American Rivers: Fighting for North Carolina’s Waterways
Our North Carolina Forever Partner Spotlight series highlights a different NC Forever partner monthly, delving into their core mission, and how each unique partner provides valuable insight and expertise to our consensus-based mission to conserve our state’s land and water resources.
When it comes to the rivers and streams that define North Carolina’s landscape, few organizations have fought harder or longer to protect them than American Rivers. For more than 50 years, the national nonprofit has worked to safeguard the millions of miles of rivers and streams that supply our drinking water, sustain wildlife, and provide a myriad of recreational activities.
Their mission is simple, to work toward a future where every river is clean and healthy for people and wildlife. American Rivers pursues that mission through five areas of focus: Dam removal, flood plain restoration, river protection programs, hydro power reform, and their clean water program. Each of those items plays a vital role in keeping our waterways safe.
Infographic from American Rivers 2025 Impact Report shows the depth of work the organization takes on.
In North Carolina, American Rivers is led by Southeast Regional Director and NC Forever board member Peter Raabe. Raabe brings an extensive background in policy and advocacy work to American Rivers, itself a policy advocacy group, having worked on Capitol Hill and as a registered lobbyist both in Washington DC and in North Carolina.
Putting the Mission into Practice: The Ramseur Dam Removal
One example of American Rivers’ work in North Carolina is unfolding right now along the Deep River in the town of Ramseur. The Ramseur Dam, originally built in the early 1900s to power a sawmill and later a manufacturing facility, long ago outlived its usefulness. Today it blocks fish passage, degrades water quality, and poses a flood safety risk to the community downstream.
American Rivers is working alongside local leaders and partners to remove the dam and restore the Deep River to a free-flowing state for the first time in more than a century. An American Rivers article on the project envisions “a state trail along the Deep River [with] a continuous walking trail, termed greenway, winding alongside the river and a designated paddle trail, or blueway, stretching the length of the Deep River, reconnecting communities to the water and to each other.”
Learn more about the Ramseur Dam removal project:
A Seat at a Broader Table
A common theme among NC Forever partners is the belief that the various non-profit and corporate entities working together make everyone stronger. American Rivers and Raabe, specifically, brings a depth of experience in advocacy and policy that make a natural fit within the NC Forever coalition. Having spent his career working within state governments and agencies to advance conservation goals, he understands the steps needed to move policy and the patience required to see them through.
For Raabe, NC Forever’s value is in what it represents: a broad, consensus-driven coalition that gives the conservation community a far more powerful voice than any single organization could achieve alone.
“Without NC Forever, we wouldn’t all be able to be in the same room with our non-profit and corporate partners. It allows a conversation to have a much bigger impact.”
– Peter Raabe, American Rivers
That same diversity of voices is what American Rivers brings to the coalition in return. As the only organization specifically tasked to improve North Carolina’s waterways, American Rivers brings a unique expertise to discussions and legislative agenda planning for the group. Their expertise in water policy, river science, and community engagement complements the voices of land trusts, agriculture interests, outdoor recreation advocates, and the many other partners who make up NC Forever’s coalition.
Raabe cites the funding of the Trust Funds (Land and Water, Parks and Recreation, Agricultural Development and Farmland Preservation) as NC Forever goals that he finds particularly noteworthy. “With the development pressures in North Carolina, that changes the ecology of the watershed dramatically. The best way we can keep that ecology stable and sustainable is through land protections to the greatest extent possible, says Raabe.”
Together, that mix of expertise is what gives NC Forever its strength: a room full of people who each see the conservation landscape from a different angle, and who are united by a shared commitment to securing the funding North Carolina’s lands and waters deserve.
