Urban Waters Speak: Stories of Resilience

This audio recording shares “Stories of Resilience” from four panelists who spoke at the Urban Waters Learning Forum networking session taking place in Grand Rapids, MI on May 13, 2024.  

Meet our panelists, listen to the full interview, and read the full transcript below.  

Dave Warners, co-founder of Plaster Creek Stewards at Calvin University

Note: The transcript has been edited for clarity. Links to resources from the conversation are also included. 

00:00:01 Renée Mazurek  

Hi, and welcome to Urban Waters Speak from the Urban Waters Learning Network, where we hear from network members in their own voice. To highlight our members, we host conversations with water practitioners working to conserve, restore and revitalize America’s urban waterways. We’re glad you’re here. 

I’m Renee Mazurek, Resilient Communities Manager for River Network and Urban Waters team member. This Urban Waters Speak episode is a little different from the ones that we usually do. 

While we hear from our network members, much of this audio was recorded at the Urban Waters Learning Forum, a networking session hosted on May 13th, 2024, before the official start of River Rally in Grand Rapids, MI. We’re bringing a little piece of our Urban Waters gathering your way in sharing these “Stories of Resilience.” 

As a part of the afternoon session of the Learning Forum, we invited four panelists to share their stories. The conversation was moderated by Urban Waters team member and Senior Manager of Environmental Justice Programs at Groundwork USA, Jalisa Gilmore. The panel included Dr. Angela Chalk, Executive Director of the Healthy Community Services in New Orleans; Carlos Calderon, the Director of Sustainable Community Engagement at West Michigan Environmental Action Council, as well as Gale Gunst Heffner and Dave Warners, the founding directors of the Plaster Creek Stewards at Calvin University in Grand Rapids, who also recently published their book, Reconciliation in a Michigan Watershed: Restoring Ken-O-Sha, about their work in Grand Rapids.  

Our moderator, Jalisa, prompted our panelists with the following questions. 

The personal prompts were: “Who are you before the work begins?” and “Who do you want to become when the work is done?” 

The community prompts were: “Reflect on the community you are accountable to,” “Describe your community when it’s liberated,” and “What work are you doing to drive toward that vision of a liberated community?” 

I want to give a shout out to the National Association of Climate Resilience Planners here for this [the community prompts], as I learned it during their Vision | Power | Solutions workshop that I highly recommend that others check out.  

Before you listen in on the stories, I do want to call out that this was recorded live on site, so there are some background noises, audience reactions and at one point some loud cheering from another session included. We hope that it makes you feel a part of the crowd and isn’t too distracting. Now, I’m pleased to transition to the recording, where Jalisa hands the conversation off to our speakers. 

00:02:50 Jalisa Gilmore  

We’ll start with Dr. Angela Chalk, then we’ll go to Carlos and then we’ll go to Gail and Dave. I have a microphone for you all. So with that, if you don’t mind passing it to Dr. Angela Chalk to kick us off. 

00:03:07 Dr. Angela Chalk 

Well, thank you. With those of you who were in the morning session, you know I have a lot to say. Aside from that, I am Angela Mary Chalk. I’m a good Catholic girl. I am a mom, a grandmother, and a great grandmother. And so, I come to this work through my great niece, who is now graduating from LSU School of Resources.  

I have retired from state service, civil service; and that’s how I come to this work after having a conversation with a 14-year-old. So, the power of our young people is so important because they can shape a new direction in life. I could have never imagined doing this work and being on the platform that I’m at now, to be able to speak up for my community on climate because that is not a conversation that we have in Black communities. 

And here I am running an organization that now receives both federal funding, philanthropic support… and we’re supporting …in communities of color, people who can make real changes through employment. And we do that with our partners and Groundwork in New Orleans. And so when I say who I am: I’m really just a little girl from the 7th Ward that has a national platform. Thank you for having me. 

00:04:36 Carlos Calderon 

Wow, that’s wonderful. Thank you. When I was considering all these prompts, I just want to acknowledge that I was rather taken aback by the depth of these prompts. Typically you hear this in in a more condensed, “Why do you do this work?” type of a question; but it was very grounding and very personal, and I appreciate the intentionality about these questions. 

