But Dove could not turn his back on the long, lazy river that winds through the farmlands of eastern North Carolina to the sea. The former Marine began rallying some new troops. Their mission: to whip the Neuse back into shape.

A War on Water Pollution
In 1993 Dove learned that the Neuse River Foundation needed a "river keeper," someone who would patrol its waters and report on its condition. Dove convinced the foundation that he was the man for the job.

Since then, the group has grown from about 200 members to an army of nearly 2,500. Their enemy: pollution in the Neuse. Nearby hog farms produce tons of smelly waste that sometimes washes into the river, and fast-growing towns send fertilizer and other pollutants into the water.

Dove constantly patrols the waters on his boat, The Lonesome Dove. Some volunteers, called the Neuse River Air Force, study the river from an airplane. They even take aerial photographs of hog waste and oil spilling into the river as evidence for the state's division of water quality. Creek Keepers march along the shore, watching for unusual changes in the river and its tributary creeks.

The worst moments came in the summer and fall of 1995, when millions of dead or dying fish swirled in the waters. A tiny organism called pfiesteria (feest-eer-ee-a) was attacking and killing them. Scientists say that when there's too much nitrogen in the water, the deadly pfiesteria cells multiply rapidly. Says Dove: "To see fish die like that--by the millions--it makes you angry."

Dove and his army fought back. They photographed the fish to bring attention to the outbreak. They took journalists and lawmakers out on river patrols to see the crisis for themselves.

State leaders seem to have paid attention to Dove's work. North Carolina will buy land along the Neuse's riverbanks to protect strips of forest that act as a filter for polluted runoff. In 1997 the state passed a law that includes tougher rules about river dumping.

Dove has even recruited kids for this battle. A bunch of fifth-graders marked every single storm drain in their 300-acre neighborhood with a sign reading drains to the neuse river: storm water only. The signs help people realize that when they dump dirty stuff into the drains, it ends up in the river.

The Neuse has a long way to go before it is completely clean again. Dove and his soldiers stepped in just in time, and they have won some important battles. "The river has her own spirit," Dove says. "She's alive; she's beautiful. I'd be lying if I didn't tell you I was in love with this river."