This morning I spoke with Pat Calvert, the Upper James Riverkeeper with the James River Association. He was on his way to Lynchburg’s city hall for a press conference from the National Transportation Safety Board on yesterday’s train derailment that spilled thousands of galled of crude oil into the James River.

Calvert hadn’t slept much since yesterday afternoon. He said he and a number of others from the JRA, the Waterkeeper Alliance and a number of other organizations were out yesterday and again today taking pictures, taking water samples for testing and otherwise monitoring the spill.

“Staff from JRA and the Waterkeeper Alliance are on the water as we speak downstream doing sampling,” he said. “We’re also looking for adverse effects on wildlife.”

Upper James Riverkeeper Pat Calvert with petroleum hands near the site of the Lynchburg spill. Credit: Pat Calvert

I asked him about the reaction from those in the Lynchburg area who make their living on and near the James: “Sad. Concerned. They have questions.”

He added that “I’m getting just as much concern from the Richmond. People want to know about their drinking water.”

A new endurance race is coming to Virginia and it promises to be quite a challenge. The James River Rundown will be one of the longest paddling races in the United States, covering 100 miles of the scenic James River over a two-day period from June 20-21, 2014.

Competitors will traverse the river in kayaks, canoes, rafts and paddleboards, either as solo paddlers or in teams. There are no restrictions on what they paddle, just as long as there is no motor, sail, or anchored oar configuration and participants reach the finish line within the 40 -hour cutoff.

The race begins at James River State Park in Gladstone and ends 100 miles later at the American Legion boat ramp just past Robious Landing Park in Richmond. Designated checkpoints will be set up along the way, offering paddlers a chance to rest or camp.

The James River Rundown committee is chaired by Kevin Odberg who was inspired to organize the event after participating in the Missouri River 340. “The real goal of this race is to create a fun challenge and spread an appreciation for the river and the James River Association that works to protect it,” said Odberg. “Finishing a race like this creates a sense of pride and camaraderie along with a real connection to the river.”

Race dates correspond with the Summer Solstice, which means paddlers will have the most amount of daylight of the year, giving them ample time to paddle without having to do so in the dark. The course is on a stretch of the James River that does not have any dams, portages or tough rapids.

That does not mean, however, that this will be easy race. At the beginning of the course, participants will fight winding river and low water levels with occasional hang-ups and rocks ready to stop their craft. The second half of the course is smoother but by then the fatigue, heat, and muscle pain will be the biggest foe.

A tube will probably not win you the James River Rundown this summer.

“We want this race to appeal to a wide variety of paddlers and be a fun event for everyone,” said Bill Street, CEO of the James River Association. “The James River Rundown will be a great showcase for recreation on the river, but safety is always a top priority, so there will be plenty of checkpoints, camping spots and safety boats along the course.

The family-friendly after party at the finish line should cure paddler’s weariness by offering live music and beverages from Hardywood Park Craft Brewery.

We like Hunter Davis and Ben Moore because they’re always hustling — and because few people know the James River like these two whitewater paddlers. Moore runs the standup paddleboarding program at Riverside Outfitters. Davis has a lot of irons in the fire, including Home on the James, where, among other things, he posts tremendous videos focusing on America’s Founding River.

The above video — “Pipeline” — is the beginning of a partnership between RichmondOutside.com, Davis and Moore. The “James River Video Atlas,” will comprise short videos of all of the the rapids in the falls of the James, from Bosher’s Dam to the Pipeline. We’ll showcase the videos here in the News Blog as they’re released, then they’ll live in our Paddling page and the appropriate Destinations pages. There you’ll be able to click on any rapid and watch the video of Moore and Davis talking about it and running it in their paddleboards and kayaks.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chris Johnson has been a longtime friend of RichmondOutside.com. We’ve featured his photos here since we revamped and re-launched back in the fall. A local physician and Collegiate School grad, he spends a lot of time outdoors photographing Richmond’s natural beauty. The other day he went back to the Pipeline to check out the heron activity and came back with this report. This is the second in an occasional series from Johnson.

