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Is
Virginia All Wet?
Or,
What Exactly Is a "Run"?
“All
land is part of a watershed or river basin and all
is shaped by the water which flows over it and
through it,” writes Patrick McCully in Silenced
Rivers. The environmentalist could be describing
the Old Dominion, which has also been shaped by its
rivers, both literally and figuratively.
On
March 22, Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality released
its most recent water quality study, which reports
on the level of the Commonwealth’s water quality
for such uses as swimming, drinking, fish
consumption and wildlife use. It turns out that our
rivers don’t rank high for swimmers, reports the
March 23 Richmond-Times
Dispatch (“Dirty Waters” Study Finds Plenty
in
Virginia
’s Rivers, Streams.”) More than half are
considered polluted.
But
while areas such as 115 miles of the lower
James River
near Jamestown, and the mouth of the
Lafayette River
near Norfolk
were considered “impaired,” other areas, such as
the Pamunkey
River, a tributary of the
York, and the Northwest
River in Chesapeake
now have a clean bill of health.
How
did our rivers get to this condition? Turn with me
now to a brief examination – a plumbing of the
depths, if you will – of Virginia’s waterways.
Virginia
ranks 21st among the 52 states in water
area (2.6 percent compared with 13 percent for Rhode Island), and some of our rivers are unique. In a 1995
paper “Heritage of the
James River
,” Ann Woodlief, a professor at Virginia
Commonwealth
University, notes that the James – the Commonwealth’s
longest river at 340 miles – is also the only
major river in the U.S.
to run completely within one state. She says that it
was the first American river to be given an English
name.
The
misnamed
New River, part of which flows through southwestern Virginia, is considered one of the oldest rivers in the
world. It dates from the Jurassic period, about 180
million years ago. Since it predates a continental
collision, it still flows from south to north. The
collision of North America and Africa, which created
an uplifting of rock that formed the Appalachian
mountains, changed the direction of most of
Virginia’s other rivers.
(Interesting
side note: according to Charlie Grymes, a Geography
of Virginia instructor at George
Mason
University
in Fairfax, 25,000-foot-high mountains once stood where Emporia, Richmond, Bowling Green,
Virginia
Beach and Chincoteague are located today.
Rivers slowly etched them away: www.virginiaplaces.org/watersheds).
In
the 17th century, colonists hoped to find
a water route to the
Far East
through old Virginny. That hope sank when they ran
into the
Appalachians. Ever the capitalists, the colonists next tried to
ship sturgeon roe from the
James River
to England
to fuel the European caviar rage. They made the
mistake of not inventing refrigeration first, and
the roe didn’t keep on the voyage across the
ocean.
In
the 19th century, Virginians finally hit
on a use for the rivers near metropolitan areas:
human waste receptacles! By 1900, the James River
was polluted through Richmond
and Lynchburg. One state legislator who opposed a 1912 bill to
control waste disposal proclaimed proudly, “The
rivers of Virginia
are the God-given sewers of the State.”
We’ve
since realized that that kind of attitude just
won’t wash.
I’ll
leave you with a watershed moment (literally)
regarding rainwater, rivers and “runs.” The
Commonwealth’s 20 major rivers are grouped in nine
watersheds. A watershed consists of an area where
all precipitation flows to a stream, or set of
streams, and “runs” (Virginia-speak for
“creek”).
Rain
falling on southwestern Virginia
travels west to the Tennessee
and Ohio
Rivers, eventually making it to the
Mississippi River
and New Orleans. Farther east, rain ends up in either the
Roanoke River
watershed, which empties east into the Albemarle/Pamlico
Sound, or the James River/Potomac River watersheds,
which discharge into the
Chesapeake Bay. Virginia’s Department of Environmental Quality estimates
there are 50,537 miles of rivers and streams in the
state, discharging 25 billion gallons of water per
day.
NEXT
UP: Happy trailer homes to you!
--
April 12, 2004
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