Being “green” doesn’t always equal being “good.” Many of the plants that are now green in the James River Park System actually threaten habitat for native birds, butterflies and other creatures. Many of these plants are not native to our continent and are invasive species.  Chances are some of them are in your neighborhood, and maybe even in your own yard.

The James River Park System Invasive Plant Task Force wants Richmonders to know that everyone can lend a hand in managing these unwanted visitors. The first step is to learn what they are, what they look like and how to deal with them in your yard as well as in the park.

Learning and hands-on opportunities are scheduled in the park system all next week — Feb. 25 through March 2 — as part of National Invasive Species Awareness Week. Providing advice and hands-on experience will be members of the local volunteer groups making up the park system’s Invasive Plant Task Force.

“The goal of our NISAW events is to encourage Richmonders to see the park system and their own yards differently,” said task force coordinator Mary Wickham. “A little work goes a long way, and if we control the invasive plants at our own homes, we help improve the health of the park system and the James River watershed.”

Here are some of the things you, your family and your friends can enjoy: The Kick Off from 1-4 p.m. Sunday, Feb. 25, at Pony Pasture will explain the impact of invasives’ on local ecosystems and show you how to identify and remove the worst culprits. You can “free a tree” from invasive vines, take a guided walk with botanist Johnny Townsend, see the popular goats that devour the invasives, and possibly win a native plant to take home.

Watch talented botanical artists with the Plants of the James River Project at work at the Reedy Creek Nature Center from 2-4 p.m. Friday, March 2, and take home their invasive species coloring book.

Throughout the week from Monday, Feb. 26, through Friday, March 2, you can join park staff and task force volunteers to remove invasives in a different area each day.

Click here for more details.

The James River Park System Invasive Plant Task Force is a partnership of 12 local organizations that joined forces in 2015 to address invasive plant coverage in the park. The Task Force partnered with VHB, Inc. to survey invasive plants for a baseline study that year and since then has collaborated to manage invasive plants and to restore habitat by planting native species in project focus areas.

The James River hit flood stage earlier this week, cresting at 15.4 feet at USGS’s Westham gauge, but in comparison to Richmond’s flood-plagued past this round was rather run-of-the-mill. Still, as this last hurricane season showed us, floods are nothing to sneeze at. So what does it mean for residents of the River City when the James crests its banks? I’ll attempt to break that down in this post, and I’ve included some fun facts for those who make it to the end.  Let’s dive in.

Main Street Station and Shockoe Bottom were inundated by Hurricane Agnes in 1972 – Richmond’s highest recorded flood. Credit: vintagerva.blogspot.com

First, consider this a PSA: unless you’re this guy and have completed this training, there’s really no reason to be in the water. Why? As NOAA and FEMA’s “Turn Around Don’t Drown” program is quick to remind us, all it takes is 6 inches of rapidly moving water to sweep someone off their feet, and the James is no stranger to the occasional swift water rescue.

It may seem intuitive to avoid swimming down Hollywood Rapids, but there’s a lesser-known reason to stay clear of the river above flood stage. Floods are quite a bit like Mother Nature flushing a toilet – an analogy that’s a lot more literal than many of us would like. Swollen rivers not only transport Virginia’s runoff downstream, but everything that runoff picks up along the way. This includes unsightly but generally harmless items like trash, as well as more subtle threats like fecal bacteria from livestock, pets, and even human waste.

If that comes as a shock, well, we don’t like it either, but to an extent it’s actually by design. Cities are required to capture and treat their stormwater (what comes from the sky) and wastewater (what comes from the toilet) before releasing cleaner, treated water back to the river. Wastewater volumes are pretty steady (we don’t all go at once, of course), but stormwater volumes can fluctuate enormously. For example, any Richmonder will tell you that it’s not unusual for several hot, dry weeks to be followed by a summer downpour that seems straight out of the tropics.

