If it feels like spring is somewhere around the corner, well, Richmond’s most famous raptor pair agrees with you. Remember Maggie and Walker, the osprey couple showcased for the first time last year at RVAOspreyCam.com? How could you forget, right? Well, they’re back from their sojourn in South America, ready to mate, nest and raise young on that same bridge piling in downtown Richmond again.

One of the peregrine falcons in a nest box on the James River Bridge in Newport News. Credit: Wildstreaming.com

And the osprey cam is back, as well, with some sweet upgrades. This year we’ve added audio, so you can hear the birds’ vocalizations, and infrared for nighttime viewing. It’s going to be a lot of fun again, and it’s all thanks to the Friends of the James River Park, whose support continues to make this effort a reality

But, wait, there’s more!

Bryan Watts at the Center for Conservation Biology invited us to put up a peregrine falcon cam on the James River Bridge linking Newport News to Isle of Wight County. Last year there were less than 30 nesting pairs of peregrine falcons in Virginia. You can follow both cams — the falcons and the ospreys side by side at WildStreaming.com

The James River hit flood stage earlier this week, cresting at 15.4 feet at USGS’s Westham gauge, but in comparison to Richmond’s flood-plagued past this round was rather run-of-the-mill. Still, as this last hurricane season showed us, floods are nothing to sneeze at. So what does it mean for residents of the River City when the James crests its banks? I’ll attempt to break that down in this post, and I’ve included some fun facts for those who make it to the end.  Let’s dive in.

Main Street Station and Shockoe Bottom were inundated by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 – Richmond’s highest recorded flood. Credit: vintagerva.blogspot.com

First, consider this a PSA: unless you’re this guy and have completed this training, there’s really no reason to be in the water. Why? As NOAA and FEMA’s “Turn Around Don’t Drown” program is quick to remind us, all it takes is 6 inches of rapidly moving water to sweep someone off their feet, and the James is no stranger to the occasional swift water rescue.

It may seem intuitive to avoid swimming down Hollywood Rapids, but there’s a lesser-known reason to stay clear of the river above flood stage. Floods are quite a bit like Mother Nature flushing a toilet – an analogy that’s a lot more literal than many of us would like. Swollen rivers not only transport Virginia’s runoff downstream, but everything that runoff picks up along the way. This includes unsightly but generally harmless items like trash, as well as more subtle threats like fecal bacteria from livestock, pets, and even human waste.

If that comes as a shock, well, we don’t like it either, but to an extent it’s actually by design. Cities are required to capture and treat their stormwater (what comes from the sky) and wastewater (what comes from the toilet) before releasing cleaner, treated water back to the river. Wastewater volumes are pretty steady (we don’t all go at once, of course), but stormwater volumes can fluctuate enormously. For example, any Richmonder will tell you that it’s not unusual for several hot, dry weeks to be followed by a summer downpour that seems straight out of the tropics.

Now imagine you’re a city planner. If you have to treat both sources of water to the same standard, it would be easiest to do it at the same facility, right? Sounds great, and many cities do exactly that, until you have a heavy rainfall event that overwhelms that facility’s treatment capacity. What happens then? Unfortunately, the only option is to release the noxious mixture of drainage and sewage into the James – a phenomenon known as a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) event.

There are two important things to keep in mind. One – not all rainfall and flooding events are the same. Floods on rivers as large as the James usually stem from regional precipitation events – slow moving fronts, nor’easters, and hurricanes – rather than localized summer thunderstorms. However, localized downpours can sometimes be enough to overwhelm a sewer system (also local in scale, after all) while hardly budging the height of the river. Two – not all sewer systems are the same. Richmond (and many other old cities across the Northeast and Midwest) has a combined sewer system that mixes stormwater and wastewater for treatment, but many cities have newer, more sophisticated systems that separate these two sources of contamination. Richmond’s made great strides in improving the quality and capacity of its stormwater treatment plants (and deserves praise for its grassroots efforts), but as long as we remain on a combined sewer system, it will be impossible to completely prevent CSO events from occurring.

The James River during our most recent flood event. Credit: Ben Watson

To conclude, a jump in the James is a cool, refreshing reprieve from Richmond’s summer swelter, and I’ve spent countless hours in the river, but it’s important to use discretion during high water or heavy rain. The James certainly isn’t as wild as the Nile or as dirty as the Ganges, but it’s a lot more like both at higher water. If you’re interested in keeping an eye on river conditions, check out products like the CSO alert notifications offered by Lynchburg and Richmond, or the James River Association’s James River Watch.

That’s all for now, and thanks for reading! As promised, some fun flood facts are included below. Stay dry!

• The James’s flow peaked just above 70,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Monday evening February 12, 2018. According to some back-of-the-envelope calculations, that means the James could fill the entire volume of an empty Federal Reserve Building in less than two-and-a-half minutes.
• If Richmond were a flat, featureless frying pan, the James could cover its 62.5 square miles with a foot of water every 8 hours.
• From 6pm Sunday, February 11, 2018, to 6pm Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 97 billion gallons of water will have flowed down the James – enough in three days to cover the entire City of Richmond’s needs for the next 4 years!
• 97 billion gallons of water would fill 147,000 Olympic sized swimming pools.
• It would take Michael Phelps 42.5 days to swim this distance if he swam tirelessly at his 200m freestyle pace.

