Geography of the James (Earth Lodge)

Looking back on the River Rat training, I found that the whole organizational idea of it is a prime example of how to get the community involved in protecting their natural resources.  Because the program seemed somewhat catered to people who are already active on the river, the James River Advisory Council is able to harness their manpower to effectively keep an eye on the health of the river at some of the smallest levels.  In doing this, the JRAC has established an extremely cost efficient way to better keep the river clean while also making people feel like they are making a difference in their community and the environment.  This is the correct way to go about environmental protection because it also lets people feel like they are part of an environmental community, which is accentuated by the social events organized for the River Rat program.

The River Rat program is also a good example of how to address the issues of place blindness.  In getting people to join this program, they are becoming more invested in their local surroundings.  People that would otherwise only take to the river once a month are now more likely to go out once a week.  After attending this training, I feel an obligation to give back to the environment.  Coming out of the training, I had a better understanding of what to look for in terms of pollutions sources and some of the environmental indicators that researchers use to gauge river health.  This type of grassroots level organization is what I believe provides the foundation for the increased environmental consciousness that the world needs.  From the River Rat program, local people are providing the information that can influence city officials on policy matters and force companies to comply with environmental regulations.

I knew my Religion, Ethics, and the Environment class was going to overlap significantly with GeoJames when on the first day of the semester we discussed the the Northern Spotted Owl and its role in the protection of Old Growth Forests, the arguments for and against logging and prescribed forest fires, and dams in the Pacific Northwest and the salmon population they affect. The parallels have become less obvious, but I still find myself making regular connections. Such held true during our early morning field trip to Reedy Creek.

One of my favorite readings for Ethics has been “The Land Ethic: Conservation as a Moral Issue; Thinking Like a Mountain” by Aldo Leopold. In the essay, Leopold defines a land ethic is an ideal relationship between humans and land. Important to this definition is the ability for an ethic to evolve: as human morality has evolved over time to include an increasing number of marginalized minority groups, we should extend our moral consideration to include the land and animals that inhabit it. From Leopold’s perspective, our view of the land as a resource shows that we lack a well formed land ethic. Our society has been conditioned to believe we have dominance over the land, and that attitude is manifest in our manipulation the land for our benefit. Leopold argues that this is unethical as the land has no master, and humans are only part of a much larger biological order.

I was remembering all this as I was standing on the banks of Reedy Creek, listening to Bill discuss the foreseen negative consequences of the proposed Stream Restoration (summarized by Parr), using his handmade tool to determine which of the trees in the riparian zone would be cut down in the process, and imagining Leopold’s impassioned support of the Reedy Creek Coalition’s mission.

He would understand the desire to negate the harm we’ve already inflicted upon the creek and to prevent any further pollution, but would find the city’s belief that humans have the ability to improve upon nature’s wild state misguided at best and abhorrent at worst.

The community seems to be in agreement with Leopold. Once we got close to the creek, almost every lawn was affixed with a picket sign opposing the restoration project. There is an obvious disparity between the land ethic of the city’s government and the land ethic of the community. Leopold would be proud that the community’s ethic has expanded to include the creek, but the question of which land ethic will have the final say looms overhead.

A lawn sign opposing the project, from the Reedy Creek Coalition’s Facebook page

The JRA tries to be the voice and the guardian of the river. They have two goals: keep Virginia on track with regard to the Chesapeake Bay plan, and help the community realize the benefits of a healthy James River. They’ve come a long way- in the 50’s the James was one of the filthiest rivers in the US. Richmond has two mating pairs of bald eagles, boasts ____________ at every opportunity. The James has the largest oyster reef in the US and the JRA is 47% to its goal of reviving this keystone water filterer. Riparian Buffers are faring less well, with the JRA’s goal being only 30% to completion. Nitrogen, Phosphorus and sediment pollution, areas specifically targeted by the Chesapeake bay plan, are at 65% of the 2025 goal.

The riverkeeper, who led the River Rat training, and the River Rats themselves, are two important parts of the cleanup effort. River Rats are people who care deeply about the river. They paddle it frequently and it’s a big part of their lives. I don’t feel like a river rat. I feel forced into a program that means a lot to people for a class. I don’t have a car, and I don’t own a boat to paddle on the James. I don’t care enough about the river to seek out sources of pollution. I greatly respect the people that do, but when going through the training to do what they do is required for a college class, I question whether we really belong there. The riverkeeper said that he had never had a group larger than 12 people. Ours felt more like a lecture.

I think my concerns are reflected in the action project part of River Rat certification. Past action projects have been things like improving dam portages and planting native species along the river. Ours, the improvement of the Gambles Mill Corridor, feels more like somebody else’s project that we’re appropriating to check off a requirement.

