Rusty Gates loved the Au Sable River. He fought for it. He spoke for it and guided others to protect it.
He leaves a legacy of conservation, environmental stewardship and untiring advocacy.
Gates, 54, died of lung cancer on Dec. 19 at his home not far from a stretch of river he called "Holy Water."
He was the founder and president of Anglers of the Au Sable, a 900-member advocacy group formed in 1987 to preserve the Au Sable watershed. He was owner of Gates Au Sable Lodge on Stephan Bridge Road along the Au Sable, about seven highway miles and 13 twisting river miles downstream from Grayling.
Gates in 2009 won the "River Guardian" award from the Northern Michigan Environmental Action Council.
The 129-mile-long Au Sable flows through the northern Lower Peninsula from Grayling to Oscoda and empties into Lake Huron. It is considered one of the best brown trout fisheries east of the Rockies.
The river also flowed through his life. He studied it, fished it. He was in his mid-teens in 1969 when his parents Cal and Mary Gates bought the fishing lodge. He learned that rivers, fish and wildlife need healthy ecosystems to survive.
It was his father, an Oscoda music teacher and avid trout fisherman, who coined the phrase "Holy Water" for the stretch between Burton's Landing and Wakeley Bridge. Rusty took over managing the lodge in 1983 when his father died. He and his wife, Julie, purchased it in 1990.
He led the Anglers through three long and highly publicized legal battles over the last 22 years to protect the river from a Camp Grayling expansion, natural gas drilling under the pristine Mason Tract and proposed dumping of treated toxic wastewater into Kolke Creek near Au Sable headwaters.
The Camp Grayling struggle started in 1987 and lasted through the 1990s. The Anglers contended a proposed 41,000-acre expansion on state land for a new multi-purpose artillery/bombing range with a multiple launch rocket system would increase noise and groundwater pollution near headwaters in Otsego County. The expansion eventually occurred -- with public scrutiny.
The Anglers took on state and federal agencies from 2002 to 2008 over a permit the U.S. Forest Service granted to Savoy Energy to drill for natural gas under the Mason Tract, a 4,700-acre scenic wilderness area along 14 miles of the river. A federal judge blocked the permit last year, saying the Forest Service "acted arbitrarily and capriciously" in finding no significant environmental impact from the proposed drilling.
The Anglers also won its 2002 to 2008 fight to halt a state-approved plan to allow Merit Energy to dump 1.15 million gallons of treated toxic groundwater a day into Kolke Creek. The plume was from an old Shell well site in Otsego County's Hayes Township.
Rusty Gates will be missed, but his legacy flows in the protected river. May his advocacy live on in the Anglers of the Au Sable because Rusty was right. The Au Sable must always be guarded.
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