Residents agree with EPA water view / Many state rivers, creeks
polluted, agency asserts; 4 reservoirs cited
Thursday, March 11, 1999
BY REX SPRINGSTON
Times-Dispatch Staff Writer
Too many of Virginia's lakes and waterways are polluted, and someone should clean them
up, Virginians told federal officials last night.
"It is high time the commonwealth of Virginia intervened to protect our precious
water supplies," said Randy Slovic, water quality chairwoman for the Sierra Club's
Virginia chapter.
Slovic said development is causing pollution that's fouling four state drinking-water
reservoirs -- Swift Creek reservoir in Chesterfield County, Big Bethel reservoir on the
Peninsula, Stumpy Lake in Virginia Beach and Waller Mill reservoir in the Williamsburg
area.
"More development, more people and less drinking water is a formula for
disaster," Slovic said.
Wyndham Price, a Henrico County resident, said Reedy Creek in South Richmond should be
cleaned up.
"It's gone from a wonderful wooded creek to a culverted, concrete disaster in my
lifetime," he said.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency conducted the public hearing in Richmond to
take comments on the agency's finding that more Virginia waterways are polluted than the
state says.
Virginia should have added the Chesapeake Bay and stretches of nearly 140 rivers
to its list of polluted waters, which was unveiled last spring, EPA officials say.
The EPA plans to add those waterways to the dirty-water list. When a waterway goes on
the list, the state must prepare a plan for cleaning it.
Chuck Epes, president of the Bellevue Civic
Association in North Richmond and an official with the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, asked
the EPA to put Princeton Creek on the dirty-water list.
The creek, in which children sometimes play, is so polluted with
fecal bacteria from old, cracked, underground sewer lines that it literally stinks, Epes
said.
"What was once a very natural creek, thriving with frogs and
fish and herons and so forth, is now virtually dead," Epes said.
The roughly mile-long creek originates in Bellevue, runs behind
homes and beside a school, then joins two other streams in Bryan Park.
The civic association represents about 2,300 families.
John J. Zeugner, president of the 300-member Friends of Bryan
Park, said, "Not only is it imperative to put Princeton Creek on the [dirty-water]
list, but health warnings should be posted in the park."
The EPA's plan to put the Chesapeake Bay on the polluted-water list raises questions
about the future of a multistate effort to clean the bay.
As part of that program, Virginia encourages problem sewage plants and other polluters
to voluntarily reduce the flow of damaging nutrients to the bay.
State officials, however, say the EPA's plan would interfere with efforts to help the
bay by requiring cleanups instead of encouraging them.
The EPA's approach would slow the bay cleanup and make it more expensive, said Mike
Murphy, director of biological enhancement for the state Department of Environmental
Quality. "Our nonregulatory approach is working," he said.
But Thomas J. Maslany, director of water protection for the EPA's Mid-Atlantic region,
said the agency would give Virginia's voluntary cleanup a chance to work before tough
regulations kicked in.
"This process is not incompatible with [Virginia's] bay program," Maslany
said in an interview.
Jeff Corbin, a staff scientist for the Chesapeake Bay Foundation, said the conservation
group agreed with the EPA's plan to add the bay to the dirty-water list.
The list, compiled by the Department of Environmental Quality, pinpointed pollution
problems in about 240 stretches of rivers, from narrow western streams to the James River
in Richmond.
The EPA says the list should also include portions of the Rappahannock, York and
Elizabeth rivers in eastern Virginia.
Other rivers that the EPA says should be on the list include portions of the James in
Henrico County, the South Anna in Hanover County, the Po in Spotsylvania County and the
Meherrin at Emporia.
Last night's hearing was held at the Department of Motor Vehicles office at 2300 W.
Broad St. About 70 people attended, and about a dozen spoke.
The EPA will hold another hearing tonight at the Roanoke County administration center
at 5204 Bernard Drive.
People can also comment in writing. The deadline is Monday. For information, call the
EPA at (215) 814-5259 or the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality at (804)
698-4462.
© 1999, Richmond Newspapers Inc. |
