Sitting on a bench by the fishing pier at Sleepy Hole Park in Suffolk, Beth Cross gestured to a swath of the Nansemond River.
“If you're looking to the left, that was condemned waters. And to the right is more of the tidal flow and not-condemned waters pushing down towards the lower river,” said Cross, director of the nonprofit Nansemond River Preservation Alliance.
“So we can literally see the acres that have been released from condemned status right from the park. It's pretty exciting.”
The Virginia Department of Health recently reopened about 600 acres of this section of the Nansemond for harvesting shellfish.
The change is the highlight of the nonprofit’s newest State of the River report, which is conducted every two years. It’s also the biggest piece of good news in more than a decade.
For a while, conditions seemed stagnant, Cross said.
“I felt like we were reporting the same things: that over 50% of the river was condemned, that it might look like that forever and this is what we could do if we want a healthier river.’”
Last summer, state and local data started showing a drop in fecal bacteria in a middle section of the river, leading to the 600-acre reopening.
But there’s a long way to go – and conditions are always subject to change, Cross said.
The Nansemond River stretches 23 miles from downtown Suffolk to the confluence of the James River and Chesapeake Bay.
Officials categorize the river’s sections as lower, middle and upper.
The lower, or northern, end tends to be the cleanest, because its waters are mixed with water coming in from the bay, a process known as flushing that helps cleanse contaminants.
But the uppermost section, stretching from about the Nansemond National Wildlife Refuge south to Constant’s Wharf, doesn’t have a natural flushing system, Cross said.
The river’s headwaters were dammed off in the mid to late 20th century to serve as water reservoirs for Norfolk and Portsmouth, such as Lakes Meade and Cahoon.
Losing that flow of freshwater makes the upper branches tough to restore. But bacteria are decreasing there, too.
The data challenges the nonprofit’s assumptions about the linear impacts of human development, Cross said. The river appears to be improving even while development continues.
That could reflect better sewage and septic systems, or homeowners and community groups taking action, such as planting oysters and native plant gardens.
The city also last year launched an Environmental Crimes Task Force to crack down on harmful actions such as illegal dumping.
Cross said storms could easily reverse the river’s condemned status, because heavy rains quickly wash pollution into the water.
“We are realistic” about the challenges, she said. But “we get to be part of a generation that is restoring something for years to come.”
