THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, April 20, 1995 TAG: 9504200442
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY DEBBIE MESSINA, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: VIRGINIA BEACH LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
Innocuous lawn practices like cutting your grass frequently or fertilizing during the wrong season may actually be choking the life out of the rivers and bays that distinguish our area.
Simple gardening decisions about what to plant around your house and where you plant it also contribute to the health of our waters.
The Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay hopes to teach conservation techniques through a new two-year project that uses residents along the Lynnhaven River in Virginia Beach as a model for others to follow.
Waterfront homeowners will be asked to volunteer their yards for demonstration projects that will test environmentally sound landscape practices - known as Bay-Scapes - developed by the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay.
Volunteers' yards will be landscaped using Bay-Scapes techniques that divert or slow down fast-moving runoff, or absorb the runoff. The methods include planting ground covers to filter runoff or creating slight ditches, or swales, to trap runoff.
The toxins, nutrients and sediments carried in that runoff choke off sunlight, oxygen and subsequently life to the river.
Altered lawn maintenance practices - like less frequent mowing, fertilizing and pesticide application - will be used to reduce sediment, toxins and nutrients in the runoff.
Monitoring stations will be set up on the properties to measure the volume, velocity and quality of the water that runs off the land and into the water.
The Lynnhaven River was chosen as Virginia's exclusive implementation site for Bay-Scapes because of the residential nature of its watershed. A similar program will be set up in Maryland.
``The feeling in Virginia is that it holds great promise for stewardship on the part of individuals,'' said Billy Mills of the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay. ``This is a very residential river, so what's going to keep it under control is decisions that individual landowners make.''
The program will begin Friday with a daylong symposium aimed at educating residents along the Lynnhaven River and Linkhorn and Broad bays about the practices and encouraging them to volunteer for the project. The symposium, the first of several aimed at various groups, is sponsored by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and the city of Virginia Beach.
``I don't think people understand the relationship between their lives and water quality in the Lynnhaven,'' said Mike Kensler, director of the local office of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. ``Here's an opportunity for folks who live in the Lynnhaven watershed to really make a difference in the future of the river if they live in a more environmentally sensible way.''
Once one of the most productive shellfisheries in the nation, shellfish grounds in the river and its estuaries were condemned in 1985 because of pollution, specifically high levels of fecal coliform bacteria.
The ban sounded the death knell to the once world-famous Lynnhaven oyster and subsequently to some fishing livelihoods.
The demonstration project on the Lynnhaven River is being funded by a $46,000 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency with matching money provided by the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, the Alliance for the Chesapeake Bay and a host of local agencies and community groups.
The project includes a demonstration landscape and information kiosk at Seashore State Park for public viewing.
Also as part of the project, volunteers are being sought to monitor water quality at 15 sites along the river for two years.
Adults are needed to do weekly samplings; and junior high school and high school students are needed to do twice annual samplings.
``I think over the course of two years, we will be able to introduce this very effective information-gathering network and report what our findings are to all the decision makers in the Virginia Beach area,'' Mills said. ILLUSTRATION: TO KNOW MORE
``The Lynnhaven River: A Stewardship Challenge for the Future'' will
be held from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Friday at the Virginia Beach Central
Library. Registration fee, which includes lunch, is $10. For
information, call the Chesapeake Bay Foundation at 622-1964 or the
Virginia Beach Planning Department at 427-4621.
by CNB