So I am Carlos. I’m a multitude of things we can talk about. All of those things after these sessions, maybe over some drinks later, but…before I enter the work, I’m a father, a spouse, a son and grandson, and brother. Most importantly, maybe to myself, I want to be a little selfish, I’m a naturalist and an ecologist. I am water. 

00:05:36 Gail Heffner 

I’m Gail Heffner, and this is Dave Warners. And when we got the prompts, we also were really struck by the depth of them and felt like there was a lot there. And our conversation started when we were first talking about is, “Where were we when the work started?” So we kind of interpreted it a little differently. Not so much where it begins today, but where were we when we started this work? 

Dave and I were faculty members. Dave still is at Calvin University, and we were working together. Dave is a biology professor; my field of urban studies. And I was directing an office of community engagement at the university. About 20 years ago, we started getting word that the water in West Michigan was in really contaminated shape, and we were really shocked to find that out. It prompted us to begin to explore what we didn’t know. Eventually we started Plaster Creek Stewards within the college. We were wanting to educate people, students and also community members. And we wanted to do research to figure out: “Why is the problem as bad as it is?” That involves looking at history as well as looking at current situations leading to the problems that exist today. 

And then we wanted to think about: “How do we do restoration work and how do we bring people from all different backgrounds and all different parts of the watershed to work together?” I want to give a shout out to River Network and Groundwork, because they gave us our first grant in 2011. We got a grant, a small grant, to do an oral history project; and it really changed and transformed the way we started the work and the way we continue to do the work.  

We learned from mothers and fathers and government officials and teachers and pastors. All kinds of people, all ages, about their relationship with the watershed and with the water in their neighborhoods. That changed the way we began to understand what we needed to do. So, I’m gonna let Dave say something. 

00:07:35 Dave Warners 

Gail didn’t mention that that grant that we got was so exciting because our first 9 grant proposals were rejected. Not the River Network, but other organizations. So, we were 0 for 9 and finally we got one, which was like the best Christmas ever. 

Who were we before this work began? Another way that Gail and I were thinking about that is that we knew that the creek that drained Calvin University and much of southeastern Grand Rapids—actually, the Creek joins the Grand River just downstream, about one mile from here—but that creek was known as the most polluted stream in West Michigan. 

And at our university, it’s a Christian university, we talk a lot about the importance of the creation and our responsibility to care well for the creation. And so, to come to that recognition that the stream that drains the watershed we’re in is unsafe for children to touch, it really hit us hard. It really motivated us to start doing some work. We didn’t know what to do at the start, but we had a sense that our job was to clean up this creek and to make it safe to play in again. And so that’s how we started, and it was, you know, maybe took us a year before we realized that somehow we could magically clean up the Creek and then walk away and say we got that done, but if nobody changed their understanding or their behavior in the watershed, the creek would just get all polluted all over again. 

So, we really changed our focus from restoration to what we talk about in terms of reconciliation. And reconciliation is a word that’s used to address relationships that are broken or unhealthy and to make those relationships healthy again. And so, our focus really has been working on the relationship between people in the watershed and the creek. And get them to think better about the creek and think about their own behaviors. And then also we realize it’s not only people in the creek, but it’s people in the upper part of the watershed being reconciled to the people in the lower part of the watershed. And so, getting these different people groups together has been a real big focus of our work as well. 

So, we’re still trying to clean up the creek, but we’re doing it with the help of watershed residents and trying to build relationships between these people in the creek as well as between different people groups in the watershed. 

00:09:55 Gail Heffner 

The only thing I’ll add is that has been one of the key hallmarks of of what we’re trying to do is how do we get people downstream and upstream to meet each other and to learn from each other and to work together side by side and really care about each other. If we can’t really get people to get to know each other and work together, we don’t feel like there’s any hope of really making any kind of lasting change. And we know from the work that we’ve done at the watershed where we are—and this is true all over North America—that the environment, that the watersheds were thriving for millennia. And it’s only been degraded, all of them, in the last 150 to 200 years since Europeans arrived. 

And that’s really convicting to those of us that come from a European white background. We are complicit. We are guilty of lack of respect, lack of care, lack of… of being apathetic about the water. And so how do we help people tell the truth about what has happened and work together to make the change that’s needed? 

