Turning the Tide on the Blackwater and Nottoway
By Bandana Malik, Waterkeeper Alliance

There’s an old secret about the Blackwater and Nottoway Rivers in Virginia. No, it is not the type that you keep and cannot tell; it’s the type that will flow openly to anyone willing to hear. The otter, mink and eagles know it, as do the rivers’ cypress and gum trees. But no person knows it better than the keeper of this secret, and the keeper of the river himself. The secret is this: these two rivers are life sustaining.

The Blackwater and Nottoway Rivers flow through cypress swamps and coffee-colored banks of Southeastern Virginia before uniting to form the Chowan River. Though the rivers run slowly towards each other like close friends for miles upon miles, they are remarkably diverse. The dark, quaint, 85-mile-long Blackwater is hidden between deep swamps and beaver dams, while the 130-mile-long Nottoway is born of rapids and fast flowing rocky streams, collecting the remains of the booming industries on its banks. And almost like a part of the river itself, on three or fours days and nights each week, you will find Jeff Turner out in his boat patrolling, even when others have gone to sleep, because “The river,” Jeff says, “is still awake at night.”

Jeff did not always have plans to be a Riverkeeper. At age fifteen he was on his way to becoming a professional bass tournament fisherman. As a plucky young member of a local bass club, Jeff would haul the largest and the most bass from the river, while his adult competitors came back empty handed. But right after Jeff’s 17th birthday, events unfurled that changed his life forever. Jeff and a friend were on a long stroll into town one day when a car pulled up, offering them a ride. The two boys hopped in the backseat. The driver, unbeknownst to them, was drunk. They bent around a curve, the tires screeched and that was that. The car hit a ditch and tumbled several times. The corner roof where Jeff was sitting caved in, crushing the 6 foot 4 inch-tall Jeff Turner’s neck and body.

For a week, Jeff was completely paralyzed and left with the crippling belief that he would never fish again. “It crushed my career plans,” says Jeff, “It was a pretty sad time in my life.” So, to cope with his physical losses, Jeff turned to the river more than he ever had before for solace. Jeff’s relationship with the river developed so much in those years – boating, fishing, thinking – that when he saw a program on television on the Waterkeeper Alliance he only had one goal in mind.

In 2000, the Blackwater/Nottoway Riverkeeper became the 47th Waterkeeper program with a staff of only one, plus his dog-come-assistant, Moonpie. Today Jeff, who is still partially paralyzed says, “As long as I’m sitting in a boat, I’m alright.”

Within his first few months as Riverkeeper, Jeff encountered his first polluter. While out on patrol one day, Jeff, who can even tell when the herons migrate by the smell of the water, knew something wasn’t right. As he puts it, “I don’t have a degree in science, but my forty years on that river is my degree, and on this day a foul smell turned my head and my boat.” Fifty feet beyond the river’s edge, Jeff found a pipe discharging raw sewage from the bathrooms of Birdsong Peanuts’ processing facility directly into the Blackwater River.

Jeff’s investigation showed that Birdsong had been spewing sewage into the Blackwater for two decades. The company responded by locking all their bathrooms in the brutal cold of early winter. Ultimately, Birdsong was forced to build a pump station connected to the municipal sewage system and was fined $16,000.

Indeed, this was the Blackwater/Nottoway Riverkeeper’s first major success, but the story does not end here. In a small town like Franklin where everybody knows everybody, environmental protection is not as simple as sending a fine to a distant stranger; the close nature of relationships makes environmental enforcement all the more challenging. It turned out that the son of the company’s Vice President was an old partying buddy of Jeff’s. For years after Jeff slammed the fine on Birdsong, Jeff’s old friend wouldn’t look at or talk to him. Nevertheless, Jeff remained steadfast in his responsibilities, despite the tension it added to his personal relations.

It wasn’t until this year, while Jeff was giving a presentation at the local AARP, that he ran into the Vice President of Birdsong. Fearing that he was in for a rough encounter, Jeff was overcome with relief when Mr. Birdsong extended his hand (and not his fist, as Jeff feared) and sincerely thanked him for the work he was doing on the Blackwater. Despite the initial look of shock on Jeff’s face, his relationship with Birdsong has since developed into a good working relationship. More recently, Birdsong even placed chairs, tables and garbage cans behind their facility to improve their waterfront for local visitors.

This shift in thinking, in changing the attitudes of industries is what distinguishes Jeff Turner. Since Jeff has become Riverkeeper, more and more industries in Franklin have been going out of their way to take responsibility for their waterways. “We’ve developed a reputation that we’re not just out there to make trouble. So they come to me; they know I know these two rivers and can help them out,” Jeff avers. This past year Hercules, a local chemical plant, spilled di-isopropyl benzene on the Blackwater. The plant’s head environmental manager immediately contacted Jeff to float down the river and take a look. Jeff recalls, “He didn’t want to kill any fish. He was just as mad as I was.” Today, wherever he goes, Jeff continues to spread the message that a clean river means a stronger, healthier community.

Besides educating industries on how to improve their equipment and procedures, Jeff’s time is spent working closely with the state Department of Environmental Quality to track water quality through a monitoring program, taking people on free eco-tours and spending days and nights patrolling his rivers. All of his activities go towards combating the largest threats to the rivers: agricultural runoff, logging and stormwater runoff.

And behind all of this is a partially-paralyzed man with a tremendous spirit and a 13 year old dog named Moonpie. “I am neither an eloquent writer nor a highly educated man; I am, however, someone who for 40 years has had a love affair with two rivers. I would very much like to continue to have a healthy relationship with my only true love and to be able to gracefully grow old together,” he says. “I will accomplish this one way or another, this I swear.”