THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, June 21, 1996 TAG: 9606210504
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 195 lines
After four years of debate and negotiation, an unlikely coalition of citizens, business executives, naval officers and environmentalists released a plan Thursday to begin cleaning up the desperately polluted Elizabeth River.
The 18-point plan written by the Elizabeth River Project sets broad, voluntary goals through 2010 to revive the historic waterway, which has helped define Hampton Roads as an international port and industrial center.
The plan was sealed with the signing of a ``Declaration of Interdependence'' by several local mayors, civic leaders, corporate executives, state government officials, Navy and Army officers. It pledges future support and resources for the restoration efforts in the future.
Without the threat of government regulation or penalty, the plan asks for civic-minded action from people and interests across the political spectrum - to reduce new pollution flows, replant forests and wetlands, curb dirty runoff from homes and development, expand environmental education, and purge intensely toxic wastes trapped in river sediments.
``We're not looking for another big government program; in fact, we always wanted to go the opposite way,'' said Ray E. Moses, president of the Elizabeth River Project and a retired rear admiral from Virginia Beach.
``We're looking for education, and for reasonable people to do reasonable things,'' Moses added. ``We don't think that's too much to ask.''
Amid the fanfare of a Hollywood premiere, hundreds gathered at Nauticus in Norfolk Thursday night to unveil the long-awaited plan. They toasted the river, their community and the hard work that lay ahead, clinking plastic glasses filled with wine and champagne.
A keynote speech was given by Charles Kuralt, the folksy CBS newsman and best-selling author, whose own family roots trace to areas near the southern reaches of the Elizabeth River, inside the North Carolina line.
``You have the resources, you have the people and I'm persuaded you have the will, too, to give this river a rebirth,'' Kuralt said.
Recalling the slow, ongoing restoration of the Hudson River, near his New York home, Kuralt said: ``Even the most hopeless rivers can be brought back to life if only indifference can be overcome. And I sense no indifference here tonight.''
An all-day conference is planned for today to explore the plan in detail and to encourage public participation in this unique environmental effort that could take years, if not decades, to accomplish. Devising teams to monitor water-quality improvements and overall project advances will be one focus of the session.
The Elizabeth, stretching from the Great Dismal Swamp to Chesapeake Bay, and bisecting the economic heart of Norfolk and Portsmouth, is one of the most highly polluted rivers in the country.
There are fish with cancerous sores. There are fearsome pollutants, such as mercury, arsenic and DDT. There are junk boats leaking oil. There are chemical factories, manufacturing plants, a huge trash incinerator and a Navy shipyard that works on nuclear-powered warships.
Shellfish harvesting has been banned since 1925 because of thick pollution. And swimming in much of the Elizabeth is considered a health risk, especially in the highly industrialized Eastern and Southern branches.
But one of the more eye-opening revelations from research conducted in preparing the plan is that stormwater runoff - from streets, lawns, storm drains and parking lots - is as much to blame as any smoke-breathing factory.
``I think a lot of people came into this with some preconceived notions about what's killing the river,'' said Mike Host, head of the environmental division at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard. ``But a lot of the big industries, the big sources, are highly regulated already.
``So I think a lot of people came away with a better understanding that probably what we put on our front lawns is causing much of the problem now,'' Host said.
To wit: More than 500,000 people live within the Elizabeth's 300-square-mile watershed, contributing millions of gallons of sewage to the river, plus pesticides and fertilizers from lawns and gardens, and oily runoff from streets and parking lots.
While progress has been made in recent years - sea birds are back in greater numbers and dolphins can be seen swimming inside the river again, for example - much remains to be done.
Project leaders say they have few illusions about restoring the Elizabeth to its original form, as first viewed by English explorers in the 17th century - a wide, lush and wild tidal basin teeming with fish and shellfish.
To turn the clock back that far would require stripping the river of its dense industrial and commercial development, which also happens to be the economic lifeblood of South Hampton Roads.
Instead, the project seeks to instill respect and sensitivity for the river as a natural system, and to restore its decimated ecology in a gentle, gradual way that does not strangle economic growth, explained Marjorie Mayfield, a former journalist who now coordinates the Elizabeth River Project.
As has been the hallmark of the grass-roots project since its humble beginnings around a kitchen table in 1991, cooperation and consensus are at the heart of the plan.
Government agencies, which traditionally have spearheaded such cleanup campaigns elsewhere, are involved here more in the background, offering technical advice, grant money and research.
The move was intentional, Mayfield said, in order to encourage all parties into the negotiations and to promote what she described as ``a bottom-up approach'' to solving a community problem.
