James River gets a C+ in recent environmental report

As in most environmental reports, there is good news and bad news about the state of the James River in 2009.

According to a study to be released today , bald eagles continued their remarkable comeback along the historic James, oxygen-giving grasses spread to more patches of river bottom, and nutrient pollution from sewage plants and industries met reduction goals for the first time.

On the other hand, the study found “some frustrating and troubling signs,” said Bill Street, executive director of the James River Association, a nonprofit environmental group that published the report.

Among the bad omens:

Fish populations are thinning or suffering from disease and infection; the lower James in Hampton Roads met clean-water standards just 6 percent of the time since 2007; oysters struggled where they once thrived; and expected water-quality benefits from major investment in new technologies have been slow to appear.

“If you look back, say, 40 years, it’s easy to see we’re a lot better off,” said Chuck Frederickson, the riverkeeper of the lower James. “But we’ve kind of gotten stuck – kind of leveled off – the last three or four years. We need to get going again.”

The James study looked at several key factors – wildlife, pollution, habitat and restoration activity – measured them over time and assigned a grade to each.

Overall, the James was given a combined score of 59 on a scale of 1 to 100 – a C+, according to group calculations.

That grade is slightly better than the one meted out by the James River Association in its last analysis, in 2007 – a C.

The James is the longest river in Virginia, stretching 340 miles and draining 10,000 square miles from near West Virginia to the Atlantic Ocean. It also includes 15,000 miles of creeks, streams and other tributaries.

The James River Association was formed in 1976, about the time the river suffered the worst environmental disaster in state history: the illegal dumping of highly toxic kepone directly into the river, an act that poisoned water quality and led to a ban on commercial fishing for years.

Kepone is no longer a threat, its remnants buried under years of sediment and sand. Instead, the No. 1 threat today is tainted runoff from farms, development sites, urban storm drains and streets – the same pollutant that bedevils other local waterways, including the Chesapeake Bay.

Frederickson and Street said the study points out the need to support tougher state regulations of stormwater as well as mandatory controls over farm runoff as proposed by the Obama administration to help restore the Chesapeake and its tributaries.

“Believe me, I’m not a big government guy, but there’s rules we all need to live by and it’s time we tackled these issues and made these part of our culture,” Frederickson said.

The Virginia Farm Bureau has pledged to fight proposed mandates, and builders and developers are contesting state stormwater rules that they say will increase development costs and hurt the fragile economy.

Frederickson and Street say they use the James for recreation, including swimming, though they caution against doing so right after a heavy rainfall, when contaminants might be swept into the river.

“People used to be scared of going into the river,” Street said, “but we’ve shown that with strong actions, we can turn things around.”

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