by Ross Williams, Georgia Recorder, [This article first appeared in the Georgia Recorder, republished with permission]
January 6, 2025

Jimmy Carter’s legacy includes working to eradicate tropical diseases in Africa, South America and Asia and to end conflicts in places like Syria, Israel and Sudan. But the late former president’s efforts also live on in the wild places of his native Georgia that he worked as governor and president to protect.

“My motivation I think was trying to preserve as much as I could of the beauty of God’s world. Based on my early religious feelings and the heritage that I got from my father and others who would try and do the same thing from a sportsman’s point of view,” Carter said in an interview with American Rivers, a nonprofit environmental organization, ahead of a 2016 film on Carter.

Carter grew up a bona fide country boy – his childhood home in Plains had no electricity or running water – but he would tell interviewers over the years that life on the farm taught him to respect nature and the resources it provides, especially when it comes to rivers.

“He was not just an advocate for our rivers, he was a paddler and an angler who had intimate relationships with the state’s rivers,” said Rena Ann Peck, executive director of Georgia Rivers, formerly known as the Georgia River Network. “It’s because of that intimate relationship that he was such a strong advocate for our rivers. Through his leadership, he changed how we viewed rivers. They were just a resource to dam, ditch and pump. As a sportsman he recognized our rivers’ other values and forced us all to consider those values before approving projects that would irrevocably change our rivers.”

No dam way

As governor, Carter vetoed construction of a dam on the Flint River in 1974 supported by the Army Corps of Engineers.

By the time he was elected governor in 1970, Carter knew a thing or two about engineering. The former farm boy attended Georgia Tech and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1946, and served through 1953, including as an engineering officer on a submarine and later assisting in designing nuclear propulsion systems for naval vessels.

In an interview published in a 1976 issue of Field and Stream magazine ahead of his 1977 inauguration, Carter said he used his engineering skills to show the Corps erred or misrepresented in their calculations showing the supposed benefits of the dam.

“The Corps exaggerated the benefits and underestimated the costs,” Carter said. “When I, as an engineer, got my slide rule and tried to confirm their figures, there was no way to confirm them because they were not accurate. Subsequent to my analysis, the Government Accounting Office confirmed that I was right, and the Corps was wrong.”

After Gov. Carter made it clear he did not want the dam built, members of the state House, led by supporters of the dam who believed it would improve the economy, passed a resolution backing the dam in the hopes that it would allow the Corps to build it anyway. The state Senate, where Carter served before becoming governor, narrowly voted the measure down.

Executive director of the Flint Riverkeeper Gordon Rogers said opposing the Army Corps of Engineers and business interests was no easy pull, but he thinks Carter was proven right.

“We knew we had a special bass there in that area back in the ‘70s, but we didn’t know it was a separate species and that it was endemic,” he said. “We have the shoal lilies there and a super high diversity of plants and other animals. So it’s this really special area that people had kind of an inkling of back in the day, but we didn’t know all of the details back then because more research has happened since then.”

“That’s what he saved,” Rogers added. “And I know that he was proud of it because he told me so.”

Carter’s love for nature also shone through in less conspicuous ways. He sought to educate Georgians on native wildlife by sponsoring books with topics like quail hunting and bird dog training.

One such book, “Wildflowers of the Southeastern United States,” by Wilbur Duncan and Leonard Foote, was published in 1975 by the University of Georgia Press and sits at No. 4 on UGA Press’ all-time bestseller list. Carter told Field and Stream that he dipped into his emergency fund to pay for the book, which contains information on nearly 1,000 flowers across 14 states.

“It is safe to say that without the governor’s funding to cover the expensive color illustration printing of that original 1975 edition, the UGA Press might not have been able to afford to publish more vital non-specialist regional natural history books,” said UGA Press director Lisa Bayer.

A fateful ride

Carter’s time in the governor’s mansion coincided with a surge in the popularity of the sport of whitewater rafting, and it was only natural that Carter would want to give it a go.

Georgia native Claude Terry, an Emory University biologist, co-founder of American Rivers and a passionate rafter, led a group of paddlers that helped introduce Carter to the sport and the Chattooga River in the early 1970s. Terry also has the distinction of working as actor Jon Voight’s stunt double in the 1972 movie Deliverance, which was filmed on the Chattooga.