I went back down to the Pipeline a few days ago not knowing what to expect. The weather was warm and sunny, and I was hopeful to have some good light to capture more heron photos.

A heron flies from its perch at the Pipeline. Credit: Chris Johnson

As expected, the river was even higher than the week before, and the water was moving pretty fast. I didn’t know what this would mean for the herons in terms of fishing. The overall activity level was still high — very similar to last week — with lots of herons flying to and from the nests and down to the water.

There’s a little spot on the north bank of the Pipeline where I’ve had good luck watching and photographing the herons catch fish. When I initially showed up, there weren’t any herons in this particular area, but within 5 or 10 minutes three of them staked out their territory.

I guess I’ve never paid much attention to the river in great detail this time of year, but the number of fish I could see with my naked eye (as well as through a telephoto lens) was unreal. It was hard to tell exactly what kind of fish I was seeing, but they all seemed to have the shape of shad. I must have watched two dozen go right by a heron sitting on a rock on the bank of the river. At times he seemed oblivious to the fish, and at other times he seemed to be eyeing in on them and acted like he was going to make some moves to catch a few.

Despite sitting and watching the same heron for close to an hour, he never really made a move and ended up flying off. At one point I literally saw fish bump into his legs once he moved down into the water. I couldn’t believe he didn’t go after them! Either the herons are really picky when it comes to eating, really blind, or eat so well that they don’t need to catch fish every opportunity they can.

Fishing, heron-style. Credit: Chris Johnson

One of the herons a little farther back did end up catching a shad, which he gulped down whole in about 15 seconds. Unfortunately he was behind some reeds, so I wasn’t able to get any great shots of him.

One interesting behavior I’ve noticed the past two times I’ve been on the Pipeline is similar to a story I read online by Phil Riggan: I’ve seen heron catch a fish, drop it back into the water, poke at it with their beaks, put it back in their mouths, drop it back, poke more and continue this cycle for several minutes. Each time I’ve seen it, the heron never actually eats the fish. I don’t know enough about their eating behavior to know how this is beneficial and not just totally mean-spirited.

As before, I saw lots of foot traffic, which is great for a weekday downtown. I ran into three other photographers, three joggers, two fishermen and probably half-dozen folks taking a stroll on their lunch break.

A heron with a shad at the Pipeline. Credit: Chris Johnson

We’ve got big dreams here at RichmondOutside.com. One of them is on the front of the Metro section in today’s Times-Dispatch.

T-D photog Kevin Morley’s shot of the RichmondOutside.com team on the mapping boat at Deep Bottom.

T-D reporter Graham Moomaw and photographer Kevin Morley joined Ryan and me at Deep Bottom Boat Landing last week as we tested our custom-built, aluminum-frame pontoon raft for the first time. Over the past two months, we’ve worked with our friends at Custom Metal Fabricators to design and build the stainless steel structure you see in the picture to the left. A set of telescoping poles holds up the housing for the six-camera array.

This summer Terrain360.com part owner Ross Milby and a partner will float the entire 340-mile length of the James River, taking pictures every 30 or so feet. Those images (about 360,000 of them) will be stitched together into 60,000 panoramic images, creating a virtual tour of America’s Founding River. With that content we can create next-generation “augmented realty” maps — maps that not only let you see a river or a trail, but click on informational icons inside the 3D map as you go past them. Our map of the James, that we’re producing in conjunction with the James River Association, will be the first of its kind. And you’ll be able to find it on RichmondOutside.com, Terrain360.com and EnvisiontheJames.org, a project of the JRA.

Our goal is to offer a unique online experience for trail and river lovers — something they haven’t seen anywhere else. That gets underway this June on the James.

Yesterday, the Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition — an new organization made up of 50+ businesses and organizations that support building a Richmond region that is bikeable for everyone — sent the below letter to Richmond City Council. In it they ask the body to allocate $3 million in the FY 2015 budget for new on-street bikeways, plus $3.5 million to ensure the completion of the Brown’s Island Dam Walk. City Council action on the mayor’s proposed budget is due by the end of May.

