sure. That makes a lot of sense. Thank you for bringing that up too because that is critically important, not just for where you are, but for really around the world. Coastal communities and riverine systems around the world are having to face these challenges.

Christopher Williams 
Right. And as we've

emphasized before in other contexts, it's a particular challenge for an urban river system. The climate change challenges for a wild and scenic river out in Montana somewhere is very different than the climate change challenges for an urban river like the Anacostia or the Charles or the Duwamish in Seattle or places like that.

Steven 
Mm-hmm.

Right.

Yeah. There's a whomps, yep.

Yep, absolutely, absolutely. Well, fascinating and important and critical work, so kudos to you and your team for everything that you're doing there and what... Yeah, please. Yeah, of course.

Christopher Williams 
Thank you very much.

Yeah, a quick shout out to the team. this this podcast.

You've been talking to me and I've been talking about all the great stuff I do. But, you know, we have a small but mighty staff of 18 and they're all incredibly committed and dedicated to what they're doing. it's this multidisciplinary team of scientists and activists and educators, communicators, fundraisers. They all just do remarkable work under tremendous odds to make the...

to accomplish these sorts of things that I've been talking about. So a big tip of the hat to the crew here at NWS.

Steven 
Yeah, and specifically want to thank Keisha as well for her coordination, you know, working with her to make this happen. So when she listens or watches this, I want to make sure she gets a call out and a specific bit of gratitude for me for her help for making this happen. Because this has been a great conversation and I'm really grateful for your time and for all that you and your team are doing there.

Christopher Williams 
Absolutely.

Steven 
in the DC area to make your watershed a better place, demonstrating how people around the world can make their watershed a better place as well by following your example.

Christopher Williams 
Well,

thank you, Steven. This has been a real pleasure. And if you do ever want to circle back to me and talk Grand Canyon or Rio Grande or water issues writ large, I'm happy to do it. I'll you a lot of fun.

Steven 
I will. Yeah. I think there'll be a part two with you coming

up. Yeah. Well, before I let you get on with the rest of your day, Chris, what's a call to action? What do you want people to do now that they've heard your story and heard all the great things that you're doing there? How do want people to take this information and be inspired by it and go do something now? Because that's we want people to get involved and get active after they hear these stories. So what's your call to action for folks?

Christopher Williams 
I am so glad you asked. You know, there's a sort of common refrain amongst folks who are working in the water space when asked, what can you do? You can not dump chemicals on your lawn. You can just be mindful of the things you're dumping into your storm drain. You can support your local conservation group, You can stop using...

single-use plastic bottles and switch over to reusable containers. And all of those things, and when I was working globally, I was thinking, yeah, that's all good conventional wisdom, but when I'm working at this global level, it doesn't seem really resonant. And the same was true when I worked at the national level. But now I'm working at the local level. And I have an understanding that I didn't before of how I'm...

how incredibly important that individual action is. Not just locally, but nationally and globally. So all those things that we tell you to do on our websites, conserve water, don't dump nasty things in the storm drain, dispose of your paint properly, dispose of chemicals properly, don't use chemicals at all if you can avoid it. Use reusable beverage containers, don't use single-use plastic bottles because those end up in the river. That stuff's really important.

Steven 
It matters, yeah.

Christopher Williams 
You know, to stick with the plastic bottle example for a minute, right now one of the things that we're working on at policy level is a bottle bill in Maryland and in DC that will set up a recycling incentive system. You you give your bottle back, you pay a 10 cent deposit, you buy a bottle of beverage, you get your 10 cents back when you turn it in for recycling. And if that's put in place, it could be a game changer for trash pollution in the Anacostia River.

It all comes from the same place, which is we use millions and millions of plastic bottles every day that we just don't have to use. If you use something like this, if everybody in the watershed used something like this instead of grabbing a bottle of water off the shelf, thank you very much, it would be a absolute game changer for trash pollution in the Anacostia River. So the individual things that people could do

Steven 
Absolutely. Yep.

