Geography of the James (Earth Lodge)

There seems to be a slight disconnect between the community and the environment here in Richmond. Way back in August, I attended the RVAH2O Watershed Open House at Forest Hill Park Shelter. The Event was very interesting, as it described some of the problems the James River Watershed is facing today, such as stormwater pollution and combined sewer overflow. What was even more interesting was the crowd, which consisted of Rachel, Andrew, Monica and I, and then a bunch of older people, most of whom were part of the Reedy Creek Coalition. That was it. At a trash clean-up on Belle Isle I participated in with Monica, the other volunteers were mostly older people and some young kids who came with their parents, but they all seemed to come here regularly, judging by the way they got going right away. Many of them were confused by the fact that two college students were here on a Saturday morning cleaning up garbage. We seemed to be the only new faces in both situations.

Rachel learning about storm pollution at RVAH2O

Those who have been involved stay involved and continue to attend events and programs pertaining to the environment, because these people have already put so much of their time and effort into fighting for the environmental rights and changes they desire. But how do you get new people involved? How do you get the whole community involved? How do we make our town more like Portland, a city filled with environmentally conscious hippies that has a government providing a bike-share system and a bridge just for public transportation? How do we get a town full of strong leaders willing to pave the way for environmental change?

According to the article “Watershed Pollution and Preservation: The Awareness–Appraisal Model of Environmentally Positive Intentions and Behaviors,” the average citizen does not know what the word “watershed” even means. On top of that, only 34% of respondents even knew the bodies of water surrounding where they live. How can we fix the environment when we do not even know the environment surrounding us?

The James is polluted from runoff consisting of poisonous fertilizers, trash, debris, human and pet waste, and many other chemicals and unknowns. This runoff kills the plants and the animals inhabiting the river, but not many people know that. There is an increase in the construction of impervious surfaces that impedes the infiltration of water into soil, so the sediment carried back to the river lacks the natural absorption and filtration usually preformed by the healthy soils.  Not many people know that. Soils absorb less rainwater than they used to largely due to human waste and the destruction of riparian zones, which keep the soil healthy and absorbent.  The lack of absorption leads to an increased water level and thus an increased frequency of floods.  To fix the damage done, instead of trying to restore natural barriers, we construct floodwalls, destroying the natural habitat and riparian zone even more. However, not many people know that.

The first thing that needs to be done is increasing awareness, especially for the younger generations, including ours. These pivotal generations are the ones blessed with the highest frequency of technological advances and the biggest scientific breakthroughs in ways to reduce, reuse, recycle, conserve energy, and protect our land. In order to do so, I believe the most important thing to do is increase education with a purpose. The “Awareness Appraisal Model” showed us that the more people knew about the problems in their watersheds, the more likely they were to want to help. Issues facing the environment could be taught as a core subject in elementary and middle school to introduce kids to the topic. There could be awards and recognition for those “ideal environmentalists” who pick up trash or plant trees or pass along some environmentally friendly facts. Or, some classes could have field trips out to the river to let the kids experience it for themselves. When paddling at Dutch Gap, the instructor stated the James River could serve as a “gateway drug” to experiencing nature, wilderness, and the great outdoors. So many of her elementary school students tended to shy away from the water, as they had never been exposed to it. However, once they did actually take a dip and paddle and swam, they really enjoyed it. By introducing people to the James and all the pleasantries it has to offer, from the relaxing walks on the shorelines to the swimming holes and class IV rapids to its rich history, it gives Richmond’s population a strong connection to the river, and in turn, provokes people to want to keep the area clean.

Having fun in the water!!

However, we cannot convince others to take an initiative into sustaining the environment by simply telling them to do so—they must know the facts and must develop a ‘fear’ about the future. In a sense, what would happen if we did not take this environmental stance? Through a combination of fear and awareness, we can find the solution to slowly repair the James to its former glory.

In terms of building a strong community, I believe it is most important to have a common goal everyone wants to strive towards to increase awareness of environmental issues and to secure protection against pollutants. A community also must incorporate a sense of identity and belonging. In efforts to raise awareness about community problem, people need to establish a sense of identity through actions, beliefs and shared common interest in order to unify the community. Finally, a community must have shared values and norms that support, promote and educate the ideology of environmental health issues to educate and empower community leaders. There should be a lot of planning, action, and communication of the specific idea concerned related to environmental protection, its logic, and how it will benefit people. There may be numerous obstacles, namely the government with its multiple budgets and bills. However, everyone needs to be on the same page and fight for the same thing.