Click here to follow the debate over funding the Brown’s Island Dam Walk and here for info on the mayor’s lack of budget support for bike infrastructure.

The Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition also has a page where individuals can write City Council and join with them in asking for these funding allocations: http://bit.ly/1gHJcmg

Dear Richmond City Council,

Recognizing that we are in a critical budget window, the Greater Richmond
Bicycle Coalition urges you to dedicate significant city funding to a
network of bike infrastructure that can connect residents across the city to
wherever they want to go: work, school, shops, parks, and more. This
includes safe and convenient crossings of the James River. Experts close to
these projects estimate needing $3 million dollars to complete a network of
20-miles of bikeways and $3.5 million to build the Brown’s Island Dam Walk.
Please dedicate city funding to pay for these projects without relying on
federal grants, which cannot be guaranteed. Additionally, the window before
2015’s UCI Road Cycling World Championships is closing, and these projects
must start being designed and implemented immediately if we are going to
have anything new on the ground before several hundred thousand visitors
come to Richmond. There are only two paving schedules between now and then.

The Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition is a new organization formed to unify
the long-standing, but often disconnected voices in the cycling community.
Supplementing current riders, research suggests that as many as 60% of
non-cyclists would ride more with more and better bike infrastructure, too.
Our coalition is composed of over 50 bike advocacy organizations and
businesses representing all nine council districts, as well as each of the
counties in the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area. Our collective reach
is over 100,000 people. And our focus is to build the right infrastructure
for cyclists and those not yet riding to make transportation, recreation,
and healthy activity by bike safe, inviting, and convenient for those of all
ages and abilities.

Studies abound showing bike infrastructure to be a sound investment,
increasing retail sales, property values and tax revenues by up to 70%. A
network that connects the city is a high-return, low-cost investment that
will increase quality of life for all Richmonders, create a more welcoming
and energetic business environment, and draw new people to the city to live
and spend money. Let’s build a city where talented professionals will
relocate to live, work, and play that also serves the needs and demands of
current residents.

We hope you agree that now is the moment to commit to something great for
everyone in our city. A representative of the coalition will be reaching out
to you to meet to discuss the need for bike infrastructure and why now is
the critical moment for the City to allocate the funds to build it.

Thank you for your time and consideration, and please let us know if we can
work together to make these projects a reality.

Sincerely,

Greg Rollins, President
Greater Richmond Bicycle Coalition, www.rvabike.org
100 Avenue of Champions, Suite 300
Richmond, Virginia 23230
info@rvabike.org
804.740.7914

EDITOR’S NOTE: Chris Johnson has been a longtime friend of RichmondOutside.com. We’ve featured his photos here since we revamped and re-launched back in the fall. A local physician and Collegiate School grad, he spends a lot of time outdoors photographing Richmond’s natural beauty. The other day he went down to the Pipeline to check out the heron activity and came back with this report. This is the first in an occasional series from Johnson.

My plan for Tuesday had been to go to the river to test out my new neutral-density filter. It blocks out light so that you can shoot at long exposures even during bright, sunny days. I’d hoped to capture rapids in the river that would have the smooth, silky look with a long shutter speed.

Canal waterfall at Pump House Park. Credit: Chris Johnson

One of the easiest river-access points for me is near the Atlantic Coast Railroad train bridge on the north bank of the James. I wasn’t really sure if I’d have any luck. When I’ve been down there before when the river is high, I’ve noticed that you lose a lot of the contours, and the river just looks like one gigantic muddy stream. I did get some nice photos in Pump House Park of the waterfall over the canal with the train bridge in the background, but, as expected, the river didn’t give me what I was looking for.

I decided to head down to the Pipeline because I remember it being pretty active with lots of white water even when the river has been high. It was a warm day and I figured the herons would also be active but didn’t know how much they’d be down on the river given how high it was.

