Main Source of Pollution in the James River Watershed

A dangerous chemical known as kepone is the main factor of pollution in the James River.

Kepone is an organochlorine compound and a colorless solid. This compound is an obsolete insecticide related to Mirex and DDT. Kepone was so disastrous that it is now prohibited in the western world, but only after thousands of tonnes had been produced. Chlordecone (Kepone) is a known persistent organic pollutant (POP) that has been banned globally by the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants in 2009. 

In 1966 workers at a chemical plant located in Hopewell, Virginia, decided to illegally dump tons of Kepone into the James River. They continued this illegal dumping from 1966 to 1975. 

What you see above is the location of the company, and the line shows the distance between the company's building and the James River. The drive from the company building to the waterfront is approximately four minutes.

Kepone started drifting downstream, concentrating mostly on an especially turbid stretch from the mouth of the Chickahominy River to Fort Eustis. It inundated the surface of the sediment, the flesh of popular food fish, and the valuable oysters that filter the river bottoms. Alongside the river life, workers in the Allied Chemical Corp. continued to poison the James for years. This continued until Life Science Productions took over the production in 1974. Production stopped only after factory workers began showing serious neurological damage, of what workers called the “Kepone Shakes”. 

In July of 1975, the state ordered the factory to shut down. At the time, kepone production was banned worldwide. However, the damage to the James River and its ecosystem was already done. The governor closed the entire river and its tributaries to fishing to protect public health. Governor Mills Godwin Jr shut the entire river down from Richmond to Chesapeake Bay. The ban remained in effect for 13 years. Estimates were that the James River could take from 10 up to 100 years for nature to purge out kepone. It turns out that the estimates were on the right track, but scientists predict that it will take up to 45 years.

There are regional clean-ups of the river that happen annually. In these cleanups, anyone can help volunteer to clean. From inside of the river to on the shore.  Here  you can sign up to volunteer to clean the river.

For a more long-term way to help the river, we should have people and companies be more conscious of what they are throwing into the James River. More cleaning protocols should be put in place so that the waste being put back into the river is as humanly possible. The more we care about the environment, the better the environment will be for the future.