00:10:57 Dr. Angela Chalk 

I don’t know how to follow that up, except to say that it takes a lot of real community engagement and participation, listening and building relationships… And folks in communities to understand their role.  

And so, while we have one of the… we have THE mighty Mississippi River, there are so many watersheds within the city of New Orleans that traditionally have fell off from the Mississippi River. And it is our drinking source. But we also have Lake Pontchartrain. Historically, Lake Pontchartrain was a part of the Mississippi River watershed, and the land formed around it creating the largest brackish lake in our country. And so, when we have pollution and drainage of our saltwater, it gets into Lake Pontchartrain. And so, it’s odd to think about the watershed as not being linear, but it’s a multi complex of highways and byways on the water. And people have been living on those waterways for millennia, long before the Europeans came.  

And if any of you ever get a chance to come to New Orleans, take one of the swamp tours. You will really see New Orleans from a different lens. Now, don’t do it in August. If you’re going to do it, do it early in the morning. But it’s a true experience to see the habitat, the flora and the fauna. And if anyone likes shrimp, know that the shrimp life cycle begins in those grasses of the wetlands. They don’t just magically appear. And so, we have a rule in making sure that our waterways are safe. 

00:12:55 Jalisa Gilmore 

Yeah. Thank you all for what you’ve shared so far. And I think you’ve started to share a little bit about your community that you’re accountable to. So, I think if you can reflect a little bit more or anything about how your community is when it’s liberated, I’m interested to hear what that vision would be. And I feel like we started to hear a little bit from Gail about, “We need to do something…” What does a liberated—your liberated—community look like? 

00:13:29 Gail Heffner 

I’ll just add, I think a liberated community would be a place where people know each other, trust each other, and work hard together to bring change and restoration and repair. It’s a combination of reparations and restoration. They have to go together. And it’s built on relationships where there’s communication and trust. It’s hard work and it takes a long time. 

00:13:58 Dave Warners 

Yeah, I was thinking about this. That one thing that we’re doing now that we didn’t do when we first started is, we’re framing our work in terms of, this is work that’s addressing injustice. It used to be environmental cleanup or something like that, you know; but we are addressing injustice. And it’s both historical injustice as well as current day, geographical injustice. 

The Indigenous Ottawa that lived here have a saying that water is life; and they were really intent on protecting water because they knew how important water was. Within about 50 years of the first colonial showing up here in West Michigan, Plaster Creek was used as a sewage conduit for raw human sewage. So, it’s a completely different world view that came over from Europe and displaced—largely displaced, not completely—the indigenous people here. So, we’ve come to realize that the indigenous people who lived with clean water for decades and centuries. We need to relearn some of the truths that they live by, and we need to come to terms with some of the flaws in the worldview that was brought over from Europe and dismantle those.  

So, there’s injustice work that needs to be done there historically. And then also just currently, because our lower income communities of color are downstream. Like many urban waterways are, much of the pollutants and the E. coli goes in in agricultural and suburban areas, in the upstream reaches, which are largely white. So, there’s injustice there that needs to be dealt with and talked about and named and brought up over and over again, so people get used to hearing that that kind of language. 

00:15:44 Carlos Calderon 

Not not to have two ecologists follow each other and talk so much about the natural world, but I like to think in a more holistic practice. I know we’re here because we’re people and we care about all the people in our community. And I think when we say people, we mean human people, but there are an extraordinary amount of life forms that live in all of our watersheds. That’s more or less who I feel accountable to. The water itself as well. That water is life. We are water. I mean, if we can’t be accountable to the water, we’re not being accountable to ourselves, really. And also, I like to think about the communities that haven’t arrived yet, right? Like, it’s great to have good water quality for us now. But to the point made earlier about reconciliation, what are we going to leave? 

00:16:41 Dr. Angela Chalk 

I speak often about leaving tangible assets with communities, not in communities, with communities. Because if you’re living somewhere, you’re living with the people that are in your immediate community. You have social norms, you have values. And you should be respecting one another. And so, without having that respect for each other, then how can you live cohesively and share the natural resources that that we one day may not have if we’re not accountable, like you said, to the water, to the flora and the fauna of the water.  