There is a gap out there for future environmental leaders that needs to be filled. In order for them to be successful, they have to have a firm background in the problems the James River Watershed is facing today, and what we as a community want to do to combat these issues. An environmental leader also needs to have a passion for natural beauty and a willingness to fight for it. As Ralph White would say, you need to want to be able to get “bruised and bloody” to make a difference (styleweekly.com).

Ralph White, local hero

Sources:

http://www.styleweekly.com/richmond/bruised-and-bloody-ralph-white-to-retire/Content?oid=1640836

https://facultystaff.richmond.edu/~dforsyth/pubs/ForsythGarciaZyzniewskiStory2004.pdf

Remnants of the algal blooms linger behind the commons

We began our tour by walking along the outside of the commons. As we paused and looked out to the lake, we saw the water close to the edge of the lake glazed with a layer of green as a result of algae overgrowth. Most people who pass by this see this as a nuisance, thinking how poorly the school is managing the lake just in time for parents weekend. However, most do not know the full story. The algal blooms are the result of fertilizer runoff from the school’s baseball field and surrounding homeowners that contribute to the Little Westham Creek watershed. The growth is most abundant during last summer and early fall, and the staff shock the river with elemental copper to kill the algae a few times a year. The school also installed bubblers to keep the water moving and aerate the water by introducing oxygen. As student who views the lake as a beautiful focal point of the school, I had given little thought to the contributing polluting factors of the lake and to what extent the school is acting to keep the lake aesthetically pleasing to passer byers.

We moved passed the side of the commons looking out to the lake and walked over to the area behind commons. Since the THC acts as a dam, it is also a fish barrier. As we looked out to where the water drains out of the lake, we saw a multitude of carcasses of dead fish scattered about. Some were on the cusp of death, floundering about on the floor while a heron and a couple of birds glean from the benefits of the barrier. I have never seen the back of THC before, so I was fascinated and a little surprised. This space of lake drainage was tucked away from most of the public, which can be an example of place blindness.

Through student efforts, we looked at how our campus converted from coal to natural gas to reduce carbon dioxide emissions. There are also solar panels installed on top of the Recreation and Wellness center. As the school makes a public effort to become a more eco-friendly campus, there are also hidden drawbacks with new construction such as the parking lot on campus, which can adversely affect the creek’s ecosystem.  

This left me wondering: what else does the university do to look appealing for the audience? Are they affecting any other ecosystem besides the Little Westham Creek? This tour opened my eyes to be aware of my surroundings, especially here at the university.

Parks and green spaces are necessary to connect us to the outside world. As we zip by life in a fast-paced manner, especially as busy college students, the environment around us can easily be forgotten. By having the parks and green spaces around us, they can serve as a reminder of the importance of the environment and as an escape from our busy lives. In the Cronan Article “The Trouble with Wilderness”, he provides the distinction between the sublime and the wilderness. Wilderness is sacred, untouched nature. “Wilderness is the natural, unfallen antithesis of an unnatural civilization that has lost its soul. It is a place of freedom in which we can recover the true selves we have lost to the corrupting influences of our artificial lives.” The sublime demonstrates a more refined view of nature, creating a romantic, tame version of the wilderness for the public to see and use.  He argues that people work their everyday lives in urban cities, thinking that the place where they truly belong is in the wilderness: a distant place where we visit from time to time. By  idealizing the wilderness as a distant place, that often means not idealizing the environment in which we actually live, therefore leading to decreased awareness of our actions. Also, by having a sublime, it teaches us to adopt too high a standard of what counts as “natural”.

I agree with Cronan in that people who live in urbanized areas can tend to have a distant mindset of the wilderness and forget to care for the environment around them, but I wouldn’t know a better alternative. By having more people and civilization submerged into the wilderness, the more wilderness becomes tainted, leaving less to be explored and more of the refined sublime or the backyard. Although Cronan argues that people need to be in the wild all the time to remind themselves of the importance of their environment instead of having it as a distant getaway, I believe the the all natural lifestyle is not meant for everyone and that there are other ways for people to be conscious of their environment without having to be submerged in the wilderness all the time. Also, everyone living outdoors would take up more space and be less energy efficient compared to cities, according to Johan Lehrer in “Urban Myths”. Having nature implemented in our lives can be a good reminder for us that the wilderness exists beyond the urban city, and therefore lead to a more environmentally conscious attitude.

One example of creating an environmentally conscious attitude with a place is the Willamette River in Oregon. Along the river, there are park areas and walkways where people can enjoy themselves apart from the city life. People can also kayak, row, or swim in the river. Oregon is known for having an environmentally friendly culture, part of the reason for that could be the increased exposure to nature so close by the city. Portland uses 20% more renewable energy than the national average, one of the first cities to ban plastic bags, and a decent portion of the population uses bike or carpooling methods for transportation. Also having the opportunity to choose the environmentally conscious is important as well. People are surrounded by the sublime version of nature, which could serve as a factor as a reminder to be environmentally friendly.

