Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, July 21, 1994 TAG: 9407210092
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Virginia's rivers and streams appear to be in good overall health, although a few trouble spots remain, according to a report released this week by the state Department of Environmental Quality.
And, of the nine major river basins, the Roanoke River and New River basins are faring well.
"We, more than most other states, have a really good handle on what's going on out there," said Ron Gregory, chief of water quality assessment and planning for the state.
Eighty-seven percent of Virginia's waterways monitored by the state met key federal standards for water quality - fishing, shellfishing, swimming, aquatic life and drinking water - from July 1991 through June 1993.
States are required to prepare the water quality report for Congress every two years. Gregory said Virginia has consistently increased the number of miles it monitors and is now up to 34,553 miles. That's twice as many as in 1992 and about 77 percent of all the state's river miles.
Virginia ranked third for the number of miles monitored for the last report.
In the Roanoke River basin, 8,696 miles were assessed and met at least one of four standards, excluding shellfishing. Not all sections of the rivers were monitored for all the standards, Gregory said.
Fifteen miles near Clover were found to contain elevated levels of PCBs, but not above Food and Drug Administration standards, he said.
The basin extends from the headwaters in Montgomery County to Kerr Reservoir at the North Carolina border and flows through 16 counties and six cities with 642,747 residents. About 62 percent is forested, 25 percent is cropland or pasture, and 10 percent is considered urban.
The New River basin is the most sparsely populated of the nine major basins, with 203,160 people. About 59 percent is forested, 35 percent is cropland and pasture, and 3 percent urban in the 11-county basin.
Of 175 miles checked for toxins, none were found to have elevated levels, according to the report. A total of 3,971 miles were monitored in the New River basin for one or more of the standards.
Throughout the state, fecal coliform bacteria, which is associated with human and animal waste, was the chief pollutant found in rivers and streams.
Five areas are under fish consumption advisories due to toxic pollutants - south and north forks of Shenandoah River for PCBs, south fork of the Shenandoah River and the South River for mercury, North Fork of the Holston River for mercury, Blackwater and Nottoway rivers for dioxin, and the lower James River and its tributaries for kepone, a chlorinated insecticide that was produced in Virginia between 1966 and 1975.
Gregory said Virginia has expanded its monitoring program since 1986, when only 4,000 river miles were checked, mostly areas around major industrial and public discharges that were suspected of being polluted.
The state has tripled the number of monitoring stations, from about 300 to 900, although many of the samples are taken on a quarterly, rather than monthly basis.
Bill Tanger, president of Friends of the Roanoke River, called the bi-annual reports a good sketch of the state's water quality but said they fail to capture major events that can damage a river system.
For instance, he said, the second-largest fish kill in the state, which wiped out all aquatic life in a Montgomery County stream a couple of years ago from a manure spill, probably wouldn't be reflected in the report.
Gregory said, however, that the trend in water quality is promising.
"We have made tremendous strides in water quality since the Clean Water Act, in 1972," he said. A total of $1.7 billion in local, state and federal money has been spent during that time to upgrade municipal sewage plants. Industries also have made significant improvements, largely through regulations.
Non-point sources of pollution - runoff from streets and farms and lawns - seem about stable because of the tradeoff from decreasing agricultural pollution and increasing urban runoff from residential and commercial development, Gregory said.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency has awarded $1.65 million to Virginia for projects in non-point source management, monitoring, agricultural management, land reclamation and endangered species in high priority watersheds.
The grant will be administered by the Department of Conservation and Recreation.
by CNB