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In the year 1957 over a million Americans
returned to Jamestown to celebrate their river roots. Long deserted,
with its banks slowly eroding into the rising river, the island was
again brought out of a wild state. Instead of colonial houses, it now
boasted a National Park Service visitors center, a restored church,
a scenic drive, a working reproduction of the 1608 glasshouse, and a
romantic statue of Pocahontas. Nearby a privately owned Festival Park
was erected on the river bank, with historical exhibits and replicas
of the three tiny ships, the first English fort, and Powhatan's lodge
joining the images of the earliest river warfare. Scholars took this
occasion to explore colonial history and archaeology in a symposium
and in numerous publications. The river's past suddenly took on new
life.
This celebration of the dreams and assumptions
that had helped shape the river's destiny also marked a crucial turning
point in our story, for a long era of taking the river for granted was
coming to an end. For three and a half centuries of living with the
James, Virginians who paid any attention to the river still saw it as
little more than the visible flow of water between two banks, which
could be directed and used in many profitable ways, even if it could
not always be controlled. Sometimes they were reminded of their dependence
on its natural processes, especially when their water supply was disrupted
by flood or drought. Public access was still not open on much of this
river, which was reputed to be filthy anyhow, so the James had become
easy for most people to ignore. What would happen in the next twenty-five
years would make people take a closer look at the attitudes toward rivers
set down long ago, and to begin to realize that perpetuating those patterns
could imperil the health of both the river and its people.
There were unheralded signs that long-term
problems were finally being recognized. In 1958, the city of Richmond
began operating a primary sewage (or "wastewater") treatment plant on
the south bank below the Falls, not very sophisticated or effective
but the first such facility on the river. Nearby, Newton Ancarrow had
recently settled his business of building fast and luxurious runabout
boats. He was already angry about what he was seeing in the river, and
he was not one to keep quiet. As he tells it, "All my life I'd been
told that the James River was dirty, just stay away from it. I accepted
that. I could stand a little mud. I had no damn idea! I was so naive
that I would not believe that anybody would do that to a river. I saw
times after a rain when the surface of the river was 90 percent floating
raw sewage-- and smelled it. But I knew it was illegal to discharge
sewage into the water, so I assumed it would be cleaned up." As Ancarrow
jokes wryly, "They named that river after the wrong king. They should
have named it after King John, because it surely is the john river."
Ancarrow might have seemed an unlikely
candidate to be a pioneering environmental activist. An engineer, he
had spent several years working at Experiment Incorporated downstream,
scarcely noticing the careless disposal of powerful chemical wastes
into the river. Like most Richmonders, he liked to spend his summers
on the river, not the James but the cleaner Rappahannock. But he could
not ignore the six inches of raw sewage and thick black oil that coated
his boat ramp just before his grand opening, or the fact that boats
could be launched only on the few days when the river was relatively
clean so that the paint would be neither stained or stripped off. Cleaning
the river became his passion, and he took his slide show of sewage and
wildflowers (eventually he catalogued 471 species from the James) on
the garden club-school circuit, talking to anyone who would listen.
He even filed suit with Ralph Nader's Clean Water Campaign, forcing
President Nixon to release billions of dollars already appropriated
for sewage treatment plants; 17 billion dollars of that went to Virginia.
Ironically, many years later the city would condemn his property, claiming
that the sewage treatment plant would someday need expanding. The city
assigned no value to the boat ramp (appraised at almost half a million
dollars), stating that no one "would want to launch a boat in a sewer."
But the concern that Ancarrow had aroused--which would be taken up by
others who found ways to get to the river--would not be easily silenced.
There were other clues in the 1960s that
the bill for centuries of disregard was coming due, but only fishermen
and state regulatory agencies noticed them. Numerous fish kills were
reported to the State Water Control Board at different points on the
river where fish still lived, and the causes were rarely found to be
natural. Each year fewer shad and herring, and no sturgeon at all, were
making the spawning run. The Commission of Game and Inland Fisheries
was kept busy trucking new and tougher fish, especially the smallmouth
bass, to restock the river. But fish were not the only wildlife missing.