Editor’s Note: The following was originally published on The James River Association’s website and is reprinted with permission. You can find the original article here.

Over the last century, most of the ferries on the James River have been replaced by a growing network of bridges and tunnels. Although these structures are remarkable feats of engineering, there’s still an air of romance to the old ferries and their crew, and plenty of secrets and trivia surround the James River ferries that remain today.

The Hatton Ferry just upstream of Scottsville. Credit: Virginia.org

Take a drive down Va. Route 31 for a trip across the Jamestown-Scotland Ferry. Stand amid the mixed scents of mud and marsh and the clamor of gulls as you enjoy a breezy reprieve from the summer swelter and cross Virginia’s Founding River. For more than the reasons given in your high school textbooks, this crossing has a place in history. Did you know the ferry is actually the subject of a hit song? That’d be Tanya Tucker’s 1972 top-ten country hit, “The Jamestown Ferry.” Dust off that old record collection in the basement and give it a listen.

The Jamestown Ferry may be the most well-known ferry system currently operating on the river, but a second ferry further upstream flies under the radar.  The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service operates a cable ferry from Bermuda Hundred to Presquile Island. This ferry has a lot of character, and while it’s currently closed to the public, it has been the primarily link to the mainland since the James was channelized in 1937. While it has a long history, even this rusty old contraption can’t claim to be the oldest ferry on the river. For that, we have to travel yet farther upstream.

The Jamestown-Scotland Ferry.

Since 1870 the Hatton Ferry, just upstream of Scottsville, has moved men and material across the mighty James. To cross the Hatton Ferry is to step back in time. Two hundred years ago more than a thousand non-mechanized, poled ferries operated around the country. Today the Hatton Ferry is the only one that remains. Maintained by the state for years, the ferry is now in the care of The Hatton Ferry Fund, a local nonprofit that raises money to cover basic operation and upkeep.

Regardless of which ferry you pick for your next adventure, these old boats have class and style. Head down to the James and check them out!

In 2011, the Friends of the James River Park launched the River Heroes Award to acknowledge and honor individuals and organizations that have made significant contributions to the James River Park. The name was changed in 2015 to the Ralph White River Hero Award to honor former Park Manager Ralph White, a 2014 River Hero Award recipient.

Past recipient’s wide-ranging efforts included volunteer work, educational efforts, preservation, and promotional activities that encourage responsible use of the Park. Their contributions have been showcased at the Friends of James River Park annual picnic at the historic Pump House. This year’s honorees will be celebrated at an awards presentation at the Troutman Sanders Board Room, 100 Haxall Point on October 5.

Nominations will be accepted until September 15, 2017. Individuals, companies, or organizations may be nominated. To qualify, projects must be coordinated with park staff and contribute to one or more of the following areas:

• Preservation: Enhance, protect and/or preserve James River Park for future generations through leadership, hands-on volunteer work or changes to public policy.

• Education: Create educational opportunities by leading educational or recreational groups through the Park and encouraging responsible Park stewardship

• Promotion: Promote the park to the public and/or Park visitors through art/ film/ photography, projects, lectures, and other activities.

Please submit application and recommendation letter to friends@jamesriverpark.org with River Heroes in the subject line. And for more information, click here.

Belle Isle is a popular place for swimmers on the James River in the summer months.

If you can swim, it’s hard to drown in the James River in Richmond right now. Take a look at the handy RichmondOutside info center (top left of the home page). The James is measuring 3.76 feet at the Westham Gauge. But if you can’t swim and you throw alcohol into the mix, all bets are off. That seems to be the toxic mix that led to the death of a 19-year-old this past weekend on the river at Belle Isle.

According to the T-D article by Bill Lukitsch: The death is the second recorded recovery of a body from the James River by Richmond firefighters this year… In 2017, the department has responded to 48 river-related calls and rescued 29 people.

Read the T-D coverage here.

It’s a bittersweet time over at the RVA Osprey Cam. If you haven’t checked in on Maggie and Walker recently (those are the adult ospreys), you missed their two chicks both successfully fledging — i.e. taking flight out of the nest. The younger of the two just fledged a couple of days ago — the older a few days before that.

A young osprey tests its wings in the nest days before fledging.

However, that doesn’t mean all the action is over at the nest. Our young ospreys will spend a couple of weeks getting stronger in the air and learning to hunt the James River on their own. As we’ve seen already, they return to the nest periodically, as do Maggie and Walker, to rest and eat fish the parents bring.

It’s been an incredible first season for the RVA Osprey Cam, starting in early March with the return of Maggie and Walker from points south, followed by mating, egg laying, hatch watch, hatching, watching the young in the nest and now fledging. Time draws near for the end of this season. It won’t be more than a few weeks before the young birds are gone for good. Maggie and Walker, of course, we’ll see again next winter when they return from South America for Season 2!

