
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SUNDAY, April 3, 1994                   TAG: 9404030051
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: D-8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: RICHMOND                                LENGTH: Medium

FLOODS: NATURE'S OWN HOUSEKEEPING

Heavy rains have filled Virginia's rivers to 2 1/2 to 3 1/2 times their normal flows for this time of year, and while high water can do damage to people and roads, scientists say it's good news for the environment.

"Floods are Mother Nature's way of keeping the river clean," said Ralph White, naturalist for the city of Richmond. "The whole process is a very positive one."

"We need little floods - freshets of 16, 17, 18 feet in height," for the James River, White said. "They're analogous to a human sneeze when you get foreign objects in your nose, like tiny dust particles or pollen. In the river system, it's logs and debris."

Trees reach for sunlight over the water and inevitably fall into the river. Left uncleared, they eventually would completely fill the river, he said.

But floodwaters take that matter and turn it to ecological use, White said. The debris is cleared from a river's channel and deposited on its islands.

"These become wonderful habitat for wildlife. That's where our muskrats live, and that's where fish live, and it becomes a habitat for insects," he said.

Richmond's experience with high water was mirrored around the commonwealth, said Byron Prugh, a hydrologist with the U.S. Geological Survey. "Basically all the streams in the state averaged above normal flows for the month of March."

Several of the state's rivers reached flood stage this week. Flood warnings remained in effect Saturday for the Appomattox and lower Nottoway rivers. The James crested on Wednesday in Richmond's City Locks at 16.05 feet. The lower Roanoke River reached 22.68 feet at Randolph on Friday, and the lower Dan River reached 21.40 feet at South Boston on Friday.

The high water is recharging the state's drinking water reservoirs and ground water supplies before summer, Prugh said.

"You're building up ground water like money in the bank for the summer," he said. "If we have a dry summer, it would be available for discharge into the streams."

In another example of a flood's benefits, previous high-water episodes on the James have largely cleansed the river of flotsam, White said, so that the boaters don't have to contend with dangerous debris.

Fish migrations also are eased by inundations, he said, as the fish use the slow-moving or slack water near the shore to move upstream past the city's dams to feed and spawn.

"The fish can root around as they either explore the flooded area or use it as a slow-water highway," White said.

by CNB