Whether this ambitious task can be accomplished without the powerful hand of government leading the way remains an open question. Many conservation groups believe that, at best, a river cleanup needs both a tough government presence and a committed community.
Without either, the groups said, results are often blurred.
``Action can be pushed by citizens - and should be pushed by citizens. But a weak state or local government presence can only hope to produce a holding pattern, we've found,'' said Victor McMahan, director of urban rivers programs for American Rivers, a national environmental organization in Washington, D.C.
Even project leaders are anxious. Asked if the Elizabeth can be seriously cleaned up without stricter regulations and the threat of government sanctions looming over the heads of would-be polluters, Mayfield smiled.
``That's a good question,'' she said. ``We certainly hope so. And I can tell you we're certainly going to try.''
Robert Hale, an environmental chemist and associate professor at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science, who also participated in the project, believes the citizen-led effort will lead to significant improvements. But he remains a realist.
``I think what we'll see is that there will always be severely degraded sections of the river,'' such as the Southern Branch, Hale said. ``But I also think other sections can be improved, and improved quite extensively, to the satisfaction of even the most green of advocates.'' MEMO: HIGHLIGHTS\ Critical Areas identified by the Elizabeth River
Project action team
-Reduce sediment contamination
-Increase wetlands, vegetated buffers and forested areas
-Engage in pollution prevention and sustainable landscaping
-Reduce pollution from stormwater runoff
-Establish an Elizabeth River monitoring progaam and data bank
ACTION PLAN
The Elizabeth River Project's Watershed Action Plan to restore the
Elizabeth River:
1. Reduce sediment contamination in the Elizabeth River to levels
non-toxic to humans and aquatic life, remediating the highest-priority
contaminated sites by 2010.
2. Increase vegetated buffers, wetlands acreage and forested areas.
3. Implement habitat enhancement programs at 25 percent of business
and government facilities in the watershed by the year 2005.
4. Minimize erosion along rapidly eroding shorelines by 2010, also
rehabilitating existing hardened shorelines to use naturalized erosion
measures wherever practical.
5. Establish pollution prevention and/or sustainable landscaping
practices among 25 percent of residential, commercial and government
land users in the watershed by the year 2005.
6. Reduce pollution from stormwater runoff to the maximum practical
extent.
7. Identify and correct inadequate sanitary collection systems, to
reduce human health risks and ecological risks from fecal coliform
bacteria in the Elizabeth River.
8. Reduce TBT - the ship-hull paint ingredient that minimizes
barnacle encrustation - to non-toxic levels in the Elizabeth River
waters and sediment, while enhancing the opportunity for continued
competitiveness of Virginia's shipping, shipbuilding and other related
businesses.
9. Promote mass transit and alternate transportation, based on a
recognition of automotive usage as a major source of pollution in the
Elizabeth River.
10. Enhance compliance with existing regulations.
11. Enhance marketability of Hampton Roads through achieving a
cleaner environment, working with localities and the Chamber of
Commerce's Plan 2007.
12. Increase public access to the Elizabeth River for the purpose of
increasing appreciation of the river and support for restoration.
13. Remove abandoned vessels and pilings, where possible also
conserving or replacing habitat.
14. Establish and maintain an Elizabeth River monitoring program and
data bank to provide the scientific foundation for protecting, restoring
and sustaining living resources and human health in the Elizabeth River
watershed.
15. Determine the ecological effects of Craney Island operations on
the Elizabeth River, with the purpose of reaching consensus among
interested parties about best management practices and remediation
needs. Craney Island is a repository for dredge spoils.
16. Develop and implement a ``load allocation approach'' as a
voluntary tool for making more informed, most cost-effective decisions
on how to manage the Elizabeth River.
17. Develop a nutrients task force to establish Elizabeth River
nutrient goals and bases for goals, and to recommend control measures
needed to achieve goals.
18. Build strong partnerships between the Elizabeth River Project and
all public and private authorities relevant to this plan, for the
purposes of ensuring public input and support; achieving environmental
equity; and promoting speedy, effective implementation and enhancing
regional watershed planning. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo
Charles Kuralt: ``Even the most hopeless rivers can be brought back
. . .''
The Virginian-Pilot file color photo
The Elizabeth River: A magnet for industry and defense. Today, the
Elizabeth River Project conducts an all-day conference to examine
the plan and plot ways to monitor improvement.
Graphic by JOHN CORBITT, The Virginian-Pilot
Contaminants of concern
Pollutants pose the biggest problems for the health of the river
For complete information see microfilm
KEYWORDS: HAZARDOUS WASTE WATER POLLUTION ELIZABETH RIVER by CNB