THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, June 22, 1996 TAG: 9606220297
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SCOTT HARPER, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: 88 lines
Now the nitty-gritty work begins.
After an intoxicating night of congratulations and champagne for completing an ambitious cleanup plan, participants in the Elizabeth River Project sat down Friday to hash out details for restoring one of the most polluted waterways on the East Coast.
Most members of the group, which includes military officers and housewives, environmentalists and industrial executives, conceded that they likely will not be around to see the fruits of their labor.
``This is a project for our children, if not our grandchildren,'' said Ray E. Moses, a retired rear admiral and president of the Elizabeth River Project.
Some of the ideas for cleaning up the Elizabeth - a waterway that encompasses 300 square miles through Chesapeake, Portsmouth, Norfolk and Virginia Beach and supports 100,000 jobs - sound like the stuff of science-fiction.
Consider:
There is a proposal to test ``bacteria buses'' to neutralize cancer-causing toxics trapped in sediments in the most contaminated part of the river, the Southern Branch.
Bacteria that literally eat toxic material would ride silicon beads to the bottom of the branch. There, they would gobble up residues of creosote, a wood insulator, which has given some fish cancerous lesions and killed others.
Sponsored by the Virginia Center for Innovative Technology and researched by the University of Virginia, the bacteria buses have so far proved successful in lab tests, said Robert Harrell, regional director of CIT.
Scientists from U.Va hope to conduct a live test in a small section of the branch as soon as next year, Harrell added. CIT is covering the $30,000 cost.
Simple math is the unlikely basis for a different futuristic idea. Engineers would inventory all pollutants in the river, then calculate how much the waterway could handle while still showing improvements in water quality.
Once the inventory is complete, project leaders could negotiate agreements with industries and shipyards so that their discharges, in total, would not breach this key ecological threshold.
Michael Barbachem, a manager with URS Consultants Inc. of Virginia Beach, who proposed the concept, said the approach is being used by the state of Washington to curtail pollution in 23 watersheds. It also has been endorsed as a future model of flexibility by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, he said.
In all, officials of the Elizabeth River Project have agreed to pursue an 18-point restoration plan that came together after four years of cajoling and consensus-building among nearly 500 individuals and businesses.
Of course, putting these ideas into action will require money. Lots of money.
Most cash so far has come from government agencies. But in an era of downsizing, there is much concern about obtaining enough money for even follow-up studies.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, for example, wants to conduct a $400,000 watershed study to determine possible solutions to myriad pollution problems. But Congress so far has not funded the request, and it appears the earliest the research could begin is 1998, said Army Corps official Craig Seltzer, who proposed the idea.
Nonetheless, project leaders remain optimistic. They note that many goals can be realized through individual commitments, and not government mandates. They include:
Encouraging employers to create small patches of wildlife habitat, plant trees or undertake wetlands re-creation projects.
Preventing pollution in the home, by using less fertilizers and pesticides on lawns and gardens, buying toxic-free cleaners and taking mass transit.
Reducing stormwater runoff, by carefully watching what materials wash off lawns and properties into storm drains and recycling used motor oil instead of flushing it down storm drains.
The two points that caused the most consternation during the four years of debate in drafting the cleanup plan centered on TBT, a toxic pesticide used in boat paint, and Craney Island, the 2,500-acre disposal site for dredging wastes at the mouth of the river, said Marjorie Mayfield, project coordinator.
In both cases, compromises resulted. For TBT, the group urged an international ban on the anti-barnacle paint additive, as shipyards wanted, but also supported continued state enforcement of tough TBT restrictions in Virginia waters, as environmentalists wanted.
For Craney Island, the group agreed to conduct a larger study of possible ecological impacts of dredge spoils dumped at the island.
The Army Corps, which runs the site, has insisted that few environmental troubles stem from Craney Island, while neighboring residents in Portsmouth have long complained about runoff and possible leaks of contaminated sediments back into the river.
KEYWORDS: WATER POLLUTION by CNB