The River Advocate: Harpur Fellow finds her mission in protecting the Susquehanna
Wendy Skinner’s project includes community education, river cleanups and a future book
On her drive to campus, Wendy Skinner couldn’t help but notice the mighty Susquehanna, its broad waters shining in the sun on its long journey to the Chesapeake Bay.
While the Ithaca resident is pursuing a master’s degree in English at , she’s no stranger to environmental activism. She’s been involved in climate activism for 25 years and, in 2007, founded a not-for-profit reuse program that helped divert usable goods from landfills, reduce greenhouse gases, and inspire a reuse culture in her community.
“The river’s grandeur and ever-changing beauty captured my heart. As I learned more about it, I became concerned for its health and began to research it more thoroughly,” said Skinner, a writer and freelance journalist.
Most Harpur Fellows are undergraduates who do their project in the summer before their senior year. That didn’t deter Skinner, who decided to turn her love of the Susquehanna into a community service project, “Meet the Susquehanna.”
For her master’s degree, Skinner is focused on fiction and environmental storytelling. She drew on her writing and research skills early in the project, as she sought to learn more about the river’s history, geology, flora and fauna, and how development has caused its progressive degradation.
To share this knowledge with others, she designed an information booth with posters, maps and handouts, and brought it to five community events around the Southern Tier.
“Despite living next to the river, some people were amazed to learn that it is 444 miles long, travels through three states, and has a watershed as big as South Carolina,” she reflected. “Others I met knew much more than I do, from having spent a thousand long summer days paddling and fishing the river, living through floods, or remembering seeing brightly colored effluvia entering the flow from an industrial site. Talking with people about the Susquehanna has been the most rewarding part of this adventure.”
This spring, she will also teach a four-class adult education series on the Susquehanna River and watershed at Lyceum, with the help of a Lyceum Graduate grant. She has also accepted an invitation from the Kopernik Observatory and Science Center in Vestal to help develop a curriculum on the Susquehanna watershed.
Thus far, her fellowship funds have gone toward developing and producing educational materials, conference costs, donations of tools and supplies to river conservation groups, and more.
She’s reserving some funds for a campaign to collect and keep tires out of local waterways, in partnership with local Lions Clubs and other community groups. Over the summer, she joined river cleanups in Cooperstown, NY, and Sunbury, PA, where tires were routinely hauled from the river’s waters.
“I learned that car and truck tires shed and leach chemicals, heavy metals and microplastics into the Susquehanna River, which supplies drinking water to 4 million households,” she said. “Some of these substances, which number in the thousands, are recognized as carcinogens or other threats to human and animal life, and the effects of others are unknown and understudied.”
To help supplement established river cleanups, she plans to get out on the waterway herself with a kayak and chest-waders to identify areas of concern.
Her long-term goal is to write a comprehensive book about the Susquehanna. In the meantime, she is writing shorter pieces to submit to journals or post to Susquehanna Magazine, an online resource she founded as part of this project.
Skinner is grateful to be a Harpur Fellow, and for the guidance she has received from Harpur Edge Director Erin Cody and the Center for Civic Engagement’s Barrett Brenton.
“The fellowship has helped me to build lasting relationships with others who are working to protect the river. At age 79, I’ve become a ‘river advocate, community educator and storyteller on behalf of the river, roles I expect to expand and maintain for the rest of my life,” she said. “I have a lot more to learn, and I’m nowhere near slowing down.”