DATE: Wednesday, November 26, 1997          TAG: 9711250015
SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B11  EDITION: FINAL 

TYPE: Opinion

SOURCE: GLENN ALLEN SCOTT

                                            LENGTH:   66 lines

THE ELIZABETH RIVER ALL HANDS TOGETHER TO CLEAN THE WATERWAY

Cleansing an extremely polluted urban waterway is a labor of legions over many generations.

The Elizabeth River Project knows that full well. A year into its cleanup crusade, the project paused on Nov. 19 to celebrate - at Nauticus in downtown Norfolk - first steps toward improving the health of the estuary and its branches that are its reason for being.

The project is an admirable endeavor. Instead of pitting representatives of different interests against each other, casting some as black hats and others as white hats, the project has assembled a wide spectrum of people to pursue desirable environmental-protection objectives. Business leaders, citizens, environmentalists, government agencies, scientists participate. They produced a consensus 18-point Watershed Action Plan for the Elizabeth's restoration.

In its own words, the project is ``a partnership among the communities and all who earn their living from the river to raise appreciation of its economic, ecological and recreational importance, and to restore the Elizabeth River system to the highest practical level of environmental quality.''

Hope this cooperative approach ultimately yields markedly less-poisoned waters in time.

But the challenge isn't for the faint-hearted.

Hampton Roads is a thriving port.

Toxic stormwater runoff from cities, farms and lawns and gardens feeds into the river.

Thousands of creosoted pilings also continue to poison the waters.

Contamination levels are such that fish are deformed, cancerous, hazardous if eaten.

The Elizabeth River Project is a catalytic agent. Having identified the waterway's ills and having proposed ways to ameliorate them, the group solicits remedial action by government and the private sector.

Though still in its infancy, the project points to successes in each sector. Virginia contributed $100,000 to develop the Watershed Action Plan, adopted last year. The U.S. Environmental Protection Administration's Chesapeake Bay Program contributed $80,000 toward implementation of the plan.

With funding from the state, the project, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission and Norfolk, Portsmouth and Chesapeake have begun removing abandoned vessels - 146 have been found.

Working with the three watershed cities and the state, the Army Corps of Engineers has defined 19 wetland-restoration sites and designated five areas for removal of poisoned sediment.

Aided by scores of organizations and volunteers and Norfolk, the Elizabeth River Project constructed the one-acre Birdsong Wetland behind the Larchmont Library on Hampton Boulevard; the $100,000 undertaking is a model restoration.

Monitoring the quality of the Elizabeth's water and sediment and the condition of its wildlife habitat and marine life is getting under way.

Governmental and private for-profit and nonprofit enterprises, 30 of which the project honored Nov. 19, are acting to curb pollution by their facilities.

Impressive. But, as the project freely acknowledges, many more steps must be taken to dent pollution.

The project's overriding achievement - or so it seems to me - is focusing the attention of many upon the river. If signficant cleansing is achieved, it will be largely attributable to countless big and little actions by businesses, home owners, farmers, boaters and local, state and federal officials to stop or lessen, whenever feasible, whatever they do that poisons the river. In South Hampton Roads, the Elizabeth is our river. MEMO: Mr. Scott is associate editor of the editorial page of The

Virginian-Pilot.

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu