VIRGINIA'S HAZEL RIVER

Sally Mello leads the Hazel River effort

	Sally Mello on the Hazel River. Photo courtesy Pam Owen.

Sally Mello has long been interested in water quality. She grew up in the Connecticut River valley and spent many happy hours on the water there. She studied art at Brown University and there met her husband, Jim.

When Jim was hired by the Smithsonian in 1962, they moved to Fairfax City, Virginia. Sally, Jim, and their four children took every opportunity to escape the congestion of suburban life and traveled west into the then-uncluttered Virginia countryside. The beautiful scenery, fresh air, and clean waters refreshed the entire family. Having seen close up the degradation suffered by the Potomac River and tributary streams, Sally hoped that the beautiful waters of rural Virginia would be spared.

The Mellos bought a small piece of land in Culpeper County in 1977, and have developed it into an organic vegetable and choose-and-cut Christmas tree farm. Waterford Run, which flows through the farm, empties into the Hazel a short distance away. Sally became interested in Virginia's program to identify its best waters when Jean Gregory of the Virginia DEQ came to Culpeper in the spring of 1993 to tell people about the new Exceptional Waters Program. A provision of this program allows citizens to nominate exceptional waters for study. Sally, along with Joyce and Richard Abel of Rappahannock County, nominated the Hazel for such study in 1993.

This nomination was not acted on during the 1990s, owing to questions about the program's governance, but Sally maintained her focus on the Hazel throughout, and nominated it again in 2005. She has learned a lot as she worked on this nomination over the last 11 years, with lists of criteria to review, nature experts to contact, and much history and planning material to digest.

In contacting many landowners and other interested parties along the Hazel, Sally has found that there is a strong desire to preserve the quality of the river. She feels the grassroots support for the Hazel has brought it a long way toward being designated a heritage natural resource for Culpeper and Rappahannock Counties and for the Commonwealth of Virginia, and thinks the growing support for its Tier III designation will bring it the rest of the way.

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