|
 The
Elizabeth River Project's draft plan for
large-scale restoration of one of the worst
sites on the Elizabeth River has gained such
momentum that partners at Money Point already
have secured more than half a million dollars to
begin implementation.
A community task
force has been working for the last year to
identify initiatives for the revitalization of
Money Point, where an explosion and spill in the
1960s is correlated with cancer in fish. Even
though the plan won't be finished until this
fall, grants have been awarded to carry out key
recommendations, including:
-
$164,000 for
four acres of wetland restoration
alongside Elizabeth River Terminals, awarded
to The Elizabeth River Project by NOAA's
Community Based Restoration Program and
Virginia’s Department of Environmental
Quality
-
$370,000
for state-of-the-art stormwater improvements,
Freeman and Buell Street, awarded to the
City of Chesapeake by
Virginia
Department of Housing and Community
Development. The city also applied for
$100,000 from Virginia Department of
Conservation and Recreation to complete the
project.
-
$100,000
to help complete a feasibility study
that is one part of the revitalization plan
and addresses how to clean up contaminated
sediments on the river bottom. Amerada Hess,
another Money Point partner, donated the
$100,000 to The Elizabeth River Project to
conserve funds for cleanup once the study is
completed. The bottom cleanup is also
sponsored by a sister organization, The
Elizabeth River Restoration Trust, which has
allocated $5 million to remediate the toxic
sediments at Money Point.
Currently the river bottom at Money Point
harbors some of the highest known levels of
creosote contamination in the world, correlated
with cancer in the small resident fish, the
mummichog. "With the current momentum, the
mummichogs could be looking at a clean river
bottom by 2008," said Joe Rieger, Project
Manager for The Elizabeth River Project. |
