Every two years the James River Association releases its assessment of the health of the James River watershed — the State of the James. The conservation group looks at 20 indicators to come up with a composite score and a letter grade from A to F. Today the JRA released its 2013 assessment with press conferences in Richmond, Lynchburg and Newport News. I attended the Richmond event at the Intermediate Terminal, across the river from Ancarrow’s Landing. The takeaway: little to no progress in reducing sediment pollution over the past 20 years has begun to overshadow headway in other areas of the river’s ecosystem and water quality – “areas where the state has made significant investments over the past few years,” the report said.

JRA CEO Bill Street talks about his group’s “State of the James” report at a press conference today.

Only two indicators met or exceeded goals the JRA set after the 2011 report: the bald eagle population and wastewater treatment pollution reduction.  The report gave sediment pollution reduction the lowest score — just 4 percent. The biggest falling indicator was for American shad, which was down 21 percent over 2011 levels, and the biggest improvement was in wastewater treatment pollution reduction, which has received substantial state investment and, as a result, climbed 22 percent in the past two years.

Overall, America’s founding river was given a grade of “C” and a 53 percent rating, up two points from two years ago.

“We see progress where Virginia has really made a significant commitment or investment, most specifically in wastewater treatment,” said JRA CEO Bill Street. “It’s up 22 percent because of the investment Virginia has made. We’ve seen that lead to reductions in nitrogen and phosphorous levels in the river as a whole. That’s very encouraging to show that where we make that level of investment we see some marked improvement.”

The state has put about $1.5 billion toward improving wastewater treatment in the James watershed over the past 10 years. But, as Street explained, that has been a kind of low-hanging fruit. Sediment pollution is every bit the threat to the health of the James and reducing will be more difficult without significant commitment from the state and localities.

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Who doesn’t love a ribbon cutting?

I was among the large crowd that turned out on Tuesday to mark the official opening of the new and improved Great Shiplock Park. The park has long been a James River Park parcel and now it’s the Richmond trailhead for the Virginia Capital Trail as well.

$550,000 (give or take) of private donations was what it took to turn the park from drab to lushly landscaped. The Capital Trail was regarded and resurfaced through the park; old canal stones were added for accents; Whit Brooks of Whitworth Cycles designed and welded custom bike racks. There are benches and shady spots to sit in, and the view of the James River and Kanawha Canal was enhanced with some hardcore weed whacking and creative landscaping. Also, with the addition of some metal ramps, the bridge the crosses the canal to Chapel Island is now handicapped accessible.

While there is still a long way to go before the trail is complete (est. summer 2015 finish), this was a big step toward that end.

In Mayor Jones’ remarks he mentioned “news” about additional projects that were in the Riverfront Plan. He mentioned Chapel Island (attached to Great Shiplock via that bridge) and Brown’s Island specifically. Since pretty much everyone who new what the mayor was talking about was in the crowd, I started asking around. Tyler Potterfield, with the city’s Planning and Preservation Division, said he’d be glad to tell me about it after he got clearance from the mayor’s press office. Nathan Burrell, JRPS superintendent, was able to speak more generally about upcoming projects.

The first, he said, is continuing the main, wide trail that runs through the middle of Chapel Island upstream along the river. “Essentially, it’s a connection between here and (the) 14th Street (takeout),” Burrell said.

Chapel Island is owned by the Department of Utilities, and the JRPS manages its eastern end. But there’s a fence blocking off the western end currently. The trail connecting Chapel to the 14th Street Takeout will eventually go through there, along the river and over or around the Shockoe Creek outflow. Burrell also said there’s talk of terracing on Chapel Island to allow fishermen, for instance, to get down to the river’s edge.

Sweet bike racks.

Running concurrently with the work on Chapel Island will be an even more exciting project on Brown’s Island: The refurbishment and completion of the bridge over the Vepco levy from Brown’s Island to the Manchester Climbing Wall area. Not familiar with the bridge? If you’ve been to Brown’s Island, you probably have seen the “Three Days April” historical walkway that juts south over the river from the park. The southern end of that would connect with the old Vepco Levy bridge but there’s a huge gap. The idea is to connect the two sides of the river with a bridge for bikes and pedestrians only.

The timing on all this, said Burrell: “I know the contract has been signed so I guess in the next half year or so.”

Look for more details when I get the chance to talk with Tyler Potterfield in the next couple of days.

The aching-to-be-connected Vepco Levy Bridge from Brown’s Island to Manchester.

James River Park lovers will enjoy Rex Springston’s profile of Nathan Burrell in today’s Times-Dispatch. Burrell took over for the iconoclastic Ralph White as James River Park System superintendent earlier this year. Inevitably, he’s had to deal with questions comparing him to his predecessor, he told Springston.

Nathan Burrell at the Reedy Creek boat put-in.

