At the River Alliance, we put the complex business we are involved in simple terms: we save rivers.
Our mission is to advocate for the protection, enhancement and restoration of Wisconsin’s rivers and watersheds.

Our membership is comprised of over 3,200 individual, organizational and business members. They are urban, rural and retired; anglers, paddlers and lovers of water. Some of our business members make their living from rivers, some run restaurants. Our members’ common interest is their passion for rivers and the inspiration they bring.

Core Principles
Our priorities and where we focus our efforts change from time to time, mimicking the ever-changing rivers we work to protect. But like a river’s steady current, the River Alliance adheres to some core principles that do not change with the times.

• We advocate respectively but assertively for rivers.
• We bring people to rivers so they experience their beauty and understand their threats.
• We partner with, when appropriate, and challenge, when necessary, the government agencies entrusted with protecting rivers.
• We develop the ability of ordinary citizens and grassroots groups to organize their passion for rivers.

Our Programs
Restore rivers through on-the-ground projects with local groups and citizens.

Current projects:
“Going Back to the Root” (River) in Racine, revitalizing downtown Racine through restoring the Root River.
Identifying invasive species in Wisconsin’s rivers, assess their potential threats, and engage citizens and organizations in monitoring or eradicating them.

Citizen water quality monitoring to enable citizens to plunge into their local streams and gather data to better understand those streams, and use their knowledge to advocate for river protection.

The Wisconsin River Initiative, organizing citizen advocates to clean up pollution in the Wisconsin River, watch-dog development projects, and conserve river shorelands, and generally raise consciousness about the state’s mother river.
Dam removal and hydro dam watch-dogging, encouraging well-informed citizen involvement in local dam decisions, and guide community decisions about dam removal.

Protect rivers by advocating for state and local policies that support rivers, and challenging those that degrade them.

Current priorities:
Push for state funding to prevent polluted runoff in agriculture.

Develop farming practices and policies in the “karst” regions of northeastern Wisconsin to protect drinking water supplies from manure contamination.

Designate two northern rivers -- the Totogatic and the Brunsweiler -- as new state “Wild Rivers” in 2009.

Strengthen Wisconsin’s groundwater pumping laws.

Support local river and watershed organizations and encourage local river conservation and advocacy

Current priorities:
Bring people to northern rivers through paddles, hikes, lectures and other events that directly and intimately engage them in the many facets of rivers.

Develop new organizations where our river restoration projects unfold (Racine and Petenwell Castle Rock flowages).

Offer trainings and technical assistance to local groups on fund raising, strategic planning, and issue advocacy.