Understandably, being surrounded in the sublime doesn’t necessarily equate to acting environmentally conscious. For example, there are many residents who live close to the James River. 91.3%  of people said it was important to keep waterways, streams, and ditches clean, but only 7.5% said clean watersheds are important. Living near the wilderness is not enough for people to be conscious of their actions. To help, there first needs to be awareness and knowledge about the environment, appraisal of the situation, and changes in behavior. One example of a way that Richmond helps this situation is through the Richmond Folk Festival. Although I did not attend the festival, Eugene’s blog post gave me a peek of what he experienced. The festival did not only bring out “hardcore nature enthusiasts, but rather common people with an appreciation for the river.” Events like this can help with awareness of the environment, and Eugene also mentioned the Cronan article and how national parks and public lands such as Brown Island act as a gateway for further passion in nature.

Cronan also mentions that by idealizing the wilderness as a distant place, that could lead to decreased awareness of our actions towards our immediate surroundings of our everyday lives. As Quinn pointed out in her response on why the long-view in critical to understanding the role humans in natural world, humans tend to look at the short-view of their actions when making decisions. Humans focus on the instant gratification of a solution without taking time to consider the long-term risks involved. Humans do this because it is easy, and it is also easy to forget about the consequences of our actions when we forget about the importance and the beauty of the environment around us. Therefore, by idealizing the wilderness from a distance, making short view decisions is easier to make. To have a reminder in our everyday lives with parks and green spaces can aid us in making long view  goals.

Rowers using Willamette River in Portland, Oregon

I believe that there should be a balance between having a conscious awareness of our current environment and surroundings, and having nature be a part of our everyday lives as a reminder. Parks and green spaces are necessary to connect us to the outside world. Although Cronan may not agree and say that we need to submerge ourselves in the wilderness, not everyone is able to do so. So by having these green spaces, we can remind people to be conscious of their decisions on the environment in the long term through awareness and education of the environment around them.

Jack and I screamed and yelled and sang. It was a wet Friday evening, and standing together in our matching neon orange shirts, we chanted over and over…

“Keep the festival free! Every donation counts!”

The Richmond Folk Festival is an amazing event celebrating American culture. Altogether, the festival attracted over 125,000 people to flood to the banks of the James river to enjoy lively music, delicious food, refreshing drinks, and great times. The production of the event costs over 1.5 million dollars; therefore, Jack and I’s task of asking for donations was crucial to the continuation of the Folk Festival.

The Richmond Folk Festival attracted over 125,000 people.

Asking for donations was a little frustrating initially. Wandering around the muddy lawn of Brown’s island, people were sparse and our bucket was empty. However, at the start of the loud rhythmic music, swarms of people crossed the bridge over to our island to dance. This was our shot. We found a perfect spot: right at the entrance of the bridge. It was impossible to miss us in our dazzling bright orange shirts. Shaking the bucket and dancing vivaciously, the donations started flowing. Everyone in attendance was enjoying themselves and bonding as fellow Richmond natives. People of all ages and backgrounds joyfully added money, loving the opportunity to support their community that put on such a great event. And supporting the community is crucial.

Having a great sense of community allows for people to be more aware of their surroundings and place in the ecosystem. We tend to care about issues more when we’re intertwined in a close community. It leads to awareness, appraisal, and action. Perhaps a stronger sense of community is the solution to many of the environmental problems we face today.

As the sense of community created by the event grew so did my tiredness. It was a long night of volunteering, and by the end, I was completely exhausted. Soon, the crowds began to clear out and the musicians packed up to leave for the night. Though the night was fading, my florescent orange tee shirt will never fade.

Our shirts were even more neon than shown in this picture.

As the Willamette River gushes through the pine-covered Willamette watershed, one cannot help but notice its hastiness and desire to do what it does best- reshaping the channel morphology and sustaining a plethora of aquatic life. This hastiness could probably be attributed to its desire to flow freely without human alterations before it suffers again the brunt of man, who has erected dams incessantly at different stages of the river to exploit its grandiose powers for hydroelectric power production and navigation. Even though these efforts by man seem plausible, one thing remains, dams result in an immense reduction of sediment downstream. This reduction if not properly monitored, may consequently have adverse effects on the well-being of the stream ecosystems.

Figure 1: The fast flowing waters of the Willamette River in Lane County, Oregon.