“The comment that I get most frequently is, ‘You have big shoes to fill.’ And my comment always is, ‘Very true, but I’m not looking to fill anybody’s shoes. I’ve cobbled my own shoes, and I’m filling those. “

The “big shoes” questions were bound to come after 33 years of White at the helm. But my guess is they’ll fade in time (and probably not much time). You can already witness Burrell’s hand throughout the park. Have you seen those beautiful new cedar signs at places like the Belle Isle Bike Skills Park, Tredegar Street by the Belle Isle parking lot and now on Chapel Island? Burrell told me a while back that more of those will be going up in high-profile spots throughout the park. The idea is to standardize (and class up) the look of popular park entrances and give people more info.

“If you are in Tredegar Iron Works, and you are a visitor to the city of Richmond, how do you know to go to (the park’s) Belle Isle, where there’s more Civil War history on the island? You don’t, unless you are in the know,” he said. “Those are the types of things I’m really looking to push forward.”

On October 15 at 2 p.m. the public is invited to the official opening of the new and improved Great Shiplock Park. (If you’re not familiar with what’s been going on at this James River Park System parcel on the north side of the river, click here and here.) In her most recent email newsletter, Beth Weisbrod, executive director of the Virginia Capital Trail Foundation, gives us a thumbnail history of how the park went from overlooked JRPS parcel to ($550,000 later) the Richmond trailhead for the Virginia Capital Trail:

About 18 months ago, as we were preparing for the city approval process of our trailhead design, we were challenged by Meg Turner of Capital Trees to think bigger. She introduced us to Jay Hugo and Jill Nolt of the architecture firm 3North, who showed us in drawings what she meant — how the whole park could call out to trail users to sit, enjoy the views of the Kanawha Canal and James River, and take in the beauty and history. Lucky for us, Richmond has several corporate citizens, private foundations, other nonprofits, and individuals who also like to think big and share a passion to make Richmond a better place. What we’ll be cutting the ribbon on next week is the result of a successful mix of partners, collaborators, and generous supporters, to the huge benefit of anyone passing through downtown Richmond along Dock Street or the Virginia Capital Trail. 

Ramps now take users across the James River and Kanawha Canal from the park to Chapel Island.

Just across the entrance to the park, trailhead amenities like benches, shade structures, and bike racks encourage people to stop. The views, history, and other nearby attractions will encourage them to linger. We built ramps on either side of the Kanawha Canal locks so that wheels can easily cross them and people can enjoy the new trails on Chapel Island. We added light poles to make it safer at night, and bright LED lights along the Trail that run off of solar panels. On the western edge of the park, our friends at Capital Trees designed a biofilter to cleanse rainwater before it goes into the river. They also added landscaping, not just to make the park pretty, but to further manage stormwater in an environmentally friendly way. 

I met up with Weisbrod last week to hear about the project, and she said she’d love to see as many Richmonders as possible flood the park for the October 15th ribbon cutting. The mayor will be there, as will other civic leaders, and they need to know that while this trailhead is now complete, there is much work to do to finish Richmond’s portion of the trail.

The Presquile ferry crossing.

How often do you get the chance to see a Federally endangered species up close, take pictures, touch it? I got that chance last week on one of those October days that defy the calendar and break warm and humid like midsummer.

I joined VCU researcher Matt Balazik and Chuck Frederickson and Jamie Brunkow, James River Association Riverkeepers past and present, on a sturgeon run on the James River near Presquile National Wildlife Refuge. When I stepped aboard near the Presquile ferry, there were already five on board, all males. Frederickson drove while Matt and Jamie worked up the fish, taking measurements and samples for DNA testing. If any had been females, they would have had electronic tags inserted to allow their location to be monitored.

Sturgeon are bony-plated bottom feeders that pre-date dinosuars. The Atlantic species was federally listed as endangered last year, but on the James they are recovering. Balazik and others are trying to find out how and why. If bald eagles have become the emblem of the James River’s new found fecundity, the sturgeon is the new kid on the block, and no less charismatic for living in the water rather than flying above it.

Balazik about to return a sturgeon to James.

On Monday, T-D environment reporter Rex Springston had an eye-opening look at the return of great blue herons on the James River and throughout the Chesapeake Bay. “A new survey, the first of its type in a decade,” he wrote, “found that herons in the Chesapeake Bay region – including the James River to downtown Richmond — have skyrocketed to 14,126 pairs in 407 communal nesting areas called colonies. That’s up from just a dozen colonies in the late 1960s.

The number of pairs was not reported back then.” The report comes from the Center for Conservation Biology at William and Mary and VCU. Center director Bryan Watts “and Bart Paxton, a biologist with the center, conducted the heron count during 200 hours of flying in May and June… Overall, the survey tallied colonies of 25 species of water birds. Among other findings, the survey showed that the number of great egrets – stately white birds that look a lot like blue herons – has gone up about threefold in the past three decades, to 1,775 pairs. Historically, egrets have nested mainly along the coast, but they are moving inland as their numbers grow.”

Great stuff from Springston (and the T-D photographers) and another great recovery story on the James, one that often gets overlooked in all the talk about bald eagle and osprey numbers skyrocketing. But like those birds, herons eat fish, so they suffered the same fate before DDT was banned in 1972. Now they’re back, and the fishing is good in Richmond.