Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021 - 39

pond in Knoxville's new park. She chose
to host it on Father's Day, she says, because of happy childhood memories made
while fishing with her dad and granddad.
" My grandfather would say, 'I think
you are the best fisherman I've ever seen,' "
she recalls. " And I would correct him by
saying, 'Fisher girl.' "
During her last three years with the
city, she worked in the communications
department of Mayor Madeline Rogero, who appointed Gibi to serve as the
city's liaison for Michelle Obama's " Let's
Move! Cities, Towns and Counties, " part
of the former First Lady's fight against
childhood obesity. When Knoxville and
Knox County were ranked No. 1 in the
" Let's Move! " effort, Gibi accompanied
Rogero to a White House ceremony recognizing the leaders. In 2015, the National League of Cities named Gibi its
Most Dedicated Staff Award winner for
her role in the effort.
That was also the year her future with
KTNRB began to take shape. At a Keep
Tennessee Beautiful conference, she was
" blown away " by Chad Pregracke, who
talked about his group's barge-based river cleanups immediately before her own

presentation on greenways. Gibi wasted
no time pitching the idea for a similar
event to the mayor and COO of Knoxville, who used their connections to reach
out to other mayors along the Tennessee
River watershed. Pregracke's group, Living
Lands & Waters, launched a cleanup tour
from Knoxville with sponsorship from
Keep Tennessee Beautiful and the Tennessee Valley Authority, and volunteers removed 22,000 pounds of trash in six cities
en route to Paducah, Kentucky.
Afterward, Pregracke challenged the
Knoxville organizers to keep the momentum going, and KTNRB was born. The

original director stepped down in late
2018, just as Mayor Rogero was wrapping
up her second term in office. An hour
after telling a friend she had a hunch it
was time to make a career move, Gibi was
asked to apply for the vacant post.
" An extra nudge toward taking the step
for this job, " she says, " was the idea that I
could do my part to help ensure that my
daughter's generation could grow up enjoying our beautiful natural resources. "
Another was Gibi's lifelong love of the waterway she'd be working to protect.
" I grew up in a part of Knoxville where
almost every day I was passing the river, "
she recalls. " And when my husband and I
moved back here [in 2006], we moved to
a part where we didn't drive past the river
and I started to notice a difference in my
mood. So it's always kind of been there. I
just didn't really know there was a way to
make a living at it. "
Since taking the helm of KTNRB, Gibi
has immersed herself in a number of projects, including Adopt a River Mile, Adopt
a Storm Drain ( " adopters " pledge to clean
a storm drain monthly), and a push to
place art-wrapped cigarette butt receptacles at marinas, campgrounds and water-

JOE HENDRICKSON PHOTOGRAPHY

ABOVE: Kathleen Gibi and a young volunteer roll
a semi tire to the boat at a Keep the Tennessee River
Watershed Beautiful Month cleanup on Nickajack Lake
of the Tennessee River near Chattanooga.
LEFT: These are some of the results of a partners'
cleanup on Norris Lake, part of the Clinch River, which
is a tributary of the Tennessee River.

JULIE GRAHAM

3 THINGS YOU CAN DO TO PROTECT OUR RIVERS
Eliminate one single-use item from your daily habits.
" It's very important to only try and give up one, " says Kathleen Gibi, executive director of Keep the Tennessee River Beautiful.
" It's like dieting. You'll overwhelm yourself if you try to give up plastic. "
Recycle and properly dispose of your trash.
Tighten garbage can lids and secure truck beds when hauling refuse. " If we have a storm, the wind will blow that trash out and
that's how all that stuff gets into our river, " says Gibi. " Eighty percent of what's in our river was originally littered on land. "
Do your part to clean up.
If you see trash, pick it up. Says Gibi, " You are helping our waterways even if you're in an inland downtown market square.
There are storm drains that go straight to the waterways, so any trash you pick up is saving our waterways. "
-NH

MARCH/APRIL 2021

Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Blue Ridge Country March/April 2021