Saturday, April 22, 2006
The Shenandoah flows into the Potomac, water supply for Washington.
WASHINGTON POST
WASHINGTON -- Paved driveways, parking lots, roads and other trappings of encroaching development are threatening the health of the delicate and storied Shenandoah River, which made its grim debut last week on an annual list of the nation's 10 most-endangered rivers.
The Shenandoah, ranked fifth by the environmental group American Rivers, is not yet one of the most polluted in the nation but was included with nine others because, the group said, it has reached a tipping point -- a crucial time when decisions made by local governments could impact the river's health for decades to come.
"This report is about timing," said John Eckman, executive director of the Valley Conservation Council, which worked with American Rivers. "It's about the fact that there is some critical decision-making going on as far as where we put houses, how do we tighten up the zoning. ... Fredericksburg is almost developed, and when you drive around the Shenandoah Valley, what looks like open farmland is already platted."
Significance
The Shenandoah is an important source of drinking water for the counties it traverses and a main tributary of the Potomac River, which supplies 90 percent of the drinking water for the Washington, D.C. area. The Shenandoah supplies 13 percent of the Potomac's water.
Other rivers on the list wound across the country -- from the Pajaro River in California to the Caloosahatchee in Florida, from the Salmon Trout in Michigan to the San Jacinto in Texas -- and included many whose problems were blamed on the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which, American Rivers said, is relying too much on outdated and failed methods of taming rivers. A spokesman for the corps had no comment on the specifics of the report.
In the case of the Shenandoah, however, the report focused mainly on local officials in the six mostly rural Shenandoah Valley counties in the river's vast watershed. Those counties are now faced with national builders such as Centex Homes, and the seemingly unquenchable demand of thousands for a new house in a pretty spot.
"Land and home values have seen a sharp rise in the last year or two," said Page County administrator Mark Belton. "We've gotten inquires from developers -- there's been a noticeable increase in interest, no question."
Local boards and planning commissions are in the process of revamping comprehensive plans and zoning laws and otherwise making decisions now that activists say could help diminish threats to the river.
"Thirty years ago, I could stand in the river and catch 50 fish an hour, until my arm got tired," said Meryl Christiansen, who lives in Warren County, Va., and helped found Friends of the Shenandoah River two decades ago, after the company Avtex Fibers was charged with dumping toxic waste into the river. The company was fined $6.15 million. "Now I might catch one fish."
The rivers in the report are there because local activist groups nominated them, and Christiansen and others have lobbied for years to get the Shenandoah included, submitting evidence of high levels of nitrogen and phosphorous, which reduce oxygen levels and throw the river's ecology out of whack.