Editor's note: We share this June 2003 Flashback by Harry Kollatz Jr. as a prelude to the Tuesday, Dec. 4, Controversy/History discussion at The Valentine, "The James River: Commerce or Recreation?" Please join Harry, Valentine Director Bill Martin and co-host Kelli Lemon from 6 to 8 p.m. at The Valentine. Also enjoy this 2013 Flashback about the creation of the James River Park System.
Newton Ancarrow with lady’s slippers, among the wildflowers he worked to save (Photo courtesy Ms. N. Hopper Ancarrow Jr.)
He died in 1991 thinking himself a failure. Pioneer James River conservationist Newton Ancarrow didn’t realize the extent of his success.
“He thought he’d lost,” says his son, Hopper Ancarrow.
Newton Ancarrow, who started out as a chemical scientist, later switched careers and became a master boat builder, starting his own company, Ancarrow Marine, which sold high-speed runabouts for more than $29,000 apiece to rich jet-setters such as shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis and the Sheik of Qatar.
Ancarrow’s late-1950s and early-1960s boat building informed him of the James River’s deplorable condition. He publicly compared it to “the Ganges River at Banaras in India.”
In 1969, Ancarrow co-founded Reclaim the James Inc., and he advocated the construction of a floodwall to protect the city’s water-filtration plant. The Virginia Wildlife Foundation, among others, officially celebrated Ancarrow’s work. Yet, throughout the 1970s, Ancarrow was considered an annoyance by government and corporate officials.
In 1975, the city exhibited further mean-spiritedness by condemning Ancarrow’s marina, located across from where the Annabel Lee docks today, to make way for a never-built expansion to the water treatment plant. Ancarrow wasn’t compensated for the improvements he had made. After all, city officials reasoned, who’d want to buy a boat dock in such poisonous waters?
The U.S. Supreme Court in 1979 waived the case Ancarrow brought against the Environmental Protection Agency (among other organizations) for failing to properly control pollution on the James. Ancarrow then retreated with his ailing wife, Josephine, to their James River Golf Course home.
The court fight began with his boats.
Ancarrow Marine’s best seller was the 25-foot Aquilifer, powered by twin 300-horsepower Cadillac engines that reached 60 mph. Among his clients were King Paul of Greece and the emirs of Kuwait and Bahrain. Newsweek and Sports Illustrated praised the boats as the best of their kind in the country.
In 1961, Ancarrow purchased several acres near the Richmond sewage plant on the James’ south bank for boat launching. He once stood with the visiting finance minister of Saudi Arabia watching the trash-laden waters. Ancarrow asked what would happen in Saudi Arabia if somebody allowed a river to become this polluted. The finance minister replied, “We would cut off his head.”
Ancarrow wanted officials to see the river after heavy rains released millions of gallons of raw sewage into the James. Ancarrow observed struggling masses of eels and catfish at this dock, trying to escape. He’d observe them “with the skin digested off them.”
Ancarrow testified about the river’s health to an apathetic City Council around 1966. He brought a large jar filled with putrid water in which floated a condom and a dead rat. Council dismissed his evidence.
He then produced a powerful, prescient documentary film called “The Raging James,” shot from helicopters, boats and on shore. It aired on public television station WCVE, and Ancarrow showed it to anyone who would watch. Views of waste pouring into the James forced Richmond and the State Water Control Board to take measures against river pollution.
His interest in preserving wildflowers along the James made Ancarrow an expert photographer. His pictures illustrated David P. Ryan’s book, “The Falls of the James.”
Ancarrow’s grandson, Grant, owns a restored 25-foot Ancarrow Marine runabout and works for Virginia Semiconductor, where he observes water quality taken into and pumped from semiconductor plants. “The water we send out is cleaner than what went in,” he says, “and the company doesn’t do it out of niceness. It’s the law. My grandfather helped make that happen.”
The James River wildlife for which Ancarrow predicted extinction has instead prospered. His beloved wildflowers, though, have taken a beating — primarily from collectors who strangely think they’re saving a plant by removing it.
Ralph White, [former] director of the James River Park System, inherited Ancarrow’s legacy. They met several times. “People said Newton Ancarrow was absurd, but he wasn’t,” says White. “He staunchly defended the river, and this city owes him a tremendous debt. He deserves to be memorialized.”
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