Mattaponi River
VirginiaFlowing 85 miles across the coastal plain of eastern Virginia, the Mattaponi River has been the lifeblood of the Mattaponi people for thousands of years and is where life begins for them. Tribal members reunite each year and help to maintain cultural continuity and a sense of place by teaching younger generations how to fish for the shad that spawn in the river every spring. Inhabitants of the Mattaponi Reservation also depend on the river for subsistence and supplemental income. However, in the early 1990s, the City of Newport News, Virginia and a regional water study group concluded that the Mattaponi River could help fulfill the region's rapidly growing water needs. Accordingly, the city requested a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to construct a dam and a 12 billion-gallon reservoir on adjacent Cohoke Creek, with up to 75 million gallons of water a day to be pumped from the Mattaponi River into the reservoir. The water line would have reached a point 2.5 miles west of the Mattaponi Reservation, which lies on the western bank of the Mattaponi River. At stake were cultural and historical sites, related ecological resources and a shad hatchery operated by the tribe. Accordingly, the Mattaponi, together with the nearby Pamunkey and Upper Mattaponi tribes, entered into negotiations to protect culturally significant places near the river.
In March 2001, after a variety of studies were completed, Colonel Allan B. Carroll of the local U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (the Corps) district recommended denial of the permit for the water project: "…the tribes cannot be fully compensated for the losses to their spiritual connections, culture and traditional socioeconomic practices that they would experience as a result of the construction of the reservoir." The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) also recommended denial of the permit because of anticipated harm to wildlife. However, the city of Newport News and former Virginia Governor Jim Gilmore appealed the decision to the North Atlantic Division of the Corps, which overruled the local office in October 2002 and commanded that the permitting process continue, albeit with incorporation of plans to, among other things, work with concerned tribes to mitigate cultural impacts of the project. Other permits were also contentious; while the State Water Control Board approved the project, the Virginia Marine Resources Commission (VMRC) initially refused to provide a permit (adapted from http://www.sacredland.org/index.php/mattaponi-river/).
In 2005, the Corps did issue a Clean Water Act permit to allow for the filling of wetlands within the reservoir boundaries, despite vehement opposition from the USFWS (adapted from http://www.rocktheearth.org/newsletter/2005-08/index.html). On March 31, 2009, however, a U.S. District Court ruled that the Corps had acted arbitrarily and capriciously when it granted a permit for the reservoir in 2005. Finally, in September 2009—almost 20 years after the project was introduced—Newport News Mayor Joe Frank announced that the city's effort to develop the reservoir was over.
For more information visit: http://www.lannan.org/lf/ic/search_detail/mattaponi-heritage-foundation/favicon.ico and http://www.savethemattaponi.org/
