Friday, June 24, 2005
Battling for the brookie
Mark Taylor
Mark Taylor's Outdoors column and notebook appears regularly in The Roanoke Times.
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VESUVIUS--After slipping off the winding gravel road and down to the St. Marys River, Dan Genest and John Ross paused on the stream bank to discuss strategy.
What flies would they use? Where should they start fishing? Who would get the first pool?
Frequent fishing partners, these two are used to talking strategy. But they don't team up only on the trout stream. Together they helped spearhead the production of the new "Battle for the Brookie" video, an educational piece on acid rain's causes and potential impacts on the environment.
They are unlikely partners in the venture.
Genest works for Dominion Power while Ross is a high-ranking volunteer with Trout Unlimited.
"Typically, power companies and conservation groups don't see eye to eye," Genest said.
Like many other energy companies Dominion uses coal-fired power plants. Those facilities not only generate electricity for Dominion's 2.1 million customers, they produce emissions that contribute to acid rain, a threat to the streams Trout Unlimited spends much of its time fighting to protect.
"It was pretty unusual for TU to get together with the enemy," Ross, chairman of the organization's Virginia State Council, said with a slight smile. "And we heard a little bit about that from our board."
Genest, who works in Dominion's communications department, also faced some skepticism from his superiors. Eventually the two were able to gain the support they needed to go through with the project.
Working toward compromise is better than fighting and going nowhere.
"Our feeling is if we don't know each other, we won't do anything," Ross said.
Connecting with TU made sense to Genest, and not just because he's an avid trout fisherman.
"As opposed to some environmental groups, TU takes a reasonable approach," he said.
Genest and Ross started working together in 2003.
"We were talking about projects, ways that Dominion and TU could work together," said Ross , a consultant and author of "Trout Unlimited's 100 Best Trout Streams in America."
Among the projects that resulted were construction of a fishing pier at Sherando Lake, and habitat enhancements at Accotink Creek in Fairfax County and Seneca Creek in West Virginia.
Early discussion also led to the idea of an educational video, one that could be used as part of a middle school curriculum.
The project required both TU and Dominion to make compromises.
"We wanted it to present a balanced view," said Ross, a 58-year-old from Upperville. "Not just a green view or the energy view."
With assistance from other groups, including the Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the groups started developing material for the tape.
Video crews shot footage of fly anglers pulling brightly colored brook trout from clear mountain creeks. Some of the footage was recorded on the St. Marys River, a Rockbridge Country stream that was one of the state's blue ribbon trout fisheries before it was devastated by acid rain.
"It had no brookies, and not much else," Ross said of the stream. "It became sort of a poster child for the need for clean air and clean water."
The St. Marys received a respite from acid rain's impact when it was treated with 140 tons of ground limestone in 1999. It is due to be retreated soon.
To show how acid rain affects the environment, artists involved in the video project created video graphics illustrating how emissions from coal-fired power plants bond with airborne water molecules then fall back to earth through precipitation.
The video also points out that auto exhaust also is a major source of acid deposition.
Ross and Genest worked together on the script, sending it back and forth after they and their superiors reviewed each draft.
After 18 months, the 15-minute-long video was completed earlier this year. Dominion Power covered the $12,000 cost, which didn't include Genest's time, and also paid for the production of the first 250 DVDs.
Groups can request copies of the DVD from Trout Unlimited. Dominion Power and TU hope that distribution expands significantly soon.
"The goal is to get something into every middle school in the state," Ross said.
Ross and Genest are working with a school principal in Northern Virginia to get a curriculum developed, with work to start this summer. The hope is to get a pilot program started in the second half of the upcoming school year, then expand the program to every middle school by 2006/2007 and tie the curriculum to the Standards of Learning.
"We are trying to catch kids," Ross said. "We want to hook them with the video, and tie it in with the SOL."
The project has encouraged Genest and Ross to continue working toward common goals.
"We're kind of looking for another project," Genest said. "The idea is to keep the dialog going."
For information on obtaining a copy of "Battle for the Brookie," contact John Ross at (540) 592-7020 or jross@crosslink.net.