The eagles and ospreys that had once nested along the tidewater river
were seen no more. Rachel Carson's revelations in Silent Spring came
as little surprise to those close to the river, although she did highlight
some missing pieces in the puzzle. The river was in trouble, because
its ecological links to human activities in its basin had not been seen
and acknowledged for more than three centuries.
Meanwhile, the State Water Control Board
became stronger as environmental concern grew in the country and state,
slowly acquiring the power to demand drastic cutbacks and treatment
of industrial and urban wastes. Authorized and funded by the Clean Water
Act and the Environmental Protection Agency, the Board could finally
act, although within the boundaries of bureaucratic red tape. Fish life
began rebounding as the river was gradually freed of some of its burden
of pollution so it could begin cleansing itself. But its long history
would not be forgotten quickly.
The most shocking revelation of all came
in 1975, when the James River became synonymous with one particular
manmade chemical--Kepone. For months the dramatic story of this nonbiodegradable
pesticide focused national attention on the profound and far-reaching
consequences on human health of using rivers as chemical dumps. Back
in the 1950s, the giant Allied Chemical Corporation in Hopewell, that
little town which proudly billed itself "The Chemical Capital of the
World," patented and began small-scale manufacturing of Kepone, or chlordecone.
An organochloride which is quite similar to mirex and cousin to chlordane,
aldrin, and dieldrin, Kepone was designed to exterminate the Colorado
potato beetle in West Germany, the banana root borer in Central America
and Puerto Rico, and fire ants in Louisiana.
But this time the chemists had done too
thorough a job. They managed to concoct a chemical which is extraordinarily
persistent in the environment, one with large molecules and relatively
low water solubility, a half-life too long to be measured, and a propensity
to locate in aqueous and lipid solutions. The molecules of Kepone, like
those of other synthetic chemicals such as dioxin, are highly toxic
to the nervous system of animals which accumulate the molecules in body
fat. This characteristic was undoubtedly considered desirable for eliminating
fat insects, especially when they inhabited other countries.
From 1966 to 1973, Allied produced 50,000
to 200,000 kilograms of Kepone a year. Its wastes were discharged directly
into the James, and no one knew or really cared. Two articles published
in 1965 that noted severe physiological and reproductive effects on
mice did not slow production or alert any environmental watchdogs. In
fact, when Allied contracted with Life Sciences Products, a tiny new
company headed by two former employees, to begin synthesizing Allied-supplied
raw materials into Kepone, the Environmental Protection Agency declared
that no registration was necessary, since undiluted Kepone could be
considered a chemical not a pesticide, in spite of its marketing history.
The ironically-named Life Sciences company
proved to be far less prudent than its parent company when it began
producing 3,000 to 6,000 pounds of Kepone daily by operating constantly,
day and night. Situated in a converted service station on the highway
near the heart of town, the company enforced virtually no safety regulations,
assuring its constantly changing workforce that the white powder in
the air, on their clothes, even in their lunch area, was harmless. Still
no one cared. An EPA air monitoring station 200 yards away from the
plant registered 40 percent of the particulates as Kepone, and neighbors
of the plant complained to the management about the smells and thick
emissions. But in a town dependent on its chemical industries, one where
executives' cars can be washed daily as they leave the parking lot,
no one reacted. In fact, Hopewell even made an exception to its usual
policy and permitted Life Sciences to discharge its wastes directly
into the city's sewage system.
Had Life Sciences been more scrupulous
about adhering to the safety rules set down by Allied, or had Kepone
been a less immediately potent chemical, it is quite probable that contamination
of the air and water of Hopewell and the James River could have continued
indefinitely. As far as those few local, state, or federal authorities
who knew about Kepone were concerned, there was no problem with the
chemical, now or later.