Christopher Williams 
are actually many and the collective impact of doing those things is tremendous.

Steven 
Yeah, love that. And to give your organization a plug on top of that, I know there's a donation button on your website. So what is your website if folks want to go support your organization directly?

Christopher Williams 
It's Anacostia WS, stands for watershed, Anacostia WS.org. And there is a donation button and I encourage you to smash that button. But there's also pages you can go to for volunteer opportunities, for educational opportunities, for boat tours. So it ain't all about asking for your money. There's also a lot of opportunities provided by the website for you to get involved personally.

Steven 
Get engaged.

Christopher Williams
in the conservation

of the Anacostia watershed. And we absolutely depend on that. We're a small, dedicated staff and the boots on the ground that actually are helping us pick up trash, helping us clear invasive species, helping us plant trees are volunteers. So, and there's opportunities for doing something really active and physical like clearing invasive species. Or if you just want to go out on a beautiful boat ride and learn about the Anacostia River and its importance, you can do that too. So come to our website for all of those.

Steven
Yeah. Yeah.

Perfect. I will put that on the show notes page as well so people can have access and link right to you and get engaged in whatever way they can, whether it's financial support or physical labor to help you out or taking you up on one of those recreational tours to find the beauty and the miracle of the watersheds that we live in.

Um, well, the last little bit before I let you go, um, Chris, we end every episode talking about hope. Um, you know, we've talked about some, some challenges that humanity is facing, the rising sea levels and, know, the pollution challenges and issues that you're, you know, currently dealing with that are remnants of the, you know, 19th and 20th century way that we, treated our rivers. Um, so we want to end every episode kind of looking

towards the future and having some hope in it. And hope isn't this, you know, pink cloud emotion. It's really not defined even as an emotion by those who study these kind of things. It's actually kind of a mindset. It's an ability to envision a better future, have a plan of action to work towards that better future, and have a sense of agency, that there's something you can do to make that better future come to be. It doesn't mean it's gonna happen.

It doesn't mean it won't be without challenges and hardships. And certainly in my mind, doesn't mean you can do it by yourself. We need community, we need collaboration. But it's this idea of a vision, plan of action, and sense of agency that you can get there is what is defined as hope. So I want to ask you three quick questions about your hope and would ask you not to think too much about it. Just kind of whatever your first answer is, go with that. So Chris, what?

Christopher Williams 
Absolutely.

Steven 
is your vision for a better future? can be for you personally or professionally or for the world. What do you envision as a better future?

Christopher Williams
The future is...

folks working together to be stewards. And you can sort of fill in the blank to be stewards of what? To be stewards of, in my case, stewards of the river, stewards of this very special place where I live and I have the opportunity to be a steward of because of my job, but everybody can be a steward in their ways and the ways we talked about before. Be a steward of these resources that

we want to pass on to our children. Be a steward of our democracy. Be a steward of this country and this society that we've created together over 250 years. Be a steward of your family. Be a steward of your community. Because you're not just, ideally you don't want to be a person who just, it's all about intake. You want to figure.

You want to figure out how you're stewarding whatever resource you're talking about, whether it's a social one, an environmental one, an economic one, so that it's secure for you and for people in the future who will be here long after you've moved on to whatever the next phase is.

Steven 
Perfect. Second question, why is that important? That we are being a steward of fill in the blank. Why do you want people to do that?

Christopher Williams
I want people to do it because it will, you'll be creating a better world for yourself and for those who come after. you know, I'm sort of pickled in the conservation world. You know, that's where I've spent my entire career. And conservation isn't about the now, it's about the future. It's about what things are gonna look like when you're gone. And do you want the people, do you want your children and your children's children and so on to...

enjoy the same, you know, I'm thinking back to the beginning of this conversation, do I want future generations to be able to run around Washington state and experience all these wonderful things in the mountains and on the seashore and in the forest? Absolutely, I do. And that's why I do what I do and that's why we need to have this stewardship ethic. And the other thing I would add, just a little bit of departure from the question, is that, that

It's not, it's worth it. It works. You can achieve success. And the place that I work is living proof. You know, we're not done with the Anacostia watershed. There's a lot of work yet to be done. But the advances that have been made to clean up this river, that you can see in the statistics, you can see in the data of water quality, but you can also see it in the fact that beavers and otters are back and they had disappeared. Bird populations are increasing.

fish populations are increasing, it's having an effect, it's working. And people need to remember that even on their darkest days, that hope and stewardship can work and indeed do work. And I think the Anacostia River, again, what we've still got a lot of work to do is living proof that it can work.

