Heart of Albany – the Flint River – still beating: Waterway presents new opportunities for the city

ALBANY — The Flint River flows through the heart of downtown Albany. When the city was built, it was constructed around the river, which provided an abundant natural resource and opportunities for growth.

In Albany, the Flint is poised uniquely on top of the Floridan aquifer, which is one of the principal aquifers in the United States — one of the most productive in the world, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Hundreds of millions of gallons of cool, fresh groundwater are pumped into the Flint’s waters, which allows southwest Georgians to use it for agricultural irrigation.

The city is working on revitalizing the river through a major stormwater and sewer project as well as looking into new planning grants for development along the river.

Many Albanians have fond memories of growing up fishing, boating, camping and kayaking on the river.

The bedrock of the portion of the river that flows through Albany is made up of porous limestone, Henry Jackson, the Flint Riverkeeper’s outreach and development director, said. There’s a direct relationship between the surface waters of the Flint and the groundwater from the aquifer.

This creates places like Radium Springs, which is one of Georgia’s seven natural wonders and a main attractor to Albany, along with multiple other blue holes that exist along the Flint — some open to the public and some not.

“It’s a fascinating environment and provides additional flow to the river, which is extremely important right now,” Jackson said. “That cold water being added to the river helps stabilize water temperatures, which is healthier for the river and aquatic life.”

These features are special, he said, adding the portion of the Flint that flows through Albany has much potential for usability and revitalization of the community.

Kayaking and other paddle sports along the Flint have grown in popularity in the last few years — especially, Jackson said, during the COVID pandemic when gyms were closed.

“People need a place to go,” he said. “They need sunlight, they need movement, they need challenge, and they need somewhere to venture out and explore and experience. The Flint River gives us all of that.”

Jeanne Yarger owns the Flint River Outpost, a canoe and kayaking service that has operated since 2001. Her most popular trip is a 4-hour paddle that begins at Radium Springs and goes all the way to Mitchell County.

People travel from all over to kayak the Flint, she said. She has regulars from north Georgia, Florida and Alabama. She’s had people travel from as far as Martha’s Vineyard or Indiana just to get on the river and catch Shoal Bass, a fish native to the subtropical waters of Georgia, Florida and eastern Alabama.

“I definitely think that the Flint is a tool that could be used to attract people to Albany or just to keep people busy in Albany,” Yarger said. “The fishing is phenomenal. There’s so much to do in that river.”

However, Visit Albany GA Executive Director Rashelle Minix said right now the Flint is an attraction, not an attractor. Visit Albany does a lot of promotion for recreational activities along the Flint. Using digital marketing and geofencing, they feed information about attractions to people who enter Albany. However, Minix said she believes there’s still a lack of visibility.

“That has a lot to do with the accessibility,” she said. “If you don’t have your own kayak, your own boat, those types of things. It makes it more difficult.”

Adding a brick-and-mortar kayak outpost in Albany’s downtown could push the Flint toward becoming an attractor, she said. The city added trails, docks and launches a few years ago, she said, and already it makes the river more accessible.

Glenn Singfield II, co-owner of the Albany Fish Company and The Flint restaurants, saw another area of opportunity in revitalizing the downtown area of Albany that sits next to the Flint. After traveling outside of Georgia for a while, Singfield said he saw a need for more diverse restaurants in Albany.

The goal of The Flint, on Pine Avenue, was to connect the city of Albany to its history — especially that of the river.

“When my father put the name on the table, he said, ‘Let’s just name it The Flint, man,’” Singfield said. “It’s strong; it makes a statement. The Flint River is synonymous with Albany, Georgia. This is the mighty Flint. We are the mighty Flint restaurant.”

The restaurant is housed in an old cotton exchange built in the 1900s. While redoing the building, the Singfields dug 30 feet into the ground, unveiling historic artifacts like carriages and objects from the Creek Natives who first inhabited land along the Flint River.

The ancient Eastern Woodland tribes that settled near the Flint called the river and village Thronateeska, or Thlonotiaske, meaning “flint picking-up place.” The Muskogee natives called the river Hlonotiskakachi. Hlonoto means “flint” in Muskogean, the Flint Riverkeeper’s site reads.

Today, artifacts and remnants of arrowheads can still be found along the riverbed.

Singfield honors this native history through artworks depicting the Creek natives and other pieces reflecting their heritage.