As a rule, when a potent chemical dribbles
its way into water, whether it be stream or aquifer, and subsequently
into the food and the human beings who depend on that food and water,
its toxic effects are quite slow and insiduous, difficult to trace and
assess. Even extensive scientific studies can do little more than point
suspiciously, since firm connections between cause and effect are virtually
impossible to establish incontrovertibly, especially when discovered
decades after contact. Kepone, though, dramatically broke this rule.
In July 1975, a Hopewell physician, perplexed
by the unaccountably severe trembling of a young Life Sciences employee,
sent a blood sample to the U.S. Public Health Service Center for Disease
Control in Atlanta. At about the same time, the digesters at the local
sewage treatment plant inexplicably broke down, forcing untreated sewage
into Bailey's Creek and then the James. When the Virginia State Health
Department was notified by the Public Health Service that the worker's
blood had high levels of Kepone (7.5 parts per million), the pieces
began falling into place. Within a week, the plant closed and no Kepone
has been legally manufactured in the United States since. The accumulations of this unnatural ingredient
in Virginia's environment were soon found to be far from innocuous,
just as the 1965 studies and the workers with the "Kepone shakes" had
suggested. New animal studies documented how Kepone could damage the
neurological and reproductive systems, the skin, the liver, and the
vision. In 1976, a National Cancer Institute report also indicted Kepone
in the development of liver cancer in animals. Physicians at the Medical
College of Virginia began research to find effective treatment for the
poisoned workers, for Kepone was proving difficult to dislodge from
the human body.
As the dangers to human health were delineated,
the governor closed the river to commercial fishing in December 1975·
Also reacting conservatively the next spring, the Food and Drug Administration
set the lowest measurable "action levels" on Kepone found in fishlife,
saying that any finfish with more than .1 part per million of Kepone
in its tissues would be considered hazardous for humans eating the fish.
A year later the level was raised to .3 ppm (.4 for crabs) where it
still stands amid annual debate. However, for years many fish in the
estuary had accumulated more than double the higher level. Around 1981
fishing was again permitted for eels, oysters, and migratory fish that
can flush themselves of Kepone, restricting only a few species for the
last six months of the year when the Kepone accumulates to high levels
in their tissues.
With its usual hyperbole, the media called
Kepone the environmental tragedy of the decade, if not the century.
Perhaps it would be fairer to say that Kepone was one of the first chemicals
to have such a dramatic and thoroughly publicized impact on human health
and the environment in this country. Most Virginians, though they love
their history, would gladly relinquish the infamy of this particular
honor. For a long time, many Americans refused to buy seafood originating
in Virginia, pushing hundreds of watermen into bankruptcy including
those along the closed James. Paranoia reached a new high, especially
among the victims and their neighbors in Hopewell. Suits totalling more
than 200 million dollars were filed by victims and watermen against
Allied Chemical and former Life Sciences executives. The once-proud
name of the James had been sullied among those who never knew her as
well as those who loved her. Most people were assured that nothing good
could ever come from this disaster.
Clean-up of this pervasive and persisting
chemical turned out to be costly and difficult, even impossible in many
instances. Kepone residues in the plant and the surrounding soils were
trucked out under vigilant control and eventually buried in a salt mine
in West Germany. The Corps had to abandon dredging of the James for
several years in the area, meanwhile searching for safe technology to
use when the sediments accumulating in the shipping channel would have
to be removed. Most of the Kepone had to stay in the river bottom and
in the fishlife, slowly moving up the food chain, where it was inaccessible.
But the "muddy ol' Jeems" has kept on rolling by, laying down its load
of upriver soil (as much as several inches a year, according to some
authorities) over the Kepone-tainted sediments, thus keeping much of
the chemical from being released into the water and its life.
Repercussions from Kepone may currently
be more positive than negative, for a hard lesson about ecological connections
and chemical persistence has been taught. No industry in Virginia, particularly
if situated anywhere close to the James, would be foolish enough to
risk endangering its reputation and profits by discharging pollutants
which could be toxic, even if the now-stricter State Water Control Board
would allow it. They are checked not so much by law as by the awareness
that Allied Chemical was punished severely, losing millions of dollars
for its role in the production of Kepone as well as substantial public
confidence. A federal judge fined Allied 13.2 million dollars, directing
that 8 million dollars go to establish an independent grant-awarding
organization. Thus the Virginia Environmental Endowment, which supports
environmental quality studies in the state, became the first such private
organization in the country. Oddly enough, then, because of Kepone Virginia
finds itself today as a sort of leader in river management and environmental
concern.
