NORFOLK, Va. — Millions of dollars are on the way to improve the local habitat of the Elizabeth River watershed.
"Removing contamination is key to this part of the river fully recovering," Marjorie Mayfield Jackson said, Executive Director of the Elizabeth River Project.
The waters you might see here around the southern branch of the Elizabeth River above South Military Highway in Chesapeake still feel the impact from generations past. Creosote still lines the bottom of the waterway near the "Money Point" area of the river, as the byproduct of practices by wood and industrial processors.
"(Old) practices put a lot of carcinogenic toxins in the river," Jackson said.
To this day, the compounds can still disrupt the bottom of the habitat’s food chain.
Monday, Congressman Bobby Scott delivered more than $11 million in federal dollars to clean up the spill’s long-lasting impacts to the Elizabeth River Project, who will then use the funding to contract the Army Corps of Engineers for help on the cleanup.
"To me it’s a miracle," Jackson said.
"It's there because of pollution from defunct wood processors - important word there is defunct - because nobody is there to go after so we have to do this ourselves," Congressman Scott said near the site of the the future cleanup.
This new funding opens the door for the "final" phase of the restoration efforts near Money Point, according to Jackson.
The first two phases proved successful in improving fish and bird diversity for a section once deemed "dead."
Joe Rieger with the ERP cited that within a roughly ten-year time period starting in the mid 2000's, the number of fish species observed in the local environment increased from 3 to 26.
The ERP, considering themselves the "catalyst" in this effort between federal funding and the work of the Army Corps of Engineers, will ask for more than $3 million in state level funding through the general assembly as a 25% match to Rep. Scott's delivered amount.
In 2020, the southern branch of the Elizabeth River-- the closest branch to the Money Point site, graded a “C" in that year's scorecard.