Singfield’s mother, Tandra, opened her first business in the early ’80s on Jackson Street. As a kid, he said he remembers downtown Albany filled with businesses — all the stuff you could need, right in the heart of downtown and alongside the river.

In the 1990s and early 2000s, the city began developing west and north. Now, though, Singfield said he believes people are ready to come back downtown.

“I see beautiful things going down here … with people walking and shopping,” he said. “This is also a great part of the city.”

The health of the river

The Flint Riverkeeper’s office is constantly trying to create and maintain the love between the river and Albanians. This involves not only being active on the river but understanding the health of the river, officials with the organization said.

In a workshop hosted by the Albany Museum of Art and visiting artist Ashley Cecil, the Riverkeeper’s staff worked with the artist to demonstrate the connection between humans and the river.

“I think, sadly, a lot of people don’t realize the really literal and straightforward connection with water,” she said. “I mean, we are made of water, more than anything. What you put in the water, you are putting that into yourself.”

A demonstration from the Flint Riverkeeper’s R.J. Gipaya and Jessica Rutledge showed how different pollution sources can flow into a body of water.

“Once you reach Albany, we’re somewhere around mile 300 of the river,” Gipaya, the group’s watershed specialist, said. “So it’s collecting everything … from the Atlanta airport, all the way down to here.”

Pollution in the Flint can stem from both point source and nonpoint source pollution. Agricultural and industrial runoff are huge contributors, but sometimes sources can be hard to pinpoint, Rutledge, the operations coordinator said.

The Floridan Aquifer runs from southwest Georgia all the way to Savannah and halfway through Florida. So the pollution that Albany’s Flint River gets is seeping in and spreading to other communities, Gipaya said.

Albany operates on a combined sewer overflow system. Stormwater and wastewater are collected into a single pipe, Jackson said. This system functions well during dry weather or moderate rainfall, but during extended rainfall there can be too much water moving through the pipes, and some of it has to be discharged.

The city has permitted legal discharges along the river, he said.

“It’s legal pollution, but it is still pollution,” Jackson said. “The ultimate goal is that none of that water goes to the river until it passes through the wastewater treatment plant.”

In 2020, the city was issued an Environmental Protection Department directive requiring 85% of combined sewer flow go to a treatment plant by 2025.

Currently, a more than $100 million project to separate the stormwater and sewage systems is in progress. The city announced in the beginning of August that the project was on schedule to meet the federally mandated deadline.

“It’s expensive and it’s time-consuming and it’s just rough,” Jackson said. “Streets are being closed down, sidewalks are being ripped out, pipes are being replaced. So this is a big deal.”

So, what could future use of the river look like in Albany?

Albany City Commissioner Chad Warbington said the city is in the progress of applying for a planning grant to provide a bridge and access to about 100 acres of land north of the downtown Flint RiverQuarium attraction.

In 1996, a master plan was developed by the Albany Tomorrow group to develop a Third Avenue promenade that extended all the way to the river. Developing these acres can easily lead to more greenspace, walking and biking trails. Ten to 20 of the acres, outside of the area considered a flood plain, could be developed into apartments that overlook the river.

This bridge would most likely be connected to the area around the downtown Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital, Warbington said.

“There’s just so much potential between Phoebe and the river,” he said. “All that land at the moment is just untouched and nobody has ever done anything with it.”

Scott Steiner, the Phoebe Health System’s president and CEO, said Phoebe is ready to partner with the city for potential development along the river.

Steiner, who grew up alongside the Mississippi River, said he’s seen the impact a river can have on a community. He said he believes giving more people access to the river by developing housing and businesses near it is a tool to attract people into the city — especially young people.

“I’ve got 600 job openings — most likely the average age of people that I’m going to hire is going to be in their 20s or 30s,” Steiner said. “That’s what I think younger people are looking for. You don’t come to southwest Georgia … because you want to be around 5 million people. You’re here because … you want to engage with nature. We need to use that.

“As a community, as we think about growth, as we think about the next generation that’s going to live in southwest Georgia and Albany, let’s get into this untapped resource.”

However, Rutledge with the Riverkeeper office warns that developing along the Flint is a fine line. The city must proceed with caution.

“I do think that it is a great asset for Albany, for southwest Georgia, that is underutilized and could help,” she said “But in the same vein, you have to be careful about the growth. You don’t want to overuse it, or devalue what it already is by developing into something else.”