Now imagine you’re a city planner. If you have to treat both sources of water to the same standard, it would be easiest to do it at the same facility, right? Sounds great, and many cities do exactly that, until you have a heavy rainfall event that overwhelms that facility’s treatment capacity. What happens then? Unfortunately, the only option is to release the noxious mixture of drainage and sewage into the James – a phenomenon known as a Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) event.

There are two important things to keep in mind. One – not all rainfall and flooding events are the same. Floods on rivers as large as the James usually stem from regional precipitation events – slow moving fronts, nor’easters, and hurricanes – rather than localized summer thunderstorms. However, localized downpours can sometimes be enough to overwhelm a sewer system (also local in scale, after all) while hardly budging the height of the river. Two – not all sewer systems are the same. Richmond (and many other old cities across the Northeast and Midwest) has a combined sewer system that mixes stormwater and wastewater for treatment, but many cities have newer, more sophisticated systems that separate these two sources of contamination. Richmond’s made great strides in improving the quality and capacity of its stormwater treatment plants (and deserves praise for its grassroots efforts), but as long as we remain on a combined sewer system, it will be impossible to completely prevent CSO events from occurring.

The James River during our most recent flood event. Credit: Ben Watson

To conclude, a jump in the James is a cool, refreshing reprieve from Richmond’s summer swelter, and I’ve spent countless hours in the river, but it’s important to use discretion during high water or heavy rain. The James certainly isn’t as wild as the Nile or as dirty as the Ganges, but it’s a lot more like both at higher water. If you’re interested in keeping an eye on river conditions, check out products like the CSO alert notifications offered by Lynchburg and Richmond, or the James River Association’s James River Watch.

That’s all for now, and thanks for reading! As promised, some fun flood facts are included below. Stay dry!

• The James’s flow peaked just above 70,000 cubic feet per second (cfs) on Monday evening February 12, 2018. According to some back-of-the-envelope calculations, that means the James could fill the entire volume of an empty Federal Reserve Building in less than two-and-a-half minutes.
• If Richmond were a flat, featureless frying pan, the James could cover its 62.5 square miles with a foot of water every 8 hours.
• From 6pm Sunday, February 11, 2018, to 6pm Wednesday, February 14, 2018, 97 billion gallons of water will have flowed down the James – enough in three days to cover the entire City of Richmond’s needs for the next 4 years!
• 97 billion gallons of water would fill 147,000 Olympic sized swimming pools.
• It would take Michael Phelps 42.5 days to swim this distance if he swam tirelessly at his 200m freestyle pace.

Here’s a cool opportunity Maymont is offering that gives citizen scientists — i.e. you and me — a chance to help monitor frog and toad populations.

From Maymont: Help us count the frogs! FrogWatch USA is a long-term frog and toad monitoring program that collects data on local species, helping scientists in their battle to stop amphibian decline. Join our local chapter at Maymont to help with the effort.

Sign up for one of our free training sessions, which will include background on FrogWatch, an introduction to the site, and information on how to monitor and identify the calls of local frogs. Participants may bring their own lunch or dinner.

FrogWatch Training Dates at Maymont:

Thursdays, February 15 & 22, 6-8pm (must attend both sessions)
Saturday, February 24, 10am-2:30pm

While FrogWatch is a great family activity for all ages, training sessions are designed for interested high schoolers and adults. Registration is required. For more information, email our Environmental Educators or call 804-358-7168.

Hundreds of trees will be removed in Larus Park to make way for Chesterfield’s new pumping station. Credit: Scott Turner

It became official on Monday night: Richmond City Council approved a long-awaited, and at times hotly contested, plan that would allow Chesterfield County to build a water pumping station in Richmond’s Lewis G. Larus Park (a hidden gem of a greenspace bounded by Huguenot Road and Chippenham Parkway).

As Mark Robinson of the Times-Dispatch reported, “Under the complex plan, the city will purchase an 18-acre parcel of undeveloped land abutting the existing parkland, expanding the 106-acre park. A conservation easement for the park also will be established.”