And so, the work that I do in being accountable and when this is all said and done and when I’m gone…I don’t know, maybe scholars will read about me…I don’t know. What I want to be said is that communities were engaged, they were educated, and they were empowered to make decisions that best reflect their needs. And at the end of the day, if no decision was made, that was the individual’s decision. But what you can’t say is that I didn’t know. 

And so that’s where the power comes in at for me and doing this work and being accountable to folks in my neighborhood. Because I have young kids looking at me and I have the elders. I’m somewhere in between because I’m a child of the 60s. So, education was important, and the investment was made in me a long time ago. So right now, there are a lot of people that’s getting good returns on their investment. And I’m grateful and thankful to have those people in my life and for me to be in their lives. 

00:18:24 Jalisa Gilmore 

Thank you all again for that. I’m hearing a lot about, you know, yes, it’s about the people, but it’s also about the whole environment and what we’re leaving for future people who aren’t even here yet. [loud cheering in the background] So yeah, I want to be cheering like that, but…  

So I guess my question for you all is… I would love to hear a little bit… we’re thinking about stories of climate resilience. You’re talking about future generations. Can you share any stories with the group about what you all are doing to drive that change, again towards a liberated community or towards a climate resilient community? If you can share a little bit of your story with the group. I think we all have so much to learn. 

00:19:16 Dr. Angela Chalk 

OK, I’ll start. 

So, since this is partly sponsored by Groundwork USA and we have a Groundwork Trust in New Orleans, I’ll start there because that is a unique partnership. If anyone knows Todd Reynolds from Groundwork New Orleans, our relationship has become one of brother and sister. And if you know brothers and sisters, they argue a lot. 

But in arguing with each other, we’re also teaching each other. So, I don’t build projects. Groundwork New Orleans builds projects. And it’s through leveraging both of our funds from funders to create… We’ve created a stormwater management park, which is called the Vision to Reality Stormwater Management Park that’s managing 35,000 gallons of stormwater per rain event. It’s also a monitoring site with our international partners, Deltares, where they’re monitoring well water. Now, how do we come to that partnership?  

What that site has done has employed young men who otherwise would have been just dismissed, because some of them have had contact with the criminal justice system. But when you start to give people a purpose and employment that is above the minimum wage—and it’s above the living wage… These young men install, monitor, and evaluate everything that has to do with that stormwater management park.  

So, Phase 2 is going in right now where we’ve created instant shade. We’re able to monitor for the urban heat island effect. We’re managing water and testing that water for non-point pollution. So, they not only get the certifications that they need, they’re actually doing the work. And so, I think as we model workforce development, we have to do more than just give people a certificate and say, “Hey, you completed this training.” And so, these young men are master solar gridsman. So, the park is solar powered. They’re learning about native plants, which is my area of specialty, and learning how to plant them. And that’s where the argument comes in at with Todd and I.  

Because he’s like, “It’s just plants.” So, I’m like, “No, they’re not.” These plants have a purpose, and we are educating each other on that. But to see the transformation of these young men from a program to actually having work and showing up at work, doing the work, when other people have counted them out and dismissed them…it’s amazing to see the impact that they’re having back in communities. 

What they have done by working on that site, that site had zero value. It’s state-owned land with the Department of Transportation. By adding in that green infrastructure to that site—we have a joint use agreement with the state for five years—they have increased the value of that property from zero to right at about $300,000. And we’ve done that in three years by the implementation that we have.  

And then…write this down because you’re going to need this, if you’re doing this work. You need to get a benefit cost analysis of all the work that you’re doing. And I’m going to throw Earth Economics out there. You can choose anybody that you want, but Earth Economics did our benefit cost analysis. And so, when you’re applying for money, funders want to know what’s the return on investment. And right now, that investment is $38 to every $1 that’s invested.  

00:23:09 Carlos Calderon 

Full disclosure/disclaimer, Gail and I have a lot of overlap. I actually live… I’m a resident of Plaster Creek. A lot of the work that they had done had inspired me to get in here. So, I will say that continuing to spread that word and use the Plaster Creek Stewards kind of as a model of community engagement further. We’re a West Michigan regional organization. So, we’re from here to the Lakeshore. We have a large population sector that we engage with. And continuing to reconnect I think is our primary goal: reconnect people with the water, with the land, with the air that we’re so very much disconnected from now. 

