The Poop on Dirty Water or, What You Need to Know About Point Source Pollution and its Management
By Jayson Whitehead
As Charlottesville's economy moved from an agricultural base to an industrial one, the threat to the Rivanna shifted. Suddenly there were impervious surfaces like the asphalt parking lots that spread like smallpox after World War II. They created an incredible storm runoff, a wave of filth that cascaded down into the streams and rivers. "It's surfaces like rooftops, parking lots and roads," says Angus Murdoch. As the president of the Rivanna Conservation Society, he works with developers to help them reduce their impact on the waterways. "There's a lot of pollution that comes directly from those areas and flushes down storm drains."
In 1972, Congress tried to address the problem plaguing many urbanizing municipalities by passing the Clean Water Act. That legislation requires states to identify impaired or polluted waters, place them on a public list and develop cleanup plans based upon a calculated "Total Maximum Daily Load" (TMDL) of pollutants, which sets limits on the amount of pollution that a stream can tolerate and still maintain water quality standards.
"The TMDL program says, 'Let's look at the big picture, figure out what the problem is, figure out what we need to do to fix it,'" says the Southern Environmental Law Center's Rick Parrish. "The program was promptly ignored for the next 20 years," Parrish says.
In the mid-1990s, Parrish was instrumental in the development of a federal program that led to Virginia's surprising adoption of the Water Quality Monitoring, Information and Restoration Act, passed in 1997. Federal rules do not require TMDLs be implemented, so there are thousands-40,000 nationwide-waiting to be processed. The state legislation took account of this backlog by requiring that a plan be implemented within 12 years. That will occur for the Rivanna when the DEQ completes a study later this year that will analyze models of all the samples collected to determine what is actually causing the impairment that was first identified in 1996. Then a clean-up plan will be developed, with the DEQ's Robert Brent estimating that it will take up to five years to implement it.
One problem at issue is storm water permits. Point source pollution-the industrial or municipal waste a development might cause-is governed by those permits. "Either the state needs to ratchet down on those permits, or the state or the Environmental Protection Agency or the citizens need to enforce them," Parrish says. Under the Federal Clean Water Act, citizens have the ability to enforce permits by filing a citizen suit, as simple as sending 60-day notice with intent to file suit to the developer. "Require builders to do more," Parrish counsels.
"Even if the regulations are enforced to the maximum extent, you?re still going to have impacts with impervious surfaces," says Alyson Sappington, the district manager for the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District. "We work with landowners of all types-farmers, developers, suburban landowners-to ensure that when rain hits their land, less pollutants are running into the water," she says.
In 1987, the Clean Water Act was amended to carve out an exception for agricultural storm water, "because of the power of the farm lobby," says Parrish. "That is still considered non-point source pollution and is essentially exempt from regulatory controls." Farm runoff is a far greater threat in more rural counties than it is here but it is still an issue, particularly for the other counties like Greene and Fluvanna that feed into the Rivanna Watershed. Since the amendment, a number of voluntary incentives have been initiated to convince farmers to take protective steps, like fencing their streams from cattle and opening up a new water source (TJSWCD offers to pay half of a farmer's cost for taking such measures). Makes sense when you consider that what cows do is eat and poop. And oh, how they love to stand in water, where seven stomachs worth of bovine refuse is deposited in a stream that trickles towards the Rivanna.
Reading the Water: Mr. Jefferson's River Tops the Wealth of Books Out There
By Jayson Whitehead
Most of the groups who work on the Rivanna have a wealth of printed and online information about the Rivanna, but for sheer history, nothing tops Mr. Jefferson's River, a book about the Rivanna by William E. Trout and Minnie Lee McGehee. A resident of Palmyra, McGehee and her husband Henry were largely responsible for persuading the Virginia legislature to designate the Rivanna as the state's first scenic river in 1973.
