Trash talking: keys to making a clean river

ANDY THOMPSON TIMES-DISPATCH COLUMNIST
Published: January 9, 2009

-- The James River watershed covers an area of more than 10,000 square miles - about a quarter of the state of Virginia.

For the past 33 years, the James River Association has acted as a guardian of the river and the land that washes into it.

In that time, the river has become cleaner, but much work remains to be done.

The JRA's recent annual report, which identified a number of successes from the past year as well as future challenges, provides a convenient jumping off point for a conversation with JRA Executive Director Bill Street about his organization and the state of the James.

Q:Last year, the river's health scored a 52 percent in the JRA's State of the James River report. What does that mean in terms of how far the river has come and how much more remains to be done?

Answer: Twenty or 30 years ago, people didn't want to have anything to do with the river. The river was closed [because of] Kepone. There was raw sewage going into the river.

Richmond really turned its back on the river. The way we got to where we are today is really addressing the industrial discharges and wastewater treatment plants and adding a lot better treatment.

They didn't seem that controllable then, but now in retrospect, that was the easiest piece to control because it was all coming out of that one pipe.

Those "point-source pollutants" have really declined despite our population increasing and our economy growing.

Q:Where do today's challenges come from?

Answer: The largest source of non-point-source pollution is agriculture just because of the sheer acreage that it covers.

That really is the best option for getting us the rest of the way that we need to to have a healthy James River. That's the most cost-effective investment we can make now.

So [the JRA is] very active in working to get funding for farmers to get stream fencing to keep cattle out, to plant trees and shrubs along streams and creeks, to do nutrient management, to do cover crops and conservation tillage methods.

Q:So, since point sources largely have been addressed, reducing runoff from agriculture is key. What about pollution from development?

Answer: That's the third piece we'll need to address to have a healthy James in the future - development and stormwater runoff and all the pollution that comes with that.

Development is the one place where pollution is actually increasing. Point sources and agricultural pollution have actually been declining over the past two decades, while pollution from urban areas has been increasing. We need to set up a system whereby we'll be able to accommodate future growth but also have healthy streams and rivers.

Q:Specifically, what has been the JRA's approach to facilitating those changes?

Answer: We have three priorities: First is funding to help farmers implement conservation practices. If we could get consistent funding from the state, that would be the best investment we could make.

The second thing is making Virginia's stormwater permits consistent with the cleanup plans we have for the James River.

Third is local development codes and ordinances. We need to make sure those promote what's called "low-impact development" using the techniques that have been developed in past 10-20 years. Often local development codes make it more difficult to implement those practices.

Q:If you could pass one law to help the health of the James, what would it be?

Answer: That is a tough question, because there really is no silver bullet. That's the challenge we face. When point sources were the major challenge, it was a pretty manageable number - 50-100.

Now, we're getting to the point where we've got thousands of farmers, hundreds of developers and 2.5 million people that are all contributing to the polluted runoff in the James River watershed, so the number of people we need to have involved has grown tremendously. So that poses a much different challenge.

There's a real paradox going on: We now need more and more people taking action to make the river healthier, but our society is becoming more and more disconnected from the natural environment. Connecting people to the river and giving them that personal connection and personal stake and understanding why it's important that we have healthy streams and healthy rivers is another one of our top priorities.