Other human benefits are not so easy to
weigh, though they exist. Researchers have found that the drug cholestyramine
will eliminate Kepone from the human system, so the Life Sciences workers
now show few if any physical effects of their ordeal. Some have even
fathered healthy children recently. But levels of debilitating anxiety
are much harder to measure. Even the level of Kepone in the sludge stored
in a lagoon at the sewage treatment plant in Hopewell has been dropping,
suggesting that something, possibly the resident fungus Aspergillus,
can degrade the chemical into weaker compounds. The treatment plant
itself has been greatly upgraded, so much that in 1983 the Lower James
River Association bestowed its "Friend of the River Award" on the operation.
Although people now buy Virginia seafood with confidence and fishing
of many species has been allowed recently, five years of fishing bans
have devastated the occupation of many commercial watermen on the James.
And there are people who still consider the James little more than an
obscenity. Yet even that may have merit if it helps assure that people
will not forget how easily a river may be poisoned.
The river has offered many other lessons,
but fortunately none have been as shocking as the Kepone discovery was.
Gradually people have been finding themselves intimately linked to the
river's flow, and sometimes in unexpected fashions. In a few hours on
a sunny September day in 1981, the river turned bright green for almost
fifty miles between Richmond and Scottsville, literally blooming with
blue-green algae. Powered by the warmth of a brilliant Indian summer
and low water full of nutrients donated by fertilized fields upstream,
a little organism called Nodulavia hauveyana (whose proper place
is usually under microscopes in biology classrooms) suddenly flourished.
As algae go, this type was a comparatively innocent one which released
odors as it died but no toxins, but it never had bloomed so vigorously
in the James before.
Throughout the city of Richmond, the overwhelming
and somewhat nauseating smell of wet earth came pouring out of spigots.
The odor was ubiquitous, rising from sinks and bathrooms, salads and
coffee pots. Though the city utilities department did receive telephone
calls from European-bred people commenting nostalgically on the new
"body" of the water, most people were disgusted, angry, and suddenly
aware of how intimately connected their daily lives were with the river
that ran through the city.
Thousands of dollars were spent as officials
added tons of activated charcoal to water filters and chemists tested
day and night. Newspaper articles about the few springs still open in
the city brought long lines of people waiting patiently with jugs well
into the morning hours, while stores rush-ordered bottled water for
their anxious customers. Numerous solutions were suggested and rejected,
including the possibility of using chemicals that would "kill everything
in the river." The dying algae backed up behind the low dams of Richmond
in what had become stagnant ponds, though some relief came by diverting
water into the old canal with its intake pipes to the purification plant.
In a few weeks, rain and cold weather
cleared the water, the fish resumed their normal eating habits, and
the river no longer imposed its bloom of living and dying algae cells
on the people dependent on its waters. So passed a relatively painless
lesson that the river has human channels too.
There can also be a humorous side to the
difficulties people have had in coping with the incessant motion of
their rivers. The problem that the Virginia Power and Electric Company
(VEPCO) encountered at its nuclear plant across the river from Jamestown
is a good example of how people think "stop" when the river says "go."
When the plant began operation, its screens for filtering the water
were constantly clogged by countless numbers of tiny creatures in this
nursery wetlands. VEPCO had to do something quickly, for it needed the
water for cooling and it was committed to minimal environmental impact,
but there were few precedents for solving this particular impingement
problem.
VEPCO biologists and engineers began experimenting,
trying to find a way to divert the fish. First they installed air machines
in the canal to blow dense curtains of bubbles, but the fish swam right
through, drawn rather than deterred by the oxygenated water. Next, they
tried a sound barrier, installing a number of underwater speakers in
front of intake pumps. No matter what they played through the speakers--
MUSAK, hard rock, classical music, or just loud noise-- the fish kept
dancing up the canal to meet their doom on the fixed screens.