00:23:57 Gail Heffner 

Can you say the question again and make sure? 

00:24:00 Jalisa Gilmore 

So, I think we were talking about future generations and what we want to see our community look like; and we know climate change is a big part of our future and our present, actually. What are the stories that you can share, all the work that you’re doing in your community to drive towards the vision of a liberated community, climate resilient community? 

00:24:26 Gail Heffner 

I think the thing that comes to mind for me is getting to know the people that were part of this place, long before I was here, and long before any of us were here. And so, getting to know indigenous people that are in our community has been a really rich lesson in my life… to begin to hear their stories and understand how they lived and what’s important in their life. So that’s a beginning.  

I think the other thing that’s really striking is… My hope and vision is that people that are young teenagers now, as well as young people, that they will really become leaders in their own communities. And so that’s what, to me, climate resilience is. People who can speak up, have courage to say what needs to be said and tell the truth, but also to take action. And some of the action’s personal in your life and some of it’s institutional and organizational. So, it’s kind of a combination of things. 

00:25:23 Dave Warners 

I’ll say a couple of specific things that we’ve been working on. Here in West Michigan, the projections with climate change, not only it’s going to get warmer, but we’re going to have more rain, and the rain is going to come in more intense storms over shorter durations. 

A big way to protect communities with that kind of future scenario is to create places where the water can be absorbed into the ground and where it’s not going to make it into the creek. So, it’s a little counterintuitive because creeks need water to be creeks. 

But when creeks get too much water then they cause problems and they flood downstream communities. So, we’ve been working on a curb rain garden project. So, we ditch out the area between the street and the sidewalk. And then we cut the curb so that the water coming down the street headed towards the storm drain gets diverted into that ditched out basin. And we plan it all with native plants; and the native plants do their good work with soaking that water up. So, after this summer, we should be over 150 of these urban curb cut rain gardens. 

And it’s been really exciting. You know, the other thing that that does is that a homeowner who feels like, “What can I do?” Suddenly they’ve got a curb cut rain garden. And when it rains, they see it’s all full of water. That’s water that didn’t make it to the creek. And so, they feel like they’re contributing. It’s a way of really pulling people in. Plus, they get a beautiful garden, and they don’t have to mow their lawn in that area. So there’s all kinds of perks.  

So, those the curb cut rain gardens have been a big project for us. We’re also working on restoring floodplain areas. In our watershed, you know, development happened, you know pretty much right down to the edge of the creek. And so, the floodplains were removed, and floodplains are like huge sponges that would soak up water when it rains. So, bringing floodplains back into some public areas like parks… and even we did one at a condo community, which was really surprising. They really wanted to become part of the solution, and we talked them into it, and they’ve been wonderful partners with us. Putting back some of these natural filters and natural sponge elements to the landscape is another good way to address climate change. 

00:27:31 Gail Heffner 

I think native plants is an act of decolonization. 

00:27:37 Jalisa Gilmore 

So, I kind of want to bring it back to the personal. Who do you want to become when the work is done? You can say one sentence or three words that you want to become…your own little style. But you know, keep it short. I want to hear from all four of you. 

00:27:51 Dave Warners 

So, one thing I’m definitely working on, and I need to get better at is just listening better and paying attention to voices that aren’t heard and helping to draw those voices forward. 

00:28:05 Carlos Calderon 

I had… my first gut reaction to this was: this work will never be done. But at the end of my time doing this, I hope that I’ll end up being a teacher, guide, a provider of support for the next generations. 

00:28:22 Dr. Angela Chalk 

I just want to retire for real. 

00:28:26 Gail Heffner 

Me too. 

00:28:37 Jalisa Gilmore 

That’s your me too? 

00:28:44 Renée Mazurek  

We so love being together with our network members, that laughter and connection carries us through until we can meet again. I hope that you enjoyed listening to the stories of these amazing leaders. More information about each is linked in our recording transcript. 

Also look for more Urban Waters resources at www.urbanwaterslearningnetwork.org, the initiative funded by EPA’s Office of Water in collaboration with the National Park Service – Rivers, Trails, and Conservation Assistance Program, and co-coordinated by Groundwork USA and River Network. Thanks so much for listening. This is Renée signing off and wishing you well.