Braving the Potomac River for Clean Water

It started at Sycamore Island. Joe Hage and Whit Overstreet pushed off from the shore in kayaks intending to paddle their way to Jefferson Island, 132 miles down the Potomac River.

Why go through the exhausting feat of rowing yourself through a dangerous current fighting the pains of lactic acid? For the love of the Potomac River.

Hage and Overstreet teamed up with Pure Potomac, part of Potomac Riverkeeper, a nonprofit organization that looks after the river, to use the trip as a way to get the message out and find out what the river means to its neighbors.

“Six million people get their drinking water from the Potomac river,” said Ted Adams, the program director of Riverkeeper. The goal of Pure Potomac is to make residents of the Washington area aware of this fact and think about ways to protect their water supply.

Hage, the caretaker for Sycamore Island, came up with the idea of an Island to Island marathon over seven days.

“It didn’t take a lot of convincing to get me to come along,” said Overstreet, Riverkeeper’s administrative assistant.

After leaving the island the duo went over Little Falls, which gets into Class III and IV rapids (Class IV is the most difficult).

From there the team moved to sea kayaks and paddled the rest of the way in the tidal parts of the river.

“Joe would get me up at 6 a.m., and we wouldn’t get to the campsites until 9 or 10 p.m.” Overstreet said.

The two were not paddling the whole time though. They stopped at local businesses, marinas and parks to talk to patrons about how the river affects them. They also had to stop for certain tides that hindered their paddling, although Overstreet admits that they did fight the tide a few times.

Overstreet used social media to track the trip, sending out tweets of their location and posting pictures of the trip on Facebook.

The trip also garnered a few sponsors, raising a couple thousand dollars. According to Adams and Overstreet, Pure Potomac plans to make Island to Island an annual event.