Steven 
Yeah, it's working.

Great example.

Yeah, love that. So last question, Chris. Now imagine for a moment we're in that future that you just described where people are actively being good stewards of their natural resources and their watersheds and democracy. I love that you brought that up. You know, actively being stewards of their community so that they're making it a better place for themselves and for future generations. That's...

happening now, widespread, it's working. How do you feel that that's happening now?

Christopher Williams 
I mean, how would I feel if I was living in that future?

Steven 
How would you, yeah,

imagine you're in that future and how does that make you feel?

Christopher Williams 
Well, it makes me feel tremendously happy and satisfied and proud because in my small way, that's what I've been striving for my entire career. I didn't go off and pursue a career manufacturing widgets. My career and the careers of all the people around me here at this organization are dedicated to realizing that future that you're describing in some way. So if I actually found myself

living in that future, I think I'd be tremendously proud. But I'd also be looking for the next challenge, because in fact, we'll get to that future and there'll be a whole other set of issues. There'll be a whole other set of mountains to climb and hurdles to overcome. That's just sort of the nature, not to get too highfalutin, but that's just sort of the nature of humanity. There's always a new set of challenges. And I'd like to think that if I was...

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah. That's life. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
you know if I wasn't 110 years old if I was in that future but somehow in the same condition I'm in now then I would turn to face the next challenge because that's you what I've done my whole life and that's what I think I'll do going

Steven 
Yeah.

Perfect. Well, Chris, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for sharing your story, your personal story, and your professional journey. I've gained a lot from, absolutely, please. No, no, no. No, no, not a problem at all, please.

Christopher Williams 
You know, can I add one thing? I'm sorry, I just may cause an editing problem, but I wanted to add one thing.

And that is that the other thing that I would want to do if I was in that future is I want to look around and make sure that everybody came with me. And that's because that's really, that's so important generally, but it's really important to the work that we do in the Anacostia watershed is, you know,

Steven 
Yeah.

love it. Love it. Thanks for adding that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
in any sort of advance, whether it's environmental or social or whatever, you always have to look around and make sure that everybody is with you. And so that's one of the things that I would do is I would look to my right and look behind me and make sure, and I would only sort of get that feeling of total satisfaction if I was confident that everybody else had come along with me as I moved into that future. I think that's vitally important and I think that's something people forget when they're thinking about

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Christopher Williams 
what the future is going to look like.

Steven 
Yeah, it's not just about how you are benefiting and that speaks volumes to your heart of social justice and environmental justice. Thank you for sharing that because that is incredibly important. If life's going great for me but all my neighbors around me are not doing so well then that's not...

Christopher Williams 
Right, right. Yeah, I'll never forget

when I was very young, I was probably just out of, I think I was just out of high school at that point, I was talking with a friend of mine. This was, this was, well, I won't say what political era it was, but this was at a time of sort of political change. And I was, I was saying to this friend of mine, who had different political views than mine, I was saying, I was talking about all the litany of social ills that were happening and whether this new incoming administration was going to deal with them.

Steven 
You

Christopher Williams 
And his response after a long pause was, well, I'm doing okay. And I was so, and I remember that moment like it was yesterday, because it's so crystallized for me, the thinking I was just describing to you about sort of making sure everybody's coming along with you, you know?

Steven 
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yep. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, thank you so much for adding that on to the end because that is so incredibly important. yeah, we need to be making sure we're, you know, carrying and bringing along and making sure that community in its entirety, a better future for all means a better future for all. So, yeah. So thank you for emphasizing that point here at the end. That's so important. So.

