The James River is a lot better off than it was 50 years ago, when the nonprofit James River Association launched to help preserve it.
At the time, high levels of raw sewage and untreated industrial waste flowed into the water, including the notorious chemical Kepone, and shut down any fishing activity.
The association, which now grades the river’s health every two years, estimates it would’ve earned no more than a D-minus back then.
In the group’s 2025 report, released Thursday, the river is up to a B, because of sustained cleanup efforts targeting sources of pollution and water quality. But it also highlights serious challenges, particularly for the wildlife that calls the river home.
“This grade demonstrates the remarkable progress that's been made over the past five decades,” said president and CEO Bill Street. “But also the work that remains.”
The James River is Virginia's largest tributary to the Chesapeake Bay. It flows nearly 350 miles from the Appalachian Mountains to Hampton Roads and provides drinking water for 2.7 million people.
The association gauges the river’s health based on 18 indicators, including land protection, oysters, bacteria reductions, fish and trees.
There is some good news. Investments in cutting nutrient pollution from farms, sewage plants and storm drains appear to be paying off.
Bald eagles are also thriving, having made a dramatic comeback after the harmful pesticide DDT was banned in the 1970s. And the Upper James River earned good marks, seeing increases in smallmouth bass and buffers of trees planted along streams.
But there are alarm bells, especially in Hampton Roads.
American shad, often called the nation’s “founding fish” because of their importance to Indigenous peoples and colonists around Jamestown, have pretty much vanished from the river.
The population was calculated as zero for the third report in a row.
Since 2023, striped bass are down by 29%, oysters by 17% and underwater grasses by 19%.
Shad and striped bass are part of a vulnerable group of migratory fish that return to their home rivers, such as the James, from the ocean to spawn, Street said.
To protect them, the state needs to act fast to deal with problems such as invasive blue catfish, he said.
The same day the river report was released, Virginia’s Board of Wildlife Resources voted to lift a recreational daily catch limit on large blue catfish in the York, Rappahannock and southern James rivers.
But Tom Dunlap with the river association told board members they need to go further. The change doesn’t apply to the Upper James.
“Applying the harvest limit removal throughout the entire tidal James River would provide a more consistent and ecologically defensible strategy across all of Virginia's major tributaries to the bay,” Dunlap said.
Street said the river is still reeling from record amounts of rain in 2018, which washed lots of pollution into the water.
Development, population growth and climate change are also making it more difficult to restore the ecosystem.
“It's like paddling against an ever stronger current, where every bit of progress takes more effort to stay on course,” he said.
