Posted on July 23, 2025
Past dredging plans were halted by high costs and the discovery of contaminants.
The City of Petersburg faced flooding amid heavy rains last week, an all-too-familiar sight for residents. Homes were damaged, people were displaced and streets were flooded.
City officials say decades of silt buildup in the Appomattox River are partially responsible — slowing flows enough that when it pours, the water has nowhere to go but up. The last full dredge to remove silt and other debris occurred in 1949.
“When we see the water ponding there, down River Street, Bollingbrook Street, Bank Street, it’s a direct result of that water not being able to be moved out of the city through the Appomattox,” said Mayor Samuel Parham at a press conference last Thursday.
Sedimentation in the Appomattox has long been an issue. The Norfolk District of the US Army Corps of Engineers sought to address it as far back as the 1870s, when the river was used as a major shipping passage.
A second channel was built in the early 1920s to reduce sediment flows, but the issue persisted and the river required dredging to stay navigable. The construction of Interstate 95 in Petersburg has only contributed to the problem by further slowing the river’s flow.
“When you hit the [I-95] bridge, all the trees that you see around you, they were not there,” said Petersburg City Manager John Altman. “That was [an] open channel of water. Those trees have grown up where the river used to be, and without that opening up, there’s going to be nowhere for the water to go.”
Petersburg City Manager John “March” Altman, left, gives remarks joined by Mayor Samuel Parham, center, and Vice Mayor Darrin Hill following recent floods on Thursday, July 17, 2025 at the Petersburg Transportation Center.
And dredging has long since stopped.
Today, the sediment blocks four sewer outfalls that could otherwise provide drainage in the city’s downtown. Petersburg received a $2 million state grant this year to go towards removal and disposal of the material, part of $7 million total received by the city from the Community Flood Preparedness Fund — previously funded by the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative — for various flood mitigation projects.
The Corps started such a project in 1991 — but it was quickly abandoned when heavy contamination with petroleum hydrocarbons was discovered.
These cancer-causing chemicals, if disturbed from their rest beneath the silt, pose downstream environmental concerns — and a major disposal challenge when removed from the river.
Though it has been more than three decades since the contaminants were discovered, it’s unlikely they have degraded much in that time — and studies in the 2000s found it would be difficult to remediate the silt to a point that it could be used in agricultural or residential settings.
Parham said dredging techniques have become less disruptive in the past 30 years — but funding remains the key issue, despite the state cash Petersburg has received. It’s going to be expensive. A 2014 estimate for the work came out to $15 million.
Petersburg City Manager John “March” Altman, left, gives remarks joined by Mayor Samuel Parham, center, and Vice Mayor Darrin Hill following recent floods on Thursday, July 17, 2025 at the Petersburg Transportation Center.
“Hopefully we can make it a priority through the Corps of Engineers. We will continue to ask our state and federal partners every year to set aside funds for this to be completed,” Parham said.
The Corps’ Norfolk District said it hasn’t been contacted by Petersburg about the recent flooding, and noted that it is the city’s responsibility to provide land, easements and rights of way for disposal of the contaminated sediment.
A city spokesperson said officials are working with Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office to coordinate a call between the city and the Corps.