Christopher Williams 
Absolutely.

Steven 
With that Chris, again, thank you so much for your time. I know we ran a little bit longer today, but the conversation was so engaging. I appreciate your time and appreciate what you've been doing throughout your career and what you are doing there in DC. And I'm gonna take you up on one of those boat rides. If I get out there to DC for a lobbying trip on my own, I'm gonna hit you up for a boat ride. Maybe we can pick up a few things while we're out there as well. I wanna make sure, perfect. Well, thank you, Chris.

Christopher Williams 
Absolutely, absolutely.

Yep, we'll absolutely make it happen, Stephen.

Steven 
for your time and wish you all the best. Continue all the amazing work that you and your team are doing. Thank you for what you do.

Christopher Williams
Thank you, it's been my pleasure.

Steven 
Alright.

Steven 
What an incredible two-part conversation with Chris Williams. Over these past two episodes, we've explored his remarkable journey from growing up with a love for nature in Eastern Washington to his work shaping environmental policy and conservation efforts across the country and the world. Chris shared his experiences working on the Endangered Species Act, his leadership at organizations like the World Wildlife Fund and American Rivers,

and now his impactful work at the Anacostia Watershed Society, where he's leading efforts to restore one of the most historically polluted rivers in the United States. Chris's story is a testament to the power of dedication, resilience, and passion for protecting our environment. His career is not just impressive to me, it's inspiring. From policy work to hands-on conservation, he has demonstrated that real change happens when we combine expertise with a deep commitment

to community engagement and justice. And kudos to Chris and everyone who has worked so hard for decades to improve the Anacostia River. It's now boatable, darn near swimmable, and efforts are being made to make it fishable. Look, having spent most of my career in support of freshwater systems, I know what's being accomplished along the Anacostia River is incredible. And as Chris so rightly pointed out,

doing this work with environmental justice in mind is so important because we want the folks who lived by the polluted river for decades to still be able to live by the river when it's restored. again, congratulations to Chris, the entire team at the Anacostia Watershed Society, and all the partners and interested parties who are making a real difference for the Anacostia watershed in our nation's capital.

So let me thank Chris one more time for sharing his journey with us and for his tireless efforts to make the world a better place. If you've been inspired by Chris's story, there are so many ways you can take action in your own community. Get involved with local conservation groups, advocate for cleaner waterways, support policies that protect our environment, and educate others about the importance of environmental justice. Even small actions can have a huge impact, like reducing pollution,

participating in river cleanups, supporting organizations that restore natural ecosystems, or something as simple as Chris and I talked about, drinking from a reusable container instead of a plastic bottle. All these little steps when added together can make a very real difference. So thank you for what you do, and thank you for being part of Stories Sustain Us. If you enjoyed this conversation, please share this two-part episode with your family and friends.

Like and follow the show and leave me a comment. really love to hear what your thoughts are about this topic. And be sure to join me for the next episode of Stories Sustain Us, where my inspirational guest shares about how we can all work together to end factory farming of animals and support sustainable farming techniques instead. Look, not everyone is willing or able to cut out meat and dairy from their diets, at least not completely. And if you're watching this right now, I got two thumbs pointing at me.

If you're just listening to it on podcast, have to believe me, but I got two thumbs pointing at me right now. However, there are organizations who are securing corporate commitments to phase out cruel practices and persuading governments to change to a fairer, kinder, and more sustainable food system. And by checking out next week's show, you can learn how to support these organizations who are helping companies to produce food without factory farming.

making cruelty-free options better and more available. So, be here on April 15th for the next episode of Stories Sustain Us, available at StoriesSustainUs.com, on YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's another fascinating and inspiring conversation and you won't want to miss it. So, let me wrap it up here and say, always, thank you for being here today. Keep taking action, keep sharing stories, and keep working toward a better world.

Until next time, I'm Steven Schauer. Please take care of yourself and each other. Take care.