CHARLES CITY — The James River Association and other project partners celebrated completing a living shoreline project at the privately owned Berkeley Plantation in Charles City on June 27. It’s the first project of its kind — a technique for protecting water quality that relies mostly on natural elements instead of walls and bulkheads — to use funds from a Virginia agriculture cost share program.
The project’s 1,500 feet of shoreline along farmland will prevent over 105 tons of sediment from eroding into the James River annually. The shoreline will also filter nutrients, a key pollutant in the Bay and its rivers, from stormwater runoff.
According to the James River Association, large projects like this one are rare on agricultural land because of the high cost and complexity for private property owners. The project is also in a unique area along the James River where agricultural land meets brackish or salty water.
Jamie Brunkow, director of river ecology with the James River Association, said the partnership between the nonprofit and the state was “instrumental” to funding the $895,000 project.
The money came from three sources: the Virginia Agricultural Best Management Practice Cost-Share Program and a grant from the National Fish and Wildlife Foundation’s Innovative Nutrient and Sediment Reduction program that paid off a loan from the Department of Environmental Quality.
The unique funding arrangement allowed the large project to move forward without cost to the property owner.
The James River Association, Colonial Soil and Water Conservation District, DEQ and Department of Conservation and Recreation have been working on the project for the last three years.
This story originally appeared July 1 on bayjournal.com.
![If it were not for the efforts of a William & Mary president in the 1960s there would not have been a marine science program to benefit from the school’s recent largest financial gift. Davis Y. Paschall, president 1960-1971, was instrumental in the development of the substantial academic programs of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at nearby Gloucester Point on the York River, The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory was established in 1940 as the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory as a joint effort between W&M and the Virginia Commission on Fisheries (now the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. It was initially organized […]](https://www.pilotonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/6SCYSOUXX5GSHC7UWSYZ2RSEAU.jpg?w=408 "If it were not for the efforts of a William & Mary president in the 1960s there would not have been a marine science program to benefit from the school’s recent largest financial gift. Davis Y. Paschall, president 1960-1971, was instrumental in the development of the substantial academic programs of the Virginia Institute of Marine Science (VIMS) at nearby Gloucester Point on the York River, The Virginia Fisheries Laboratory was established in 1940 as the Virginia Fisheries Laboratory as a joint effort between W&M and the Virginia Commission on Fisheries (now the Virginia Marine Resources Commission. It was initially organized […]")