Scientists announce efforts to clean up Elizabeth River

NORFOLK

Environmentalists announced lofty new plans Wednesday for cleaning up the Elizabeth River, including a goal of making the long-abused waterway safe for swimming, fishing and shellfishing by 2020.

The Elizabeth has been closed to oyster and clam harvests since the 1920s because of bacteria and other pollution. And most of the urban river flunks state clean-water standards, so that swimming and fishing are considered risky activities.

But conditions are improving, scientists and officials say, and are expected to get better as new programs, planned cleanups and green technologies take hold.

“We were afraid to say this before, that it was too high a dream,” said Marjorie Mayfield Jackson, executive director of the Elizabeth River Project, an environmental group. “But we now believe in this – we can make the river swimmable and fishable again.”

Jackson outlined a new action plan – the third since the group formed around a kitchen table in 1991 – at a ceremony at the Norfolk Botanical Garden. It capped months of discussion and debate among scientists, state and federal officials, activists, teachers and business leaders on where to focus the cause next.

Among other objectives, the Elizabeth River Project, in conjunction with its private and government partners, expects to:

- increase the number of waterfront trees by 20 percent by 2020;

- show a “net gain” of wetlands by 2020 that have been disappearing under development pressures since World War II;

- start a land trust by 2014 to accept and manage donated properties;

- urge local officials to start planning now for sea level rise associated with global warming;

- and enlist 25,000 “citizen soldiers” who pledge to live greener, change their lifestyle, and complete stewardship activities by 2020.

“By the time I retire,” Jackson said, “I hope to have a clean river.”

It will not be easy.

The river contains some of the most toxic contaminants in the world, mostly locked in bottom sediments, which remain from centuries of shipbuilding and heavy industry that largely went unregulated until the 1970s.

Much of the river’s wetlands are gone, and hundreds of storm drains from developments and city streets in Norfolk, Portsmouth, Chesapeake and Virginia Beach empty into its waters every day.

High levels of bacteria – from pets, sewage systems, storm water, wildlife, boats and ships – are the reasons swimming and shellfishing in the Elizabeth are considered potential health hazards.

The bacteria levels do not help fishing, either. But the presence of polychlorinated biphenyls, which are highly toxic waste products, is why the state Health Department advises consumers against eating more than two meals a month of most species caught in the river.

Roger Everton, a water quality specialist with the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, said bacteria levels are coming down in the Elizabeth, especially the main stem of the river past downtown Norfolk and Portsmouth, and in the Western Branch and Lafayette River.

“We could get there” by 2020, Everton said Wednesday.

Sewage plants are being upgraded, he said, and cities are planning to replace leaky old sewage pipes as part of another initiative.

Environmentalists may push for a “no discharge zone” throughout the river so that boats are not allowed to empty their toilets overboard. The same designation has helped to reduce bacteria in the Lynnhaven River in Virginia Beach.

And the Elizabeth River Project also wants to borrow from the Lynnhaven’s success in another field – public education, in reminding residents about “scooping the poop” left by their pets, and in minimizing the amount of fertilizer spread on lawns and gardens.

Scott Harper, (757) 446-2340, scott.harper@pilotonline.com