Partnership focuses on Bay recovery, oyster revival

YORKTOWN

A partnership of businessmen, scientists and watermen announced a new company Thursday that seeks to help restore native oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, create jobs and curb pollution.

Part foundation, part seafood business, part ecology project, the Oyster Company of Virginia encourages citizens to join the venture as paying members. Their money - memberships range from $175 to $50,000 - would pay for training and equipping watermen who want to become oyster farmers.

Members also would be eligible for dividends from oyster sales, and they would have access to an "eco-retreat" being developed off the Severn River in Gloucester as a work site and outdoor education classroom.

Officers of the new company, including a former New Kent developer and the president of the Virginia Waterman's Association, outlined their plans at a briefing Thursday in Yorktown.

Those in attendance came away impressed.

"It's exciting, a great idea," said state Del. Harvey Morgan, R-Gloucester. "Let's hope it takes off."

The head of the company, W. Tolar Nolley, said he hopes the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency endorses another aspect of the company - building artificial oyster reefs out of old shells and concrete as a way of capturing nitrogen pollution that today is choking water quality in the Bay.

Oysters are renowned for filtering algae and phytoplankton that stem from excessive nitrogen and phosphorus in the Bay. As one waterman said Thursday, "the Bay's never going to come back until the oysters come back."

Nolley, with a background in land development and pharmaceutical sales, said factories and sewage treatment plants could buy nitrogen "credits" from the company-owned reefs if they are having trouble meeting strict pollution limits that the EPA is proposing to hasten the Bay's cleanup.

Nutrient trading, as the buying and selling of these credits is known, is an approach favored by Gov. Bob McDonnell's administration for meeting the EPA's proposed "pollution diet" for the Bay.

"This is about developing these reefs and getting credit for the tremendous amount of filtering they do," said Ken Smith, president of the Virginia Waterman's Association. "It's good for the Bay, it's good for native oyster restoration."

Scientists from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science and the Army Corps of Engineers are involved in the effort as advisers and supporters.

Russell Burke, a VIMS researcher, said concrete reefs in the Rappahannock River have prove d adept at soaking up nutrients that cloud water quality and harm the Bay. The reefs also have spawned oysters, mussels and other aquatic life, despite the presence of diseases that have ravaged oyster stocks elsewhere, Burke said.

Nolley said he has an agreement with the reef originators, Reeftek Inc., to use their layer-cake design in constructing more of the structures if money is available. He hopes to tap state and federal grants and loans to do so.

Motivated by the meltdown of the oyster industry in the Gulf of Mexico after the BP oil spill, Nolley said the company incorporated in August and its officers have been meeting privately with oyster merchants, watermen and scientists for months.

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