Check out our old articles on this topic for background info.

Going forward, Chesterfield will spend $7.5 million to build the pumping station on what is currently 1.2 acres of Larus Park. The county will lease the land from the city for $1 per year, but the city’s Department of Public Utilities said it will generate $4.1 in gross revenue over five years based on what Chesterfield will pay in water usage.

Check out Robinson’s piece in the T-D for more. In the meantime, do yourself a favor and check out this tucked away jewel of Richmond’s park system. Click here for directions and more info.

As a result of its successful (and ongoing) fundraising campaign, the Richmond BridgePark Foundation
has commissioned a team of world-class consultants to further examine options for its ambitious
plan to link downtown Richmond with a linear park across the James River.

This next phase of research and idea development builds on the inspired concept design created by Richmond and Los Angeles based architecture firm, Spatial Affairs Bureau, in 2015. Timmons Group assisted in the civil engineering aspects of the 2015 study. That concept development prompted an extensive community engagement process to receive valuable feedback, make concept improvements, and begin fundraising and preparation for Phase 2 of architecture and engineering work.

A possible version of the Bridge Park — looking south down the revamped Manchester Bridge.

Phase 2 planning will be led by Spatial Affairs Bureau and New York based engineering firm,
Buro Happold, structural engineers for The High Line in New York.

“We are humbled by the community’s overwhelming support and thrilled to work with this extraordinarily accomplished team. The popularity of the T. Tyler Potterfield Memorial Bridge coupled with the exciting projects pending downtown make now an ideal time for us to contribute a vision to our City,” said Ted Elmore, BridgePark President.

The Foundation has an office in Riverfront Plaza downtown, where they display a scale model of the proposed site. The office regularly receives community leaders and student groups to learn more about the project and engage in educational programming around architecture, design, planning, and ideation.

RichmondBizSense.com’s Jonathan Spiers reported that the foundation intends “to complete this latest planning phase by the end of this quarter, after which results will be presented to the public. [Elmore] said the phase will include engagement with the community and getting feedback on the concepts.”

Eastern box turtles can live as long as 100 years in the wild. Credit: Wikipedia

Melissa Scott Sinclair has a fascinating story at RichmondMagazine.com about a lady named Shelley Whittington, a Hanover resident who’s become an advocate for turtle welfare in Central Virginia. It reminded me of a column I wrote years ago for the Times-Dispatch about the incredible eastern box turtle. EBTs can live for decades — sometimes as much as 100 years — and, if habitat is right, may never leave it’s 1-mile square home range.

As Sinclair writes: The Eastern box turtle, an ancient terrestrial species, has a near-unbreakable connection to its home range, even after a subdivision swallows the woods. Once removed, a turtle may spend the rest of its life searching for that place again — but if left there, it may starve in the sterile environment of fenced lawns, or be unable to find a mate.

Whittington’s story of creating a sanctuary for EBTs and other turtles is a great read. Check it out here.

This news broke last week, but it’s hard to overstate its significance and bears repeating. From the Capital Region Land Conservancy:

The path of the James River takes many twists and turns along its 348-mile journey from the Allegheny Mountains to the Chesapeake Bay, yet there is only one place that has come to be named “River’s Bend.”  The 180-acre property, which was formerly a golf course, could have been developed into a dense residential subdivision with an additional 100-homes built along the James River. Instead, the property’s owner, Riversbend Land LLC, has protected the wetlands, views, and one mile of shoreline with a conservation easement held by the Capital Region Land Conservancy that also provides for public access.

“Finalizing this easement was a great way to end the year,” owner and easement donor Neil Amin said. “Having grown up in River’s Bend, I care about the future of this area and am proud to be able to help protect it and share it with the community.”

CRLC has been evaluating options for a conservation easement at River’s Bend since 2010. The property sits at the nexus of a wealth of natural, historic, and scenic resources.

