Bill Townsend Receives National River Heroes Award

For more than a half-century, Bill Townsend has worked passionately to
protect and revitalize the more than 31,000 miles of rivers and streams in
the state of Maine. The results of his efforts have rippled across the
nation. Since Bill arrived in Maine as a dairy farmer in 1957, he has earned
a reputation as an innovative, passionate and effective river advocate. He
has been a vigilant watchdog for Maine's rivers and the life they support:
from the smallest headwater streams to the largest rivers, from the mountains to the sea, for the benefit of creatures ranging from invertebrates to Atlantic salmon to eels to bald eagles.

In March, River Network announced that Bill Townsend , founding president of Maine Rivers, was selected from dozens of nominations to receive a national river conservation award. In 2001 River Network created the National River Hero Award as a way to recognize individuals for their outstanding work in saving rivers. River Heroes are nominated by peers and honored at the National River Rally. River Rally 2006 will take place on May 5-9th at Mt. Washington Resort (NH)

"Saving America's rivers takes a long-term commitment," said Katherine Luscher, Program Director at River Network. "It requires a concerted action, hard work and dedication and often, a little stubbornness. Bill
Townsend has shown that dedication and effort. He epitomizes the spirit and intent of the award and we are thrilled to have the opportunity to show our appreciation for all he has done on behalf of clean and healthy rivers."

Bill's response to the award was typically modest: "My first thought was 'Oh my god, I don't deserve this." A lifelong fisherman now in his eighth decade, Townsend has no intention of slowing down his commitment to restoring rivers.

"I don't think I'll ever be able to just stop; I'm driven," he said. "I see water issues becoming more important and more complicated, and I think that there's going to be a tremendous need for people who care to address these issues all over the world."

In addition to the wholehearted gratitude of the river conservation movement, selected River Heroes receive an engraved plaque with a hand-made wooden paddle and a prize packet worth over $1,000. "The power of this award is not in the prize package itself, but in the recognition and appreciation
demonstrated by your peers. It's truly representative of the river conservation movement: homegrown with a lot of heart, humility and humor," said Ms. Luscher.

Along with Mr. Townsend, four other individuals from Alaska, Tennessee, Alabama and Massachusetts will be honored at the banquet. For more information about the River Heroes Award, contact Kathy Luscher at River Network at (503) 542.8384.

River Network is the nation's leader in organizing and supporting America's community-based watershed and river conservation movement. Based in Portland, Oregon, River Network was founded in 1988 in the conviction that the solutions to river degradation are primarily local and must be created by citizen action, watershed by watershed. River Network merged with River Watch Network of Montpelier, Vermont in 1999 and has offices in Oregon, Vermont, and Washington, D.C. For information about River Network or its
programs, visit www.rivernetwork.org or call (503) 241-3506.

FROM THE NOMINATION OF BILL TOWNSEND FOR RIVER NETWORK'S RIVER HERO AWARD, SUBMITTED BY MAINE RIVERS:

Bill is truly visionary, imagining the rivers of Maine, the nation and the world as they ought to be -- even when they were horribly polluted, or stagnant and devoid of life due to centuries of over-damming. "When I first came to Maine, the Kennebec, the Androscroggin and the Penobscot were open sewers," he once told a reporter. "In the summer the stench was so bad that in Augusta, people had to close their windows. The fumes were so strong they could peel paint off the wall." Faced with that state of affairs, Bill began what has become a lifetime of work to restore Maine's rivers. "I can't help myself," he says.

Once imagined, Bill has an extraordinary ability to break down complicated issues, to find creative, comprehensive and lasting approaches and to engage and inspire others to successfully transform these visions into reality. He also has an uncanny ability to recognize the right advocacy tools for the right time or task. Finally, because the word "impossible" is not part of Bill's river vocabulary, he has a rich history of accomplishing for rivers what others thought could not be accomplished.

Bill has been active and effective on every front of river restoration and protection: from local to international; through on-the-river restoration as well as policy-making in the courtroom and the legislature; by doing battle over pollution permits or dam re licensing or through collaborative solutions. He has likewise played pioneering roles in an impressive array of river issues: advocacy for Maine's foundational water quality laws including river reclassification; ending the log drives that clogged major rivers from bank-to-bank, gouged out riverbed and destroyed spawning habitat; restoration of Atlantic salmon, American shad and 10 other species of native sea-run fish; creating programs to fund land conservation through the Land for Maine's future program which protects important riparian lands; preventing the damming of Maine's St. John River at Dickey Lincoln through the creation of the Allagash Wilderness Waterway; successful opposition to the Big A dam on the Penobscot River; leadership of the Kennebec Coalition as they successfully removed the Edwards Dam from the Kennebec River, reopening 18 miles of free-flowing habitat; and most recently first-time efforts to address the monitoring and regulation of water flow and quantity in Maine. Bill's favorite river, of course, is the one he's lived near for
more than three decades, the Kennebec. He's characterized his engagement with that river as a "thirty year love affair" and he's fished the river, paddled it, conserved land along it and led the decade-long battle for the historic removal of the Edwards Dam. But Bill's love for rivers has been admirably indiscriminate: his work has touched virtually every river in the state.