History of the Compact-

Formed in 1997, the Cumberland River Compact began as a group of people sitting in a circle throwing out ideas on how the Cumberland River could and should be protected. There were business people from large corporations. There were environmentalists. There were philanthropists and scientists. There were black people and white; males and females; young and old.

They watched a film of a man named Vic Scoggin who swam the entire length of the main stem of the Cumberland - 697 miles. Vic showed them coal mine runoff, dead livestock, and old cars. He photographed straight-pipe sewage and industrial effluent flowing into the river. He swam in a wetsuit and covered himself in Vaseline to protect himself against the chemical outflows and areas with extremely high fecal coliforms.

After the film was over Shirley Caldwell-Patterson and Bill Forrester (two current Board Members) stood up and asked, "What are we going to do about this?" The group answered and the Compact was formed.

One of the most interesting and ultimately useful decisions that was made in the early months was the determination that we be a nonconfrontational organization. As one future Board Member put it, "I've been the CEO for a company who has had environmental lawsuits brought against it. It never made us change how we did business. We paid the fines and just kept conducting business as usual." He wanted to be part of an organization that engages business, government, farmers, miners and all community members in the problem solving process. After all, nobody wants dirty water. Some people just don't realize that the alternative is within their grasp.

So the Compact took on the role of "educational organization". Our belief is that through education and cooperation more long -term partnerships and solutions will be forged than were we to form yet another "activist" organization. Whether for its sanity or its practicality - this idea is working. It has built a reputation for us - in a short time - that now has universities and state agencies approaching us to partner with them. We have a watershed program that may be instituted across two entire states instead of just the Basin.

We have other states calling us for permission to reproduce our work. Best of all, we're seeing "business as usual" starting to change in our Basin.

Our history is short. Our accomplishments so far are good. The best is yet to come and we invite you to help us write the history of that story.