news story / By Bob Doran

Destination Iraq

Baykeepers’ latest mission, helping save Eden

(March 31, 2011)  One morning last September Pete Nichols of Humboldt Baykeeper was up early working, listening to the radio in the background. Something on the BBC news caught his attention.

“I heard an interview with this Iraqi, Azzam Alwash, talking about his [river] restoration work for an organization called Nature Iraq.” Nichols recalled. “It was this fantastic story of restoring the wetlands that were supposedly the Garden of Eden.”

He decided to learn more. Now, six months later, Nichols is catching a plane to the Middle East — destination Iraq. He leaves this week to go meet Azzam Alwash in person.

Nichols established Humboldt Baykeeper seven years ago as part of the larger Waterkeeper Alliance, an advocacy organization started 15 years ago by Robert Kennedy Jr., initially bringing together likeminded groups on the East Coast. “The Hudson Riverkeeper group was the genesis of it all; that was started by commercial fishermen in the ‘60s,” said Nichols. “There are 192 groups right now, nationally and internationally.” And the next may be Waterkeeper Iraq.

Since Nichols serves on the Waterkeeper board, he’s among those responsible for what are known as site visits, basically checking out new chapters before they are brought into the fold. One such visit took him to China two years ago; this one is a bit different.

“I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little nervous about it,” he admitted. “I’ve been trained by the media to have a certain picture of Iraq in my head; I’m looking forward to dispelling that and creating a new vision for myself. You know, you meet people and start talking about their way of life, and nature, and you always find a lot of commonality.” 

He sensed a commonality with Alwash six months ago when he googled his name to learn about his work. Born in Iraq and raised in Nasiryah by a father who served as an irrigation engineer, Alwash came to the California in 1978 and earned civil engineering degrees from CSU Fullerton and USC.

In 1998, he and his geologist wife Suzanne founded a group called Eden Again to focus attention on the intentional draining of the marshes at the delta on the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, an area you may remember from your history books as Mesopotamia, the “Cradle of Civilization.”

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