A planned expansion of the James River Park System — and its conservation easement — is advancing, with Richmond’s City Council set to approve an ordinance for the acceptance of grant funds from the Virginia Land Conservation Foundation that will allow for the transfer of Vauxhall Island to municipal ownership.

The City plans to incorporate the nearly three acre island near downtown into the James River Park System. Ultimately the Capital Region Land Conservancy will include Vauxhall Island into the conservation easement it co-holds with the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation and Enrichmond Foundation on nearly half of the park system’s 600 acres.

The planned acquisition from the Enrichmond Foundation (which purchased the island at auction in 2014) aligns with the Richmond Master Plan’s mandate to “preserve the river’s waterways and adjacent riparian lands” and to “increase public access to the James where appropriate and feasible.”

Part of a chain of low-lying, flood-prone islands at the end of the eight mile stretch of state-designated Scenic River known as the Falls of the James, Vauxhall is legally accessible only by water and is undeveloped save for a single un-illuminated billboard which is now slated for removal.

Interesting, if unsurprising, news from Halle Parker and John Boyer in today’s Times-Dispatch. There were two river rescues on the James yesterday, Richmond Fire and EMS told the T-D. In one a “man said he was going for a run on the Pipeline Trail on the north bank of the river near the Mayo Bridge when he was stranded…He noticed that the water was high but continued to run until he was overtaken.”

Click here to read Parker and Boyer’s account of that rescue and the other.

It’s probably a fool’s errand to tell people to be careful on the river, especially on a holiday weekend when alcohol often impairs people’s decision making. But it it helps, here’s the graph of what the river looks like right now (Saturday morning at 8 a.m.-ish).

The river is cresting currently (14.26 feet at the Westham Gauge near Huguenot Bridge), and it’s cresting higher than it did three weeks ago, which was the highest level the James had reached in Richmond in about 3 years. It’s also over two feet above flood stage.

So, go out and check out the surging James River this weekend — it’s putting on an amazing show — but try to do it safely!

Donna Bailey storm drain art design.

Storm drain art soon will become the latest genre to adorn the streets of VCU.

Through the RVAH2O Storm Drain Art Project, an initiative of the City of Richmond Department of Public Utilities, four local Richmond artists have been selected to paint their message on storm drains to educate the public about the importance of keeping our river, waterways and streets pollution-free. These winning artists were among 24 entries in RVAH2O’s online contest issued by DPU in March 2017. They will paint four storm drains in the heart of VCU: along Harrison Street and adjacent to Grace Street.

RVAH2O’s online contest invited local artists ages 18 and up to submit design entries for the 2017 RVAH2O Storm Drain Art Project. Design criteria included depicting “It All Drains to the James”; environmental protection of waterways; and the James River’s ecosystem, natural habitats and wildlife.

The panel of judges included members of the Richmond Public Art Commission and members of the DPU stormwater team. The four winning artists are:

Donna Bailey, “It All Drains to the James”

Douglas Fuchs, “The James in the Drain”

Jenny Haebel, “Consider the River”

Alison Tinker, “Protect the River – It’s What You Otter Do!”

Donald Fuch’s storm drain art design.

Each artist will be assigned a storm drain to paint over two weekends: May 27-29 and June 3-4. Artists will be compensated with a $400 stipend for their work and materials, such as tools and brushes. They also will receive instruction on how to paint storm drains, which will include precautions to prevent paint from getting into the drain. DPU will provide each artist with non-slip paint, basic brushes and water tubs. DPU also will closely monitor the drain painting and will provide standard construction inlet protection (gutter buddies) for each drain, as well as small tents that the artists can use for shade and protection during the process.

This is the second consecutive year of the RVAH2O Storm Drain Art Project. In May 2016, six artists were selected to paint storm drains along Tredegar Street, adjacent to the James River. They remain today a visual reminder of the importance of the James River in our lives, as well as the lives of the plants, animals and fish that rely on the river for survival.

Support the RVA Osprey Cam by buying one of these sweet t-shirts!

If you missed the news, on Sunday at Dominion Riverrock our RVA Osprey Cam partners the Friends of the James River Park announced the names for the adult ospreys. After almost two weeks of online and in-person voting at Riverrock, we counted up the over 1,200 votes. The winning name pair?

Maggie and Walker!

Considering ospreys usually mate for life and return to the same nest every year, we’re hoping to get to know Maggie and Walker for years to come.

The cam wouldn’t be possible without the generous support of our sponsors — the Friends of the JRP, Ellwood Thompson’s, the James River Association and Property Results — and next year we hope to add features like audio and infrared (for viewing at night). So, we’ve launched a Bonfire campaign with some sweet RVA Osprey Cam t-shirts. If you’ve enjoyed the cam — and there is still plenty of action left, as the chicks get ready to fledge — please consider supporting the cam and the Friends of the JRP by buying a t-shirt. Thanks!