It adjoins 144 acres of wetlands owned by VCU’s River Rice Center and two parcels separate it from another 25-acre privately owned property under conservation easement with CRLC since 2005 for its bald eagle habitat. It lies across the river from Chesterfield County’s Dutch Gap Conservation Area, comprising 810 acres of woods and wetlands. Presquile National Wildlife Refuge and the Brown and Williamson Conservation Area are also nearby. River’s Bend is within the direct viewshed of Henricus Historical Park, a 10- acre public park interpreting the site of the English colony’s second settlement in 1611.

The newly protected land includes 85 acres of emergent wetlands and forested or shrub wetlands according the United States Fish and Wildlife Service inventory. The easement’s terms include 100-foot buffer protections for the property’s mile of James River shoreline and 35-foot buffer protections for the wetland areas as well as the 11,000 feet of stream bank and 2,600 feet of pond border. The existing infrastructure of over two miles of paths will be available for public access and will be open to the public year round.

Chesterfield County Bermuda District Board of Supervisor, Dorothy A. Jaeckle noted, “River’s Bend is a great example of balancing growth and change with respect for our natural resources and our history. Private land conservation plays an important part in fulfilling our long term strategic goals for Chesterfield County along the James River for the benefit of all our citizens.”

Editor’s Note: It was my great pleasure to be the Outdoors columnist for the Times-Dispatch for six years, from 2008-2013. I wrote two columns a week for most of that time, mostly sticking to Central Virginia, writing about the people and places that make the outdoor scene here special. I kept all my clippings from those years, and as I was going through them the other day, it occurred to me that, while some were event-based or otherwise time sensitive, many of them are still relevant today. The below is one of those, amended and updated (from Jan. 2013). Look for more in the future as part of an occasional series.

There’s a camellia bush in my yard, that lights up every winter with pink blooms. No matter what my wife and I plant in the garden all year long, nothing draws more comments from visitors than the camellia.

The ghostly sycamore stands out on a riverbank.

As I write this, it’s 24 degrees outside and snowing. But the camellia is a showoff. It’s covered in blossoms — dozens upon dozens. It would take hours to count them all.

I think it draws so many comments because of its sense of timing. What in the world is a bush doing blooming like that in the middle of winter, people wonder?

The camellia, however, is not alone in its wintertime display. There’s one other Richmond resident that does its best work this time of year. It doesn’t preen and strut like a camellia, but in many ways, the show it puts on is more impressive.

On the James River near my house there’s a place where I take my dogs to swim. It’s no secret, but it is tucked away. To get there, you have to walk across the roots of a tree. The roots are exposed and reach all the way down to where they anchor the giant tree in the river. But before they get there, they envelope a huge granite boulder, embracing it, almost devouring it.

The tree is an American sycamore, and it’s roots are just one of its distinctive features. In fact, there’s very little about the sycamore that isn’t distinctive. And right now is the best time of year to appreciate this unique individual.

The distinctive bark of the sycamore.

If you’re unfamiliar with the sycamore, go down to the nearest body of water and search the edges for a bone-white tree standing tall and branching grandly. That’s a sycamore, and where there’s one there are bound to be many more. Along the James in Richmond they line the banks, roots both in and out the water. When a morning fog hangs low, they appear ghostly — skeletal.

Good friend Scott Turner, an arborist and owner of TrueTimber Tree Service, is a fellow sycamore lover. In a blog post on his website he describes looking at a sycamore tree as looking into “the whites of winter’s eye.” It’s an apt description.

“There is one species in the crowd that seems to want to distinguish itself in the depths of winter even while all the others appear dull and tired,” Turner writes. “One cannot mistake the great, white monarch of the river’s edge – the glistening, white-skinned sycamore tree.”