Sediments play an invaluable role of creating diverse ecological habitats. Invertebrates and other micro-organisms rely on the simple habitats engineered by the river currents as the river deposits load and creates new pathways. These habitats support a community of organisms that depend on each other in magnificently interlinked foodwebs, while the river acts as a regulating agent determining the relocation and emergence of new habitats as it erodes bank channels and deposits sediment in different sections. This ensures redistribution of organisms along the river channel thus promoting biological diversity. It is this biological diversity that grants communities formidable strength to withstand perturbations such adverse weather changes by enhancing community succession and colonization of new habitats. However, with reduced sediment amounts due to damming, intermittent biotic populations along river channels are inevitable. These erratic populations if not properly monitored may become extinct. For instance, sensitive micro-invertebrates and migrating birds that rely on such habitats for spawning or foraging may experience a population bottleneck or forced emigration that leads to population outbursts in other ecosystems while leaving unfilled ecological niches in the previous habitats. The ultimate effect is the loss of ecological diversity and species succession, all attributable to damming of hydrologic systems.

Moreover, reduction of sediment downstream has resulted in compromised water table levels. This is because with reduced sediment in a river’s current, the velocity of the river augments. This can be detrimental to the channel morphology as the river uses its grinding powers to make deep incisions into its river bed and causes massive erosion of its banks. The result is a reduction of the subsurface water levels as water percolates deep into

Figure 2: Increased stream velocities cause massive downcutting of their riverbeds leading to lowering of streams and consequently the watertable.

the underground aquifer. Aquatic animals and other riparian vegetation now suffer the brunt of a hydrologic drought. Survival for the fittest demands that aquatic organisms have to either move upstream to escape the adverse effects of the hydrologic drought downstream or die from intraspecific competition for the limited resources with other aquatic animals. On the other hand, the initially water-logged soils of the riparian zone now become dry soils that allow free movement of air between their crevices. Nitrogen is able to accumulate in these soils and is released into water channels when the water table rises during events such as floods or hurricanes. This deposition of nitrogen into water sources has the effect of increasing algal blooms and ultimately causing eutrophication. Likewise, with reduced water levels comes reduced riparian vegetation cover. A huge portion of the invaluable function played by riparian zones as buffer systems is lost and streams become exposed to the raging effects of pollution from nearby ecosystems. This is double tragedy to aquatic life that now have to show forbearance towards the scarce water burden due to diminishing water table levels, and imminent threats from pollution. In the long-term, adverse ecological problems are inevitable.

Evidently, floodplains rely heavily on sediments carried downstream by rivers. These sediments are the veins of floodplains, as they are responsible for the fertile soils that make floodplains agriculturally viable regions rather than pools of waterborne infections such as Bilharzia. Native Americans that lived along the coastal plains of the James River particularly relied on the rich soils of the tidewater region to grow subsistence crops such as corn and beans. These coastal plains produced substantial amounts of food that enabled trade within the Native American tribes. Similarly, today many countries rely on floodplains for food production. These extensive tracts of floodplains play a critical role of

Figure 3: Farming on the Yamuna River floodplains in Delhi.

curbing food insecurity and providing an impetus for economic growth. Moreover, floodplains have proven to be invaluable water filters. Studies show that when floodplains get inundated with water, they act as natural filters that remove excess sediment and nutrients from the water before it enters other hydrologic systems. This is significant to the health of aquatic animals and human beings that draw water from such systems.  Degradation of water quality has particularly been observed along small rivers and at hypoxic regions of large rivers due to loss of floodplain habitat. This loss thus allows excessive nutrients to enter hydrologic systems. Damming consistently reduces the amount of sediments reaching the coastal plains thus massively contributing to the exacerbation of this water quality issue. Ultimately, flood plains that once served the invaluable functions mentioned above become ineffectual areas of no ecological or human significance.

It is eminent that dams cause appalling effects to ecological and hydrologic systems in the long-term. These effects lead to loss of ecological diversity and degradation of land and other water resources. These effects may take time before they are discernible to us because the rather ephemeral benefits we derive from damming such as hydroelectric power production, enhanced navigation and recreation blind us from foreseeing the ultimate ecological impacts of our actions. Unfortunately, the end result is a loss both to man and ecosystems subservient to him.

References:

http://www.nature.org/ourinitiatives/habitats/riverslakes/benefits-of-healthy-floodplains.xml

https://www.google.com/searchq=reduced+water+tables&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=613&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjtzoSNiNPPAhVJcD4KHRWmBFAQ_AUIBygC#tbm=isch&q=river+incision+&imgrc=vUQzX_y3q0DY7M%3A

https://www.google.com/search?q=floodplain+on+yamuna+river&espv=2&biw=1366&bih=662&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjfz6H_yN_PAhWIoD4KHZ_rDDIQ_AUIBigB#tbm=isch&q=yamuna+floodplains&imgrc=dMynlil-XXOmVM%3A