By Anna-Rhesa Versola
Photography by John Michael Simpson
The Haw River runs through the heart of environmentalist Elaine Chiosso. She fell in love with the landscape in 1971 when she transferred from the University of California, Berkeley to UNC. “I have always just loved water,” she says, remembering the creek where she played near her grandmother’s house south of San Francisco. “When I first came to North Carolina, I was just amazed at the amount of rivers and trees and streams.”
After earning a bachelor’s degree in science education, Elaine settled in Hadley township, close to the banks of the Haw River, in 1974. In 1982, she attended the first meeting called by the Haw River Assembly and became a member. That was before her adopted daughters were born – Katie Chiosso Kenlan in 1985 and Tess Chiosso Kenlan in 1990.
She joined the board of directors the year her youngest was born, and became executive director in 1997 after landing a grant to fund the position. “HRA gave me some needed flexibility, especially once I became a single mom,” Elaine says, adding that she spent a lot of time with her children playing and swimming in the creek and the river near their home.
She also served as the first Haw river keeper from 2008 to 2017. She is a former member of the NC Sedimentation Control Commission and the NC Water Infrastructure Council. Currently, Elaine serves on the Chatham County Environmental Review Advisory Committee and continues to work on pollution issues as senior policy advisor at HRA.
“It takes a certain kind of person [who] likes doing this work,” Elaine says, looking out toward the water from the porch of her office in Bynum. “You find policy work really interesting. You have a passion for justice. And I love nature. I mean, all three of those things come together. I know other people like me. Some of them are river keepers. Other people work in nonprofits that do it for a long, long time. You have to be able to see and celebrate the small successes. Like Martin Luther King Jr. said, ‘The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.’ I still believe in that.”
A MILLION PEOPLE
The Haw River travels 110 miles from its headwaters around the Forsyth-Guilford county line through eight Piedmont counties until it merges with the Deep River in Chatham to form the Cape Fear River. More than a million people depend on the 1,700 square miles of the Haw River watershed, which includes Jordan Lake. All along the way, there are about 11 major wastewater treatment plants, numerous industrial plants, sludge fields, farmlands and developments. All the runoff is pouring into the creeks and streams feeding the river.
“Pittsboro is the only town using the Haw River as a [drinking] water source,” Elaine says. “Everybody else built reservoirs on creeks that they could protect a little more, not to say that they’re pristine, but more protected.”
In August 2022, Pittsboro installed a granular activated carbon advanced filtration system to remove between 95 and 99.9 percent of chemicals known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, from the Haw River.
The HRA has a tiny lab where they test for pathogens like E. coli bacteria in water samples collected from the Haw. Safety levels are published online and in an app called The Swim Guide. “If that’s high, then you’re worried about other kinds of bacteria and things that could also be in that water,” she says.
“Drinking water is different from playing in the water. I do tell people if you’re with the kids, you’ve got to try and tell them; you got to make them understand to keep their mouths closed. Don’t be gulping the water down. The amount of exposure through skin – assuming you’re not like swimming long hours every day – I don’t think it’s terribly worrisome.”
Other HRA projects include an annual river cleanup in March, stream monitoring by citizen scientists and outdoor education programs for school children. “From the beginning, we always saw the work of the Haw River Assembly as both getting people to love a river or take care of a river, but also advocacy work, to make sure that laws were being followed and that the laws were strong enough. And to go after polluters if it didn’t look like the actual enforcement people, whether they were state or county or federal, were doing what they needed to do.”
Elaine says improvements require elected officials who are willing to push boundaries. “Because it is the state that’s supposed to be doing these things. When the state’s not doing them, then very typically in this country, it is the work of nonprofits to push that.”
SUCCESSION PLANNING
Whether Elaine kayaks across whitewater rapids to collect litter in the river or she wades into the details of a legal case, her tenacity will be felt for generations. One example came in 2014 after 3.5 million gallons of raw sewage spilled into the Haw River. Elaine and the HRA brought its first 60-day notice of intent to sue the City of Burlington under the Clean Water Act, compelling major repairs and cleanup efforts. Today, the work goes on for the watchdogs.
“I’m getting toward retirement age, but I still love what I’m doing,” Elaine says. She continues to encourage and lead HRA to become a more inclusive and diverse organization and to include environmental justice as a key focus. “I know my limitations. Retirement [is about] looking at transition and succession. … But when I do, I think it’ll be in good hands. We’re really doing all the things way in advance to make sure that it’ll keep going strong.”