A heron nabs a hickory shad. Credit: Chris Johnson

As soon as I got on the Pipeline, I saw herons flying all around. I took a few long-exposure shots with my tripod but quickly ditched that and went strictly to shooting with my telephoto lens. At one point I had 12 herons in plain sight right in front of me and three or four behind me. They’ve got to be some of the most patient birds. Most of them sat still just staring down at the river. In the two hours I was there I only saw three actually plunge in to go fishing: One was unsuccessful; one caught a fish, wrestled with it for about 20 seconds but lost it; and one caught and ate one.

The birds sitting on the river seemed pretty territorial. I saw several get too close to each other, which resulted in some skirmishes and dunks in the water. There was lots of activity on the nests. I’d say there were easily 20-30 nests, maybe more — I didn’t really take the time to count — and probably another 20 to 30 herons sitting in the trees. Some nests had two birds sitting on top. Others just had 1one. And some were empty. There was lots of coming and going from the nests. Most of the birds flew away and came back from what looked like more towards the south bank of the river.

Down the hatch! Credit: Chris Johnson

There was a good amount of human traffic on the pipeline, too, which was great to see for a Tuesday morning. I probably passed or was passed by 10-12 people out there. Most were interested in the heron activity; some seemed just to be going for a stroll. With the herons, gulls, cormorants, ospreys and other birds so active in such a concentrated area, it’s an amazing time of year to head down there.

I’m excited to get back down again when the river is a little more calm and it warms up more. Hopefully by early to mid summer I’ll be able to see some of the chicks flying and fishing on their own.

It’s hard to believe the size fish herons can fit in their throats. Credit: Chris Johnson

Last Friday, after we’d gotten the photos we needed for our 3D tour of the Vepco Levy Bridge (the site of the future Brown’s Island Dam Walk), the RichmondOutside.com team stopped under the Manchester Bridge to see what was going on on the river. There were a ton of seagulls on the water upstream of the heron rookery, and just downstream of the Vepco Levy Bridge we counted three osprey nests on the old bridge stanchions for the Richmond-Petersburg Railroad line (Only one nest had an osprey in it at the time).

Established osprey migration patterns.

It’s that time of year, the time when migratory ospreys make their way back to fish-rich places like the James River from points south to build nests and fill them with eggs. And there are a couple of high-quality online resources that will be useful for the budding Central Virginia bird lover or anyone who wants to go check out the patterns and urban homes of the esteemed fish hawk.

The Center for Conservation Biology has set up a very cool site that uses bird enthusiasts to track osprey nests all over the world — osprey-watch.org. Click here and check out the map to see where ospreys have set up shop in Richmond area. The CCB site also has links to osprey cams worldwide.

A couple of days ago the Chesapeake Bay Foundation sent out a press release about their Osprey Tracking Project. There you can watch three birds outfitted with radio monitoring devices as they migrate back to Virginia and Maryland from northern South America.

Both of these sites also include resources to learn more about ospreys. Check them out, and when you’re near a local body of water scan the sky to see if you can spot one.

Osprey in flight. Credit: Wikipedia.org

Earlier this week we highlighted reporting by the Times-Dispatch’s Graham Moomaw on Mayor Dwight Jones’ proposed 2015 budget — specifically that it included no new funds for projects outlined in the Riverfront Plan. Much of the early focus of the plan has centered around the Brown’s Island Dam Walk — a proposed pedestrian- and bicycle-only bridge that would follow the path of the defunct, but still extant, Vepco Levy Bridge.

A number of local conservation and outdoors groups were concerned when word spread about the mayor’s proposed budget. In today’s T-D, the mayor seemed to backtrack, saying his budget “sends the wrong signal” about the city’s intentions regarding the Riverfront Plan and adding that “we are well on track to complete the dam walk before the world road cycling championships…” Still, a number of questions remain, many of which are outlined in Michael Paul Williams’ Metro section column today.

The Vepco Levy Bridge looking south toward Manchester.

The excitement level is high for the BIDW for seemingly obvious reasons: It would be the first bike/ped-only bridge on the James in Central Virginia; it would connect the north and south banks of the James; it would be just a few feet above the water.