Finally human ingenuity triumphed. J.
D· Ristroph, director of VEPCO's Environmental Services Department,
designed a new kind of traveling screen with 47 screen panels which
rotate continuously. Rather than blocking the young fish, the screens
carry them for a brief ride, then drop them into a sluice trough that
carries them safely downstream and far offshore, safely out of harm.
It was a clever idea and it has worked well, with a 4-6 percent mortality
rate instead of the earlier 95 percent, and the design has been adopted
by power plants all over the world.
Unfortunately, simple engineering devices
or waiting for nature's repairs will not solve all the problems encountered
by living creatures in this river, especially if they happen to live
downstream from people who continue to use the river thoughtlessly.
This conclusion was recently underscored, both dramatically and scientifically,
with the publication of the Environmental Protection Agency's extensive
studies of the body of water captive at the foot of the James, the Chesapeake
Bay. Even the most cautious scientists now declare that the less hardy
but valuable life in the Bay---such as striped bass, oysters, blue crabs,
and anadromous fish--is dying off, and the Bay's system of rivers must
assume most of the blame, especially the Susquehanna, the Potomac, and
the James. Each carries nitrogen and phosphorus from land run-off and
sewage treatment, as well as metals and organic chemical compounds which
have seriously disrupted the ecosystems of the Bay. Some signs may be
found right in the mouth of the James. Submerged aquatic vegetation
which once hid and supported baby crabs and other nursery animals disappeared
here, as in much of the Bay, in the 1970s, victim of overfertilization
from upstream fields and sewage treatment effluent.
The James River oyster is in serious trouble.
This tenacious shelled creature, lauded by John Smith as huge and abundant,
has long selected the mouth of the James as breeding grounds and nursery.
Stuck on its bed, it has tolerated and absorbed whatever has come downstream,
purging itself as much as possible. Watermen long ago learned that they
would have to move the baby oysters to other rivers and the Bay so they
could grow and cleanse themselves better than they could in the James.
But the numbers of "brood stock" and "spat set" have declined drastically
since 1960, in effect undermining the long-established oyster industry
of the Bay. The MSX virus and the oyster drill have appeared, weakening
and killing susceptible oysters. Scientists now suspect that they may
be vulnerable because of chlorine and other "debilitating contaminants"
and increased silt loaded with pesticides, Kepone, and heavy metals,
all of which interact with salinity and water-level changes. One study
discovered 94 different organic compounds, including Kepone, in oysters
taken from the river. There seems to be no question that when the lower
river is in trouble, so are the reproductive cycles of the oyster and
other forms of life in the Bay.
The lowly seed oyster has thus become
one living barometer of the dangers of upstream pollution. Its message--
that the entire river system must be seen, understood, and managed with
care--is heard all the more clearly because a profitable industry is
at stake. The oyster will be watched carefully as federal and state
governments embark on an expensive and complicated campaign to clean
up the rivers to save the life of the Bay.
The findings of the landmark (or rivermark!)
Chesapeake
Bay study were first published in September 1982. There were no
festivities planned, not even much publicity for a while, and the news
was received soberly. Yet there could not have been a more appropriate
way to celebrate the 375th anniversary of the white man's first settlement
on the James. The modern language of authority, the scientists' statistics,
had declared the life of the Bay to be in peril, perhaps dying, and
pointed fingers of blame upstream, up the Bay's rivers. Now it was time
for people to revise their ideas about the river, time to name it again.
To save the Bay, and perhaps ultimately themselves, they would have
to go beyond seeing the river as a highway for ships, as a flow to be
regulated and channelized to flush through machines, homes, and themselves,
and as a ready source of commercial food. Its continuing wealth would
depend on how clearly they could see the greater River of stream, river,
and Bay, of sea and rainfall, as a living, moving ecosystem, and acknowledge
its intimate connection with their own well-being.
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