"She really is the godmother of the Rivanna," says Rivanna Conservation Society President Angus Murdoch of McGehee. Her book is a loving tale of the river's past, starting with Thomas Jefferson's efforts to open up the Rivanna in 1763 up until the year 2000, and as such, it is a must read for those who want to learn the extensive history of the river. "My frequent trips along the Rivanna," she writes, "by canoe and on foot, have revealed much of the history and life of the river, and I continue to search for ways to preserve its beauty and its story."
A Flood of Good Intentions: There's A Lot Being Done to Help the River
By Jayson Whitehead
In 1998, Moore's Creek, which drains parts of Albemarle County and the City of Charlottesville and forms much of the southern boundary of Charlottesville, was placed on Virginia's Impaired Waters list for levels of fecal coliform bacteria that indicate the creek is unsafe for swimming and fishing. The next year, the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission (TJPDC) began working to get it off the list, performing a bacterial source tracking study to determine where the bacteria were coming from and installing a gage to monitor stream flows.
The second phase, mandated by federal law, was a TMDL (Total Maximum Daily Load) initiated in 2001 to help determine the broad categories of pollutant reductions that would need to be made in order for the creek to meet health standards. The final TMDL, which called for the removal of all nonpermitted human sources and all cattle from the stream as well as reductions in grassland, residential, and urban loads, was approved by the Environmental Protection Agency in May 2002. The next step was to draw up an implementation plan, which addresses the specific actions needed to bring fecal coliform bacterial levels in Moore's Creek within safe limits for human contact and identify potential sources of funding. TJPDC's implementation plan proposal has been funded and work is now underway.
The same year Moore's Creek was listed as impaired, the Rivanna River Basin Project issued its State of the Basin report. Initiated by TJPDC, the project's stated goal was to "assess past and current conditions of the Rivanna River and its tributaries and to articulate desired future conditions." Their ambition was realized six years later when Virginia's General Assembly-50 years after opening up the Rivanna-passed a bill creating the Rivanna River Basin Commission to "provide guidance for the stewardship and enhancement of the water and natural resources." On April 25 of this year, the Commission met for the first time. Made up of representatives from Albemarle, Fluvanna and Greene, the Commission already has $285,000 (raised by the Nature Conservancy) in its purse and will likely have quite an impact on the efforts to restore the river basin.
In addition to the TJPDC, Albemarle County has enacted a number of programs to protect streams and other water resources, including capital projects to fund storm water management retrofits, stream channel and floodplain restoration, and wetland and upland enhancements. They have also engaged in numerous public education and involvement activities directed towards the general public, business owners, and home owners, like the multiple demonstration projects at county office buildings (including green roof, rain tank, rain garden, rain barrel, underground StormVault, and pervious pavers). They also continue to support stream biological monitoring (through StreamWatch), and participate in studies correlating stream health with land use. "As land use intensity increases," StreamWatch's John Murphy says, "biological conditions decline."
Pour on the Help: What You Can Do to Make a Difference
By Jayson Whitehead
There are some simple ways to help the Rivanna, but the most efficient method may be installing a Rooftop Runoff Collection System. According to the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District, an average of 34,300 gallons of rain falls on a 30' x 40' roof in Central Virginia each year. That could potentially provide enough water for 4,287 showers; or 686 loads of laundry; or 6,860 flushes of a commode; or 45 one-inch-deep waterings of a typical lawn. In other words, a lot of water.
Installing a system is as easy as placing rain barrels below gutters to collect the water for all sorts of uses. Think of it as recycling the rain. Most importantly, it catches the water that cascades off the impervious roof, saving the river of some of the gunk a storm generates.
In addition, on April 5, Albemarle County announced a cost-share program for stream buffer planting that will reimburse qualifying property owners for half of the cost of new riparian plantings on their property, including materials and labor. It is available to any property owner of nonagricultural riparian land within impaired watersheds in the county. The program is funded entirely through a Water Quality Improvement Grant from the Virginia Department of Conservation and Recreation. It totals $140,000, which the county received in 2006, and requires no local dollars.