Matt Gentry | The Roanoke Times

The community of Eggleston in Giles County is one of the older communities on the river. Now newer structures are showing up along the river.

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• Connecting residents with their river -- the New River

BARREN SPRINGS -- Jack Lawrence wore a straw pith helmet and carried a walking stick made from a golf club shaft as he crossed a rocky, dry stream bed to his 43-acre island between the New River and New River Trail State Park.

"My father left it for me," Lawrence, 72, said of the island.

His father bought the farmland across the river in 1945. The next year, he bought the island.

"It still looks about the same to me," Lawrence said. "Except for all the houses growing up around here. It used to be way back in the sticks. It's not that way anymore."

A lot of places that used to be in the sticks aren't that way anymore.

Much of the development along Virginia's section of the New River has been industrial. Three dams turn the river's current into electricity. The New River Foundry, the Radford Army Ammunition Plant, Celanese Corp. and Appalachian Power's Glen Lyn Power plant line the river between Claytor Lake and the West Virginia line.

But that may be changing. Small lots, holding every kind of shelter from a rusting bus to a rustic looking McMansion, are scattered along Virginia's section of the river.

A residential development was proposed -- and withdrawn -- atop the Palisades, cliffs above the river near the Giles County community of Eggleston, where Mary Draper Ingles' long walk back from Ohio is said to have ended.

The River Course, a high-end golf course owned by the Virginia Tech Foundation, abuts the river near Fairlawn in Pulaski County. Houses sit just out of bounds and on the hills above the course.

"I think a certain amount of development is going to come, but let's do it in a responsible manner," said Ben Borda. "Let's plan for whatever development makes sense."

Borda is the New River's river navigator, a position with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. It's a part-time job created in 1998, when the federal government declared the New River an American Heritage River. The designation does little to shield the river from development. Declaring a river Wild and Scenic -- another federal government designation -- provides some protection, but only 26 miles of the New River are Wild and Scenic. All of those miles are in North Carolina.

Lawrence said he regularly gets unsolicited offers for his land from eager speculators. "We may be able to help you reach your financial goals," a letter from one Michigan land company said.

That could sound appealing to someone like Lawrence, when the county's last tax reassessment tripled the assessed value of his land.

"Those kinds of pressures are going to come," Borda said. "There's some balance that has to be achieved there.

"I think the key is just to be able to plan for this as much as possible and do it in a very environmentally, ecologically, aesthetically appropriate way."

Borda's main jobs are cutting governmental red tape and finding money for projects that serve the American Heritage River initiative's three-fold purpose: economic development, natural resource protection and cultural and historic preservation.

Borda and the New River Community Partners, a grass roots organization that exists to see that those purposes are served, went to 21 county seats in the three states where the river runs to see what people wanted. They came away with 335 projects.

They include ecosystem restoration in Claytor Lake; a mapping project due out next month that will make planning canoe trips along the New River much easier; a study that could lead to a section of the river from Narrows to Bluestone Lake in West Virginia being declared Wild and Scenic.

Borda and the partners are also helping Radford and Hillsville apply for federal money to help with downtown preservation.

Montgomery County, in comparison, hardly has an interest in such issues. Because the Radford arsenal and the national forest own so much riverfront property, there's only about 9 miles of developable riverbank in Montgomery County, according to planner Meghan Dorsett. Factor in the flood plain, steep slopes and property that's cut off by the railroad lines that parallel the river, and there's probably no more 4 miles of buildable land along the river, Dorsett said.

Grayson County has a lot of buildable riverfront property. Some of it was almost used for a state prison, but the prison's being built on another Grayson County site away from the river instead.

"I've guess we've gotten into a win-win situation," Ralph Tuggle, chairman of the board of supervisors, said hours before a groundbreaking ceremony for the project last month.

Tuggle supported the riverside site because he feared the county would lose the 350 jobs the prison is expected to provide. The river is an asset, Tuggle said, but its economic impact is "nowhere near as much as we would like."

"Historically, a lot of people come to Grayson County, but they don't spend much money here," Tuggle said.

Until tourists start spending more money, it will be hard to persuade people to open businesses to serve tourists. Until businesses are there to serve them, it's unlikely tourist will spend more money.

"It's sort of like the chicken-and-egg thing," Tuggle said.

People are spending eco-tourism money down river in Giles County, but Britt and Leigh Stoudenmire, owners of a river guide company called Canoe the New, fear that may change. They're particularly worried about a plan to use 254,000 cubic yards of coal ash as fill for a construction project in the river's flood plain near Narrows.

Once the ash has been piled and compacted enough to raise the ground level 30 feet or so, the plan is to sell the land to someone who will build some kind of industry on top of it.

The ash contains toxins, including arsenic, lead and mercury. Although state and federal regulations say the project is safe, the Stoudenmires and others aren't convinced.

Britt Stoudenmire thinks that's putting the river and the river's eco-tourism potential at risk. There's a limit to how much the river can take -- and to how much tourists will take before they stop coming back, he said.

Howard Spencer may be the project's biggest booster. He's chairman of the Giles County Board of Supervisors, Glen Lyn's town manager and executive director of the Giles County Partnership for Excellence, the nonprofit that's working with AEP to get the project done.

Spencer also runs a work force training program in Narrows.

"I've spent hundreds of thousand of dollars training young people to work somewhere else," he said. "When I was growing up, everybody could go to work at Radford or Celanese. That's not the case anymore."

Upstream, the city of Radford is moving in the opposite direction.

Radford calls itself the New River City and has developed a long-term plan to use the river to attract tourists and stir up business. The city already has bike trails, canoe landings and other recreational facilities along the river.

Those things probably add more to Radford's quality of life than its bottom line, in Mayor Tom Starnes' view. But he also sees that quality of life can indirectly fuel economic development. Some people like to live in college towns with trails and a park and easy access to a river.

Radford leaders also recognize that times are changing. Old line industries are shrinking or disappearing altogether. The river that powered them and absorbed their waste can serve a very different role now, one that blends environmental, cultural and economic aspirations.

"A lot of people are looking for communities with that type of asset," Starnes said. "I think we recognize the importance of the river."

At some level, at least, the choice is simple.

"You either adapt to change," he said, "or more than likely you're going to be left behind or left in the cold."