He’s exactly right. Once you know what a sycamore leaf looks like, you won’t confuse it for another. Sycamore wood is hard but light, not at all dense. If, on a cold night, you’ve been sent to the woodpile to stoke the fire, you won’t mistake a sycamore log for oak or hickory. Old sycamores often have trunks that are mostly hollow at the base, perfect places for children to hide pennies and string and imagine worlds.

The bark, though, is where the American sycamore really sets itself apart. It’s as if the tree has scales, scales which lack the elasticity to grow with the tree and slough off. Underneath the brown and green bark, the sycamore is pale white. It’s like nothing else in Virginia’s forests.

Sycamores grow very large. In one of his journals, George Washington recorded a sycamore near the joining of the Kanawha and Ohio rivers measuring almost 45 feet in circumference. The tallest sycamore ever recorded topped out at 167 feet.

They can live hundreds of years, and, despite their affinity for water, are adaptable to many soil types, which is why you’ll see them all over the place. They’re a generous shade tree, branching high and wide, with large leaves that catch the sun long before it reaches the ground.

The sycamore is a standout in any season, but, like the camellia, it’s at its best when its neighbors put on their winter clothes.

“Last week when we had all that rain, when the weather was so dreary,” Turner told me, “it was like the sycamores along the river stood out even more.”

So, go down to the nearest creek or lake or river and search the banks for the “white monarch” of winter. Stand on its roots; look at the mottled, camouflage-like bark pattern at eye level; listen to the wind in the white bones above you and the water lapping at its base. An encounter with a sycamore is a sensory experience, one best appreciated when the days are short and spring is a distant wish.

With the General Assembly session starting in a week, I thought it would be good to share the James River Association’s list of priorities for the James in the GA. Click here to read more from the JRA and what they expect from this legislative session.

Back in December, JRA Government Affairs and Policy Manager Adrienne Kotula writes, outgoing governor Terry McAuliffe released his proposed budget in front of the General Assembly money committees:

We are grateful to Governor McAuliffe for his dedication to the Water Quality Improvement Fund as well as the Virginia Land Conservation Fund during his tenure as Governor. As we move towards the 2018 General Assembly session and Governor Northam takes office, we must remember that funding for water quality and land conservation are a paramount concern.

Agricultural Best Management Practices
Virginia’s successful Soil and Water Conservation Districts help farmers get important practices on the ground, like streamside buffers and cover crops, but adequate and steady funding is needed to continue these efforts. The Governor’s budget included $22 million towards this effort, but more is needed.

The James River near Buchanan. Credit: JRA

• Support steady funding of $62 million per for agricultural best management practices

Stormwater Local Assistance Fund
Stormwater pollution is a serious issue that communities across Virginia are required to address. Runoff from impervious surfaces in urban areas is the only growing pollution source to the James. The Governor’s budget included zero funding for stormwater and we cannot let this growing pollution source go uncontrolled.

• Support $50 million per year for the Stormwater Local Assistance Fund

Land Conservation Grant Programs
Land conservation is a Virginia tradition. Continuing that tradition of providing for protected land that nourishes us is vital. The Governor’s budget included $5.75 million per year for this program. We need an increase in the budget to meet our goals.

• Support $20 million per year for land conservation grant programs

If you’d like to stay up-to-date on our advocacy efforts, make sure to join our Action Network. You can also join us on January 10th for an Advocacy Lunch and Learn to hear the latest on the opening day of the 2018 General Assembly Session.

For more information or questions contact: Adrienne Kotula at (804) 938-7266 or akotula@jrava.org

Editor’s Note: It was my great pleasure to be the Outdoors columnist for the Times-Dispatch for six years, from 2008-2013. I wrote two columns a week for most of that time, mostly sticking to Central Virginia, writing about the people and places that make the outdoor scene here special. I kept all my clippings from those years, and as I was going through them the other day, it occurred to me that, while some were event-based or otherwise time sensitive, many of them are still relevant today. The below is one of those, amended and updated (from Jan. 2013). Look for more in the future as part of an occasional series.

