Set sprinklers to water the lawn or garden only - not the street or sidewalk.
Use the microwave to cook small meals. (It uses less power than an oven.)
Purchase "Green Power" for your home's electricity. (Contact your power supplier to see where and if it is available.)
Scrape, rather than rinse, dishes before loading into the dishwasher; wash only full loads.
Cut back on air conditioning and heating use if you can.
Turn off appliances and lights when you leave the room.
The Elizabeth River Project and its partners are working with the Environmental Protection Agency and the Virginia Institute of Marine Science to clean the river's bottom.
Over centuries, industry has taken its toll and left parts of the river in pretty bad shape.
A little fish is playing a big role in the river's future. Mummichog is an Indian term which means they go in great numbers. That's one reason it’s a great indicator species for contamination along the Elizabeth River.
"They are extremely abundant. We can set five or six minnow traps for half an hour and we can easily have a thousand fish," says Dr. Wolfgang Vogelbein with Virginia Institute of Marine Science.
Dr. Vogelbein tracks their health.
"You can bring it into the lab, you can experiment on it, you can manipulate it, and it's easy to work with," he adds.
Perhaps the most significant trait of the Mummichog in tracking contamination is that the fish spends its entire life in one small part of the river.
"It's essentially non-migratory. They don't move around alot. So what you have is in this river are little semi-isolated, sub-populations."
That helps pinpoint which areas need the most work.
At VIMS, Vogelbein and his associates look at the livers of mature Mummichog to study cancer and pre-cancerous growths. By charting the occurrence of cancer, they can follow the contamination levels.
The most recent data shows more cancer in fish taken from the southern and eastern branches of the Elizabeth. Cancer rates were very low in the Lafayette River and practically non-existent in the western branch.
In the coming years, scientists will use this research to see how the clean-up efforts are paying off.
It's the stated goal of the Elizabeth River Watershed Action plan to "Make the Mummichog well again by the year 2020."
