SHORELINES

25 Shor e l i n e S | 2016 Vol :4 department, the fire department, the emergency medical agency, the paramedics and the rescue squad. Safety has always been the highest priority at Alabama Power, and it's the same for Renew Our Rivers." Phifer soon began getting calls from other lake homeowner and boat owner associations interested in hosting cleanups. Within three years, there were cleanups at all the lakes on the Coosa, Tallapoosa and Black Warrior rivers. Then, he began working with Georgia Power's Plant Hammond employees to help them organize a cleanup. With cleanups popping up at lakes across Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi and Florida, the program was renamed Renew Our Rivers in 2002. Fittingly, the occasion was celebrated at the Plant Gadsden pavilion, the place where Phifer's cleanup idea turned into reality in 1999. Phifer said the cleanups have become a huge team effort, with company employees working closely with lake homeowner and boat owner associations and community volunteers. "The cleanups have gotten bigger and included more and more people," says Phifer. "That first year, there were so many unknowns and so many things you didn't know how to do. Later, it became clearer, and people began to understand their roles. We became more efficient. It's still a lot of work, but it has become more manageable." PHIFER: VITAL TO H. NEELY HENRY LAKE CLEANUPS Phifer, who retired from Alabama Power in 2009, has continued to play a leading role in the annual H. Neely Henry Lake cleanups on the Coosa River. He often takes his boat out on the water before cleanups to look for areas where debris has accumulated. Then, he helps dispatch volunteers and boats to those areas. Phifer remembers one year his cleanup leadership team almost became too confident, thinking they could cover more and more of the river. "We thought, 'We are getting good at this,' so we took on 53 miles of river," Phifer said. "Because the volunteers were so scattered, communication became a problem. We had groups that needed to talk to each other, but SouthernLINC and cellphones wouldn't work. After that, we began covering more manageable pieces of the river." Because the river stretches through Etowah, St. Clair and Calhoun counties, there are now two H. Neely Henry cleanups, Phifer says, allowing volunteers to cover more miles of waterway. Phifer is, in fact, more involved in river issues than ever as president of the H. Neely Henry Lake Association. This year, Phifer, along with Casandra Maudsley, lake association board member and Alabama Power Shoreline Management Operations administrative assistant, coordinated the cleanup that removed trash from the portion of H. Neely Henry Lake that runs through St. Clair and Calhoun counties. During the Aug. 27 cleanup, volunteers removed nearly 2.8 tons of trash. Above right: Photo by wynter Byrd – One of the hundreds of Renew Our Rivers volunteers who help remove trash and debris from Alabama waterways.

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