DUCKS ARRIVE FOR WINTER

If you think it’s been cold here the past few days, you’re probably not a northern pintail. Or a canvasback. Or a hooded merganser. No, if you’re one of those duck species, and you wake up to a sunny, 29-degree Richmond morning, you’re probably high-fiveing your friends: “At least it’s not 20 below!” you say.

The hooded merganser can be found on the James anywhere from Dutch Gap to Bosher’s Dam. Credit: Wikipedia

Ducks and geese come from all over North America — Alaska, Canada, New England, the northern central U.S. — to winter in the Chesapeake Bay region. Heck, tundra swans fly all the way in from the Arctic. But some find the waterways of Central Virginia so inviting, so food and habitat rich, that they never make it to the Bay.

“There’s no doubt that this time of year there’s the most diversity of ducks here,” said Gary Costanzo, a waterfowl biologist with the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries.

Most people can identify a Canada goose and a mallard. They’re practically suburbia’s mascots. But this is the best time of year to get familiar with a host of dabbling and diving ducks that, come spring, will head back north to their breeding grounds.

Aaron Bose, local birder and graphic designer, is always on the lookout for waterfowl fresh in from colder climates. “Personally, I really enjoy birding in the city,” he said. “It’s an urban area, but there’s a lot of birds to be found. It’s almost a challenge because you’re trying to find a variety in a place where you wouldn’t expect them.”

Check out the rapids below the Nickel Bridge for bufflehead action.

The James River is always a good place to start because it’s full of vegetation, invertebrates and fish that dabblers and divers need. That’s more true now, Bose said, because when it’s cold enough for smaller bodies of water to freeze — like local ponds, marshes and wetlands — “birds hit the river; they’ll want to find the open water.”

In the city, the area from Pony Pasture to the Wetlands is a good place to start. “The water is pretty calm. You can see good numbers of buffleheads,” Bose said. You can see ring-neck ducks, lesser scaup. We’ve even had a few canvasbacks recently.”

Mergansers are known as river ducks, and, Costanzo said, they’ll go to any kind of water that’s got a lot of fish in it.”

Of the three varieties — common, hooded and red-breasted — he explained, the red-breasted tend to frequent salty of brackish waters, so they’re more often found in the Bay. But hooded and common mergansers can be found anywhere from Dutch Gap in Chesterfield County on the tidal James to Bosher’s Dam just west of the Richmond/Henrico line.

“Usually, there’s one or two common mergansers in the city,” Bose said. “Usually I see them up by Pony Pasture or down off the Floodwall.”

Both Costanzo and Bose mentioned Dutch Gap as a great place for waterfowl watching. “That overlook when you go into the Henricus (Historical Park) area,” Bose said, “that’s really great for pintail, American wigeon, which you don’t necessarily see in the city too often. You get a lot of shoveler.”

Is there a more beautiful bird than the wood duck?

If all this has you saying, “That’s great, but how will I tell a hooded merganser from a ring-necked duck, or an American black duck from a wood duck?” there’s good news. There are dozens of bird and waterfowl ID books and websites available (AllAboutBirds.org is one of my favorites). And Ducks Unlimited offers a free app, which features duck ID info, including pictures, for all the major North American species.

Ok, you’ve got your ID resources, a pair of binoculars, and a few local bodies of water in mind to survey waterfowl. Getting to know ducks in the area this time of year still can be daunting.

“Take them one at a time because it is easy to get overwhelmed with a lot of birds,” Bose suggested. “Just focus on one or two and figure out what they are and forget about the rest. Next time you’re out, you already know those two and you can focus on some others.”

The effort will be worth it, because once you’ve got a few down, every winter you’ll feel like you’re greeting friends returned from the wintry north. But get out there soon. By March, the north won’t be quite as wintry, and the traveling waterfowl show will be gone.