Environmentalists Call Report a Wake-Up Call
By Sandhya Somashekhar
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, August 13, 2006
It was a steamy morning, but Todd Lewis and his mother, Bonnie, couldn't resist the urge to lower Todd's boat onto the Potomac River to fish for smallmouth bass at Algonkian Regional Park in Sterling.
As dawn turned to a scorching midday, their enthusiasm yielded to disappointment. Nearly half of the fish they pulled up had burn-like lesions; some were so covered that "you didn't even want to touch them," Todd Lewis, 30, said.
"The water out there is crystal clear, but there's got to be something wrong," said Bonnie Lewis, 55, peering at the still surface of the Potomac as her son hitched the boat to the truck.
There is, in fact, a lot wrong with the state's waterways. The Virginia Department of Environmental Quality identified as polluted about 9,000 miles of rivers and streams in a report last month, alarming a state that prides itself on its natural beauty.
The report summarized the condition of 14,300 miles of rivers and streams, almost one-third of the state's total, which the department studied between 2000 and 2004. It concluded that about 63 percent of the waterways examined were impaired, meaning they failed to meet standards in categories such as swimming, fishing and sustaining aquatic life.
The report also identified more than 100,000 acres of polluted lakes, estuaries and reservoirs.
Officials were quick to point out that many of the bodies of water new to the list, which is updated every two years, were added because of strict new standards for underwater life. The department targeted rivers that were likely to be polluted, so it wasn't a representative sample, they said.
And the news isn't all bad, said Darryl Glover, the state's water quality monitoring and assessment manager.
"In some places, we are actually seeing mild improvements in some things," he said.
Nitrogen levels in the Potomac River have fallen over the past 20 years, for example, helping to reduce damage to plants and animals, Glover said. He credited better waste management.
Still, the good news offered little comfort to environmental groups that say the report should be a wake-up call to the state.
"The bottom line for us is these numbers don't lie," said Ann Jennings, executive director of the Virginia branch of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "They document the sad reality that Virginia is facing a water pollution crisis."
In recent months, a number of accounts have bolstered that claim.
Reports of high phosphorus levels and foam in the James River have perplexed Richmond officials, who have been trying to determine the source of the pollution.
Closer to home, in the Potomac and Shenandoah rivers, large numbers of fish have been dying for unknown reasons, many of them with lesions or ambiguous sex organs. Scientists suspect that discarded pharmaceuticals, considered an "emerging pollutant," and traditional pollutants such as fertilizers might have contributed.
It was those dead fish that sent Bonnie and Todd Lewis hunting for a new fishing spot four years ago. Todd Lewis lives about 10 minutes from the Shenandoah, but two or three times a week he drives an hour to Algonkian Regional Park or two hours to Lake Anna in Mineral for his fishing fix.
"Sooner or later, it is going to ruin the fishing everywhere out here," he said.
Many of the waterways were identified as impaired in the state report because of contaminated fish. A particular problem in the downstream parts of the Potomac are polychlorinated biphenyls, or PCBs, industrial chemicals banned in the 1970s but lingering in the environment, officials said.
The state has developed guidelines on fish from rivers and streams that encourage people to limit the consumption of certain species and to avoid others, officials said. (Information can be found at http://www.vdh.state.va.us ; click on "Fish Consumption Advisories.")
The waterways highlighted in the report by and large are safe for swimming, Glover said. Of the 49 public beaches managed by the state, five -- none of them in Northern Virginia -- are considered unsafe because of high bacteria levels, he said.
The problem seems to be catching the attention of politicians. The recently passed state budget included more than $270 million for water quality projects, most of it for the Chesapeake Bay but about $72 million for the river system. Environmentalists lauded the allocation as an important step.
The Department of Environmental Quality is accepting public comments on the report, which is available at http://www.deq.virginia.gov/wqa/305b2006.html , through tomorrow at dmglover@deq.virginia.gov .
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