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By RUSTY DENNEN
Fredericksburg is still negotiating with a Spotsylvania businessman for the go-ahead to complete its Rappahannock Canal project.
City officials recently met with Hugh C. Cosner, who owns the former Embrey Power Plant off Caroline Street on the river.
The power plant property is where Fredericksburg and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers want to install a pump to move water from the river into the canal.
"It was a good meeting with him I'm cautiously optimistic," City Attorney Kathleen Dooley said Tuesday. Discussions have been ongoing since last fall.
The historic waterway, built in the mid-19th century to move goods up and down the river, has been empty since the Embrey Dam was breached in February 2004. The dam had supplied water to the canal, which meanders about two miles through the city to its outlet underground at Princess Anne Street.
The Corps of Engineers has the money for the work--$1.5 million--but cannot proceed until the city has secured easements on Cosner's land for a pump station, pipes and maintenance road.
Cosner, a former Spotsylvania County supervisor, and a partner bought the vacant power plant building in 1978 for commercial development, possibly a restaurant. The city and the property owners have been dickering over where the pump station and service road should be located on the property.
Cosner wants those farther from the power plant and closer to an adjacent parcel of city-owned land, a city official said. Efforts to reach Cosner for comment were unsuccessful.
The power station, idle for more than 30 years, has pumps inside but they are not suitable for refilling the canal.
The first phase of the project--installing aerators along the bottom--has been completed. The aerators are designed to keep water in the canal from stagnating.
Hundreds of city residents live on or near the waterway and some are not happy with its present condition. During the summer months it becomes a stagnant mud hole that attracts mosquitoes.
And it's unsightly: Tons of litter are exposed now that it's empty, with the occasional shopping cart, tires, beer cans and fast-food containers.
The Fredericksburg Wetlands Board in January asked City Council to direct the Public Works Department to clean up the litter before it's refilled, and to increase the penalties for littering.
The council shelved the request, but City Manager Phillip Rodenberg said other cleanup plans are in the works.
A grant from the regional refuse board will be used to have inmates from the Rappahannock Regional Jail pick up litter along the Canal Path. There will be three cleanups a month, Rodenberg said, between March and November.
Because the canal has steep banks, it's unlikely that much of the trash in it will be removed. "If they can reach it and it's safe" from the Canal Path, "we'll want them to pull it out," he said.
In its heyday in the mid-1800s, the canal was a focal point of commerce in Fredericksburg, a major thoroughfare for commodities such as grain, fish and lumber for several decades until it was doomed by competition from the railroads.
Other surviving parts of the canal, including locks and dams are still visible along the river above Fredericksburg.
The canal work is the last phase of the decadelong, $10 million Embrey Dam removal project.
To reach RUSTY DENNEN:
Email: rdennen@freelancestar.com
