By Jay Scarborough
Capital News Service

A House committee has postponed until next year consideration of two bills affecting the Appomattox River.

By voice vote Wednesday, the House Committee on Agriculture, Chesapeake and Natural Resources continued until 2011 a bill to exempt the Harvell Dam in Petersburg from fish passageway requirements and a proposal to designate more of the Appomattox as an official “scenic river.”

Sponsors of the two bills are hopeful they will gain approval next year.

House Bill 795, sponsored by Delegate Rosalyn R. Dance, D-Petersburg, was continued so the parties involved can work on the fish passageway issue rather than let the bill die in committee.

“They really don’t have an outline specific of what it is they want to be included in the bill,” said Lashrecse Jones, Dance’s legislative assistant. “They just want to have the opportunity to hold some public meetings and get public input so that everyone is on one accord.”

According to the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, a Denil fishway (a type of fish ladder) was built on the 9-foot Harvell Dam as a requirement of the owner’s hydropower license from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Alan Weaver, game department’s fish passage coordinator, said the dam is no longer used to produce power, but the federal regulations still apply.

“We are involved because we are trying to remove the dam. We see that as the best approach to fish passage given the set of circumstances,” Weaver said.

“If the dam was still going to have a future use for water supply, hydropower, etc., then a fishway alternative would be the way that fish passage would be accomplished. Without those things really on the horizon, we have been looking at hopefully removing the dam.”

The game department hopes to remove the Harvell dam, but it has not finalized any plans or applied for permits to do any work, Weaver said.

“From the game department’s perspective, we are interested in restoring the fish passage, restoring the river itself to a more natural state and getting increased recreational use out of it,” Weaver said.

HB 1281, sponsored by Delegate Riley Ingram, R-Hopewell, would designate a 19.2-mile stretch of the Appomattox River as part of the Virginia Scenic Rivers System. This section runs from the Lake Chesdin Dam to the Appomattox’s confluence with the James River at City Point in Hopewell.

Currently, a 6.2-mile segment of the Appomattox – from the Lake Chesdin Dam to the Route 36 bridge in Petersburg – is considered a scenic river.

Pat Bennett, legislative assistant to Ingram, said HB 1281 was continued because Chesterfield County had questions about the bill and had not passed a resolution endorsing the measure.