Who is CREG?
CREG is a watershed non-profit group focused on the long-term sustainability of the Cedar River and its tributaries. Headquartered in Cedar Falls, Iowa, the group arose from the Cedar River Festival, the longest active river clean-up in Iowa.
The Goal: a watershed community that compromises needs vs. wants with wise and healthy decision-making.
CREG hopes to remove the Cedar River from Iowa’s impaired waterways list. The river was added by the EPA due to high nitrate levels, a result mostly of our agriculture industry. There is little opposition from CREG as to the demand Iowa satisfies for corn, especially with the ethanol explosion in 2006. But looming behind is an aquatic life that will always absorb the effects of monetary-based land practices, until extinction. There are compromises that must be found.
Equally as important are the effects of urban sprawl. Every house, building or structure that is built displaces water and disrupts the natural absorption of the Earth. Our society accepts routing of this water through ineffective drainage/filtering systems. The slow drip of antifreeze on the parking lot of any business becomes the next breath of a catfish in the Cedar River.
Everything ends up in our rivers.
The expanding ‘dead zone’ in the Gulf of Mexico is an unfortunate example; Iowa is partially to blame. The benefits of our land come with further responsibilities to our waters, as simple as water monitoring, to low-impact development in cities, to planting farmland buffer strips along the river’s banks. Through awareness and action, the group hopes Iowans will one day look to the Red Cedar’s beauty like they gaze at a sunset falling over the ocean.
CREG also hopes to serve the watershed community by providing this website as a networking tool. Environmental activism is occurring all across the US; search the Net and you’ll see. The group’s mission will include providing a hub for connecting our watershed communities and their interests.
Although environmental groups conjure many thoughts, CREG’s mission is not radical. The group strives simply to leave Iowa better than they found it.
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