Category Archives: Kanawha Canal

Questions For The Chief

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Dear Police Chief Tarasovic,

I would like to know who hired the contractor that destroyed the pre-Civil War Tredegar wall on city property, and the public would like to know if the entity that hired the contractor be held responsible. The reasonable citizens of Richmond assume that the laws against destruction of public property will be applied equally and that this destruction of public property will not be “swept under the rug.”

I would greatly appreciate it if you applied transparency to the case of the destruction of the Tredegar wall on city property.

Thank you very much for your assistance.

Scott Burger

Email sent March 23 (An earlier, similar email was sent by a neighbor in February and an even earlier email was sent last year to predecessor Chief Norwood). No responses received as of yet. I am hoping that Chief Tarasovic will be willing to speak to this issue tomorrow evening at the 5th District meeting.

From a February Times Dispatch article:

“I’m a transparent person,” Tarasovic said Tuesday after joining Mayor Dwight C. Jones in congratulating dozens of officers for winning awards. “I’ll tell you how I feel. I’m telling you how I feel now.”
“I believe in sunshine, and I think we will shine in the sun,” Tarasovic added, referring to transparency.

Panoramic View of Canal

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A neighbor, impressed by the 1960’s photographs found at the Library of Virginia, took the liberty of stitching 5 of the photos together to make one panoramic view. This shows the canal (with water!) and the full length of the Tredegar wall, a portion of which was demolished by NewMarket a year ago, and another portion on city property that was illegally demolished recently.

A Cross-Section of the Canal

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During the construction of the new bridge for the 2nd Street Connector, the contractors made a clean cut through the canal. This cut provided a cross-section of the canal.

As shown clearly in this photograph, there is only about a foot of dark top soil above the yellowish clay liner of the south bank of the canal. (photographer placed a 4 foot ruler in the photograph to show the scale.) Bill Trout, who is the former President of the American Canal Society, visited the site, and he took a sample of the clay and demonstrated how the clay was “puddled” with water to form an impervious barrier that kept the water from leaking from the canal.

This is important because Venture Richmond’s proposed plan to slice off 5-6 feet from the top of the south bank of the canal would definitely damage the integrity of the canal by slicing into the important clay liner of the canal.

Richmond Voice Covers Canal Wall Demolition

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Thankfully, the Richmond Voice newspaper is still on the case. You can click here for the pdf of their recent issue, which includes a story about the recent destruction of the historic Kanawha canal wall.

Supposedly, the Police Dept and the Dept of Public Works are investigating the matter, but Oregon Hill residents remain concerned that it will not be fully prosecuted. Perhaps more outside pressure will come to bear.

On the Preservation of Richmond’s Canal

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From email:

To all those interested in the future of Richmond’s historic canal:

The attached letter is from Mr. D.J. Ballinger, president of the international canal organization Inland Waterways International, containing a resolution of support for the preservation and wise use of the remains of the James River & Kanawha Canal in Richmond. Originally known as the James River Canal, it was the first operating canal system with locks in America. It first opened in 1789 and was completed into the Great Basin in 1800. The canal company elected George Washington as its honorary president and gave him a grand tour in 1791. Today, much of the canal is still intact in Richmond.

The resolution was passed at the annual World Canals Conference, held this year in Yangzhou, China, on China’s Grand Canal. For 25 years these conferences have been held annually in America or Europe, and now, for the first time, in the far east. This one was held in conjunction with the Sixth World Canal Cities Expo, which has been held annually in Yangzhou. The Chinese are making the most of their canal heritage. Communities along its length are working together to nominate the Grand Canal as a World Heritage Site, and are using it to create beautiful parks and waterways much beloved by both tourists and those who live there. Efforts like this are going on all over the world.

Richmond rightly prides itself as a River Town and has learned much from other river cities. But Richmond is also a Canal City. The technology and philosophy of canal park development is not the same as river park development. We need to work not only with other river cities, but with other canal cities and canal parks to learn how we can put our historic canal to its best use for our city. The sweep of the canal around Oregon Hill is in danger and needs our help.

Bill Trout

Somebody Should Be Going To Jail

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The local corporate media is playing all coy about the recent demolishing of the historic canal wall. They keep referring to it as if it was an accident and was bound to happen. (It was not. There were witnesses.)

Not me (and yeah, this is marked as editorial).

I believe somebody, despite knowing the many concerns of our neighborhood and larger Richmond community, thought they could sneakily order and get away with, under the lingering goodwill glow of the folk festival, and before the Riverfront Plan comes up at City Council, the destruction of an important part of Richmond’s history (built with slave labor, designed with the help of no one less than George Washington). And, I guess they figured this sort of thing has been done before in Richmond, so they did think they could get away with it.

As others have pointed out, the work crew did not even bother to put up erosion controls as required by the Chesapeake Bay Act, before beginning this work that included a deep bulldozer rut down the side of the canal.

Imagine if a regular citizen tried something so arrogant, so pernicious. This was not like a kid spray painting a monument, this was someone destroying a large swathe of historic artifact. I don’t care how big or small of a figure the guilty party or guilty parties are, or which corporations they are leaders of, somebody should be going to jail.

Corporate accountability should mean something and not just political buzzwords. Speaking of which, where’s our Councilperson on this? After all, he was very recently quoted- “We need a council to do the people’s business of being watchdogs over the public purse, to be watchdogs over waste, fraud and abuse, to be watchdogs over massive mismanagement,” Jewell says. Really, Marty, then why aren’t you publicly calling for a criminal investigation?