I grew up in this area too and have noticed that both the Flint and the Hooch have both developed a smell over time. Each having their own distinctive smell, bu

I grew up in this area too and have noticed that both the Flint and the Hooch have both developed a smell over time. Each having their own distinctive smell, but both not smelling like what I knew to be a healthy river bed from growing up. This despite the conservation efforts on particularly the Hooch by high society Atlanta money. You don't have to go very far - Chattahoochee Hills will do - just to look at the river and see and smell how terrible it is. The Chattahoochee National Recreation Center is very nice, but it's far enough upstream before it goes through the industrial areas of south Cobb/Fulton so it hasn't developed "that smell". The Flint is no better. By the time you get to Albany it's almost putrid. The local riverfront society there has Turtle Grove Park, which in the small handful of times I've been was largely abandoned and taken over by homeless and junkies. Not sure which situation caused which, but the locals don't go there. Most of it comes from ag pollutants - pesticides, fertilizers, etc. There used to be a time where you could stand on the Broad Street bridge, drop a hook into the water with a chicken liver on it and pull up a mudcat that would feed an entire family. There's no way I'd eat anything out of that river - not any more.