BY FRANK DELANO
At the present rate, it will take almost 200 years for Virginia officials to write plans to clean up the state's polluted waters.
Since 2001, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality has completed 88 cleanup plans, an average of 11 per year, according to a June report by Secretary of Natural Resources L. Preston Bryant.
At that pace, it will take 176 years for the state to figure out how to clean up its remaining 1,937 polluted streams, lakes and estuaries.
The cleanups themselves could take even longer. The 88 plans already written have put into place about 30 projects to reduce pollution, a state official said.
The effort has reduced pollution in some waters. But only one three-quarter-mile-long section of one mountain creek has been cleaned up sufficiently to be removed from the state's long list of polluted waters, the Environmental Protection Agency says.
Cleaning up Virginia waters could cost $1 billion or more. But the state has no long-term funding plan, and money for the effort is often lacking in state budgets, said Gerald P. McCarthy, executive director of the Virginia Environmental Endowment.
"The state has spent about $300 million to improve wastewater-treatment plants, but it has never spent enough to clean up non-point sour-ces of pollution," said former Secretary of Natural Resources W. Tayloe Murphy Jr. of Westmoreland County.
"Among many other adverse consequences, this lack of commitment and funding to clean up the water has resulted in the death of the Chesapeake Bay seafood industry and the loss of jobs and the way of life of thousands of people," Murphy said.
Virginia has 10,604 miles of polluted streams, 94,039 acres of polluted lakes and 2,185 square miles of polluted estuaries.
High bacteria levels are the major pollutant in the rivers. Low dissolved oxygen and high PCB levels are the primary problems in the lakes and tidal waters.
But few environmentalists or state officials support the lengthy, expensive process of documenting pollution stream by stream.
"It totally misses the three main problems in the Rappahannock and the Chesapeake Bay--nitrogen, phosphorus and sediments--because there are no water-quality standards for those pollutants," said John Tippett, executive director of the Friends of the Rappahannock.
"It's a good concept, but in actuality, it's ridiculous and unworkable. The whole thing is a complete fraud," said Lynton S. Land, a retired scientist and clean-water advocate from Northumberland County.
"It's largely a paper process that you have to go through, but paper reports don't clean up streams," said Jeff Corbin, assistant secretary of natural resources.
"We've been stuck for the past decade in doing nothing but plans and doing nothing to clean up water pollution. We know the solutions. Let's fund them," said Chuck Epes, a spokesman for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation.
little progress
The plans for polluted waters set "total maximum daily loads." TMDLs represent the amount of pollution a body of water can take without exceeding water-quality standards.
Hence, TMDLs also indicate how much pollution reduction must occur to make the water clean enough for swimming, fishing and other uses.
TMDLs are required by the U.S. Clean Water Act. As of May 2008, the state had completed TMDLs for 546 polluted waters. The effort has cost more than $10 million and necessitated almost 500 public meetings across the state.
But much more money and time will be required to develop TMDLs for the state's remaining 1,700 impaired waters. The state hopes to accomplish the task by 2018 if additional funding for the work can be found.
The Rappahannock River basin is typical of the magnitude of the problem. From its headwaters to its mouth, 177 tributaries and other sections of the river are known to be polluted, mostly by bacteria from animal and human waste.
But TMDLs have been written for only 24 of the river's polluted sections. State law requires a cleanup plan to be drafted for each TMDL, but only one TMDL implementation plan has been written--to clean up four creeks in Fauquier and Stafford counties.
The plan for Thumb Run, Carter Run, Great Run and Deep Run covers about 93,000 acres, or about 5 percent of the 1.7 million acres in the Rappahannock basin. Written in 2006, the plan estimates it could cost $12.6 million to reduce bacteria to an acceptable level and perhaps another $41 million to restore the streams to pristine condition.
The plan focuses on excluding livestock from streams, buffering streams with trees and other plants, reducing fertilizer on pastures and cropland, replacing and repairing septic systems and reducing pet wastes.
Compliance is voluntary. Two years into the implementation plan, 10 drain fields have been repaired and 19 landown-
A $1 billion price tag
This year, the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation has $20 million to assist landowners who want to improve water quality.
At present, there is no money for those cost-share programs in next year's budget, said DCR Deputy Director Russ Baxter.
"Funding is the limiting factor in the restoration of impaired waters," said Charles Martin, TMDL manager for the DEQ.
"Virginians ought to be outraged that 10,000 stream miles are not deemed swimmable or fishable," said Epes of the Chesapeake Bay Foundation. "They ought to demand that they be cleaned up. TMDLs and implementation plans will never fix the problems."
"We're in this mess because we want to do everything as cheaply as possible," said Land.
Epes believes it will cost a billion dollars--$100 million annually for 10 years--to help farmers install ways to protect the state's waterways.
But Jeff Corbin doubts that "the public will to do it."
"One thing that has always frustrated me," said the assistant natural resources secretary, "is that legislators talk about investing in education, trans-portation and public safety. But when it comes to the environment, they always talk about the expense.
"We need to do a better job of showing the economic gain that will result from cleaning up the environment," he said.
Frank Delano: 804/333-3834
Email: fpdelano@gmail.com
10,604 miles of polluted streams in Virginia 94,039 acres of polluted lakes 2,185 square miles of polluted estuaries 546 polluted waters in Virginia for which cleanup studies have been done 1,700 remaining polluted waters in the state for which studies are required $10 MILLION total spent on cleanup studies as of May $1 BILLION estimated cost of cleaning up all Virginia waters |