The James River has vastly improved since its 1950s, kepone-poisoned self. This is in no small part to individuals like the riverkeeper, like Newton Ancarrow, and like River Rats. Efforts under the Chesapeake Bay plan are currently rated at 61%, a B-, and improvements in areas like sediment pollution and smallmouth bass population are especially large. I hope that our class can fit in to that story, I just don’t think it should be as river rats.

When I was first given to massive trash bag at the Dutch Gap cleanup, I was skeptical about the amount of trash we would be able to pick up with such a large number of people participating.  My estimate was that each of us would be lucky to find more than three or four bottles apiece.  After walking down the trail to the river, and not seeing a single piece of trash on the way, I was certain that my prediction was correct.  However, after reaching the bank of the river and starting to poke around the logs and shrubs a little bit, I was shocked.  The entire riverbank was covered in plastic bottles, glass bottles, bottle caps, glass shards, shreds of plastic bags, plastic drink rings, fishing line, fishing lures, scrap metal, diapers, chairs, fishing poles, umbrellas, cans, rubber pieces, and cardboard.  My bag quickly became very heavy, and I watched the same thing happening to people all around me who were struggling to carry their bags back to the trash collection site.  It was extremely rewarding to see this previously trash-filled landscape to slowly turn back to what it looked like in its natural form.

Thinking back on the experience I realized that in addition to all of the large trash items, I also spent a lot of time on my hands and knees picking up glass shards.  It was easy to assume that with all the glass shards I was picking up, I was making a significant impact in this portion of the cleanup.  However, thinking back on it, I realized that a single glass bottle, when shattered, creates what appears to be a massive amount of glass.

The amount of time and effort needed to clean up the effects of one smashed bottle is so incredibly disproportionate to the amount of time and effort it takes to shatter one.  I believe that this holds true for the environment as a whole.  It can be messed up in the blink of an eye, with a chemical spill for example, that would then take many years to repair.

“THERE’S ONE! THERE’S ONE!”, the nun barked at me as I trudged into the woods.  This was not some sort of Catholic school punishment I was receiving as you might expect, but a rather interesting service opportunity to remove an invasive species.  These nuns were not dressed in the typical gowns and habits.  Rather, they wore boots, jeans, and baseball caps, and wielded a variety of saws and axes.  The reason nuns were involved in this removal was because they managed the massive Belmead property we were volunteering on, and they had turned their focus towards a mission of environmental education and protection.

We were there to remove the aggressive plant species Ailanthus altissima, otherwise known as Tree of Heaven.  Tree of Heaven was introduced to the United States from China in 1784.  It quickly escaped cultivation as an ornamental tree and spread to the wild.  Because of its aggressive nature that includes releasing toxins to kill competition in the surrounding area and its response mechanisms to being cut down, we had to use an herbicide that we painted onto the stumps of the trees we cut down.

While I understand the need to control invasive species, I could not help but feel that all of these efforts were somewhat in vain.  We were going into deep, dense thickets of weeds and woods to find these trees that would be otherwise invisible from the outside.  Even with the argument that they are damaging to surrounding growth, these trees have been here for almost 250 years, and in Virginia alone, a study found that the species is thriving along approximately 30% of the state’s interstate system.  I believe that there needs to be a more thorough definition of what is classified as an invasive species, and which species need to have better concentrated removal efforts.

Gravel crunched under my tires as my car pulled into the parking lot of the crew team’s boathouse at Rockett’s Landing.  I arrived about an hour before the start of practice to do a few repairs, and realized this would be the perfect reflection spot.  After walking down to the dock with wrenches in hand, I had a seat and watched the sun dance off of the small ripples in the water, making the river appear as if it was made of glass.  Looking both down and upriver, I am surrounded by dilapidated structures and the burnt out shells of old warehouses.  Old fishermen dot the shores and the smell of gasoline and smoke blur together.  The exceptions to this image are the sleek and shiny “The Boathouse Restaurant”, and the luxury apartments that have developed next to it.

All of these structures adjacent to the river allow man and nature to be juxtaposed and reveal the important idea of the longevity of the river and our natural world.  The river has seen the rise of Richmond from early settlers, through the industrial era, and into modern day.  Throughout this time, the landscape has changed drastically, and the river itself was attempted to be controlled and manipulated through canal-building efforts, but as a whole, the river has not changed much.  On the other hand, the warehouses dotting the shores have already served their entire purpose seeing as they are now only rusted, metal structures left over from the fires that scoured them.  The building and development of the area is a cycle that ultimately ends in destruction by either the people who built the structures or by the natural landscape itself.  Currently, the cycle is at the development stage with these new ventures that are beginning to replace the rusted structures.  While taking all of this in, the sounds of the flow of the river remind me to always respect the power and longevity of the river.