In a 2019 issue of American Whitewater magazine, outdoorsman and photographer Doug Woodward remembered one excursion to a section of the Chattooga that ended with a vicious rapid known as Bull Sluice, which the boaters planned to skip.

Only when it came time to get out, Carter and Terry remained in their canoe. Woodward recalled Carter asking the odds of the two being seriously injured or killed if they attempted the run. Woodward told him he would likely capsize, but with proper safety equipment and the supervision of the other rafters, the odds of being seriously hurt were low.

Carter made the decision to go for it, and the rest of the boaters looked on as Carter, the sitting governor, and Terry became the first to pull off a descent down Bull Sluice in a tandem canoe.

“I’ve run that rapid hundreds of times. I’ve never run it where I didn’t have butterflies in my stomach. It’s an intimidating rapid,” said Buzz Williams, emeritus executive director of Chattooga Conservancy.

Carter would go on to tell American Rivers that it was a formative experience for him and his relationship with rivers.

“I think that the Chattooga was the first time I ever risked my life, I’d say, in going down a wild river,” he said. “And I think it gave me an element of both satisfaction and a sense of you might say heroism in confronting the awe-inspiring power of the Chattooga River when I had a major responsibility as a governor of a state.”

“It kind of opened my eyes to a relationship between a human being and a wild river that I had never contemplated before that,” he added.

Carter would go on to fight against damming the Chattooga as well as designating it for protection under the Wild and Scenic Rivers Act, which seeks to protect it from damming and other actions that might harm its flow.

Way down yonder

During the same time frame, Alan Toney remembers another act of river-based derring-do that helped Carter prove his bona fides as an outdoorsman.

Toney, who is now chair of the Fulton County Soil and Water Conservation District, back in the ‘70s was a member of Friends of the River and a self-proclaimed “river rat,” part of a group dedicated to preserving the Chattahoochee River from excessive development.

“Claude took him down to Chattahoochee, and there’s a famous rock that people who were brave jump off of, about 30 feet over the river, and Carter jumped off. Claude goes, ‘He actually jumped off, this guy’s the real deal, this is not built up, this guy has a real environmentalist, he cares,’” Toney said.

Carter was happy to climb on board with the river rats and helped push through the 1972 Metropolitan River Protection Act – despite the wishes of former Gov. Lester Maddox, who was previously the state’s governor.

That act created a 2,000-foot buffer along a 48-mile stretch of the Chattahoochee River between Buford Dam and Peachtree Creek along both of its banks. It was later amended to protect an additional 36 miles.

“He was a visionary back in the ‘70s to understand that Metro Atlanta was going to grow exponentially into the future and made a proactive effort to try to protect the Chattahoochee before those threats even existed,” said Jason Ulseth, executive director of Chattahoochee Riverkeeper. “And the Metropolitan River Protection Act, we still use it today on an almost daily, weekly basis when working on river plans and development that’s coming near the river. That act is still a very important tool.”

In 1978, then-president Carter would go on to establish the Chattahoochee River National Recreation Area at a ceremony in the Rose Garden attended by river rats including Toney.

“It was pretty cool,” Toney said. “We were very appreciative to have him. But you know beyond that, the barrier islands on the coast of Georgia, Sprewell Bluff there on the Flint River, all those things happened because Carter was governor in Georgia, so his imprint on the environment was huge, both federally and in this state.”

Carter’s nationwide environmental legacy is best known through his decision to install solar panels on the White House, long before the technology was anywhere close to mainstream, to signal concern with reliance of fossil fuels for energy amid an unprecedented energy crisis. In 1977, Carter signed legislation creating the modern U.S. Department of Energy by consolidating tasks carried out by numerous disparate government agencies.

One of Carter’s greatest environmental achievements lies far to the north of his home state. In 1980, during the final days of his presidency, Carter signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, which set aside more than 157 million acres of land in Alaska for protection — more than four Georgias worth of land. The act more than doubled the size of the National Park System.

Deputy Editor Jill Nolin contributed to this report

Georgia Recorder is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Georgia Recorder maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor John McCosh for questions: info@georgiarecorder.com.