But one thing very few Richmonders, even those fired up by the idea of the dam walk, can say is that they know what it will be like to stand on the completed bridge and take in the full sweep of the James River — Belle Isle and the Lee Bridge upstream, Brown’s Island to the north, the Manchester Bridge and the islands downstream.

Now they can. At RichmondOutside.com we consider ourselves intrepid pushers of the envelope, and we’re proud to bring you our Terrain360 tour of the future Brown’s Island Dam Walk.

On Feb. 18th dozens of Richmond residents piled into the Virginia War Memorial to hear city planners and politicians discuss the first step in implementing the city’s much-debated, much-anticipated Riverfront Plan. The focus centered around the Brown’s Island Dam Walk, which would connect Brown’s Island to Manchester on the south side of the river via a metal footbridge designed specifically for pedestrians.

The current Vepco Levy Bridge (right), is slated to be reborn as the Brown’s Island Dam Walk. Credit: Phil Riggan

The meeting that night and the dam walk have drawn much press, including here at RichmondOutside.com. Mayor Dwight Jones, in a seeming indication of his seriousness of purpose regarding the Riverfront Plan, attended that public forum and spoke first. He said that while in the past the city’s riverfront has grown be default, now it will grow by design. Other speakers said it was the intention of the city to have the project completed before the World Road Cycling Championships come to Richmond in September 2015.

Makes sense, right? Supposedly hundreds of thousands of visitors will descend on Richmond. If we’re going to build this centerpiece pedestrian bridge linking the north and south banks of the river, why not have it ready for guests? (And let’s be honest, the Redskins training camp project disabused us of the illusion that large city projects have to take a long time.)

Today, however, comes the news that all those visitors, not to mention 1.2 million Central Virginians, might not find a pedestrian bridge across the river come September 2015. The Times-Dispatch’s Graham Moomaw reports that “the latest budget proposal from Richmond Mayor Dwight Jones offers no new money for the implementation of the city’s Riverfront Plant.”

Moomaw goes on to write that “in the past two budget years, the city has allocated almost $5 million in capital funds to help jump-start the Riverfront Plant…(the mayor’s press secretary Tammy) Hawley said jones pushed for the initial $5 million and that the Riverfront Plan is a priority for him.”

If so, he has a funny way of showing it. His budget for FY 2015 makes no mention of the Riverfront Plan. How to explain the mayor’s presence at the Riverfront Plan public forum in February and his stated desire to see the plan come to life and this budget proposal?

Hawley told Moomaw that the administration will be adding more riverfront money into future budgets. She also said that the city expects $2.5 million in matching funds from the state this year, which would be added to the $4 million they have on hand ($1 million of that $5 million has already been spent). The questions then become: What if that $2.5 million doesn’t come through? And, if it does, what if $6.5 million isn’t enough to get it done in time? I’ve spoken with people familiar with the planning  and implementation of the Riverfront Plan who mentioned $7.5 million as a likely minimum cost for the Dam Walk.

Here’s the view from the north looking south at the existing Vepco Levy Bridge that no longer connects Brown’s Island to Manchester.

The James River Association is concerned. They put out a press release last week saying, in part, “Providing additional funding in FY 15 is critical to the completion of the first project under the Riverfront Plan, the Brown’s Island Dam Walk, as well as to plan other projects such as trail improvements on Chapel Island, a new public park at the Lehigh Cement site and the ‘Missing Link’ trail between Manchester and Belle Isle.”

Beth Weisbrod, Executive Director of the Virginia Capital Trail, is too. A portion of the Capital Trail just east of Great Shiplock Park is bound up in the Riverfront Plan machinations as well. “We were all shocked to learn of this,” she said.

Am I missing something? The Riverfront Plan was the result of a long, expensive process. It has broad support among Richmonders. In words, anyway, it seemed to have similar support from the most powerful politician in Richmond — Mayor Jones. Now that support is in very much in question because, while words are a good start, it’s money that builds bridges.