Marjorie Mayfield Jackson loved the Elizabeth River, which she could see from the back porch of her home near Norfolk, Va., so much that she gave up a successful career as a journalist in 1991 to save it. The river that runs south of the mouth of the wider James River through town was not swimmable, heavily polluted by creosote and chemicals left behind by the shipping industry that dominates the regional economy. Wildlife was scarce and the remaining aquatic life was beginning to develop cancerous lesions.
Mayfield Jackson took a part-time job as a waitress so she could work with a small team to begin the river restoration effort, which led to the creation of the Elizabeth River Project.
Over the course of the organization’s three-decade history, the river has become much healthier, and wildlife has returned, according to several people familiar with its work. They credit much of the project’s success to an approach to bringing together groups that are typically on opposing sides of legal disputes to collaboratively develop win-win solutions to improve the ecological and economic well-being of the river and the communities in its shores
“A long time ago I heard of a study that said that the only difference between a plan that is implemented and one that sits on the shelf is whether the planning team went to the kitchen table of anyone who could stand against it and listened,” says Mayfield Jackson. . “From this listening comes the powerful way forward.”
The relationships forged through reducing water pollution now allow the Elizabeth River Project to focus on another important challenge: climate change. This year, he completed work on the Ryan Resilience Lab, a building built to demonstrate the design of structures that are resilient to sea-level rise and can be relocated or deconstructed as needed as wetlands migrate toward the interior
Mayfield Jackson acknowledges that the decision to include a rolling conservation easement, the first in the country, was not an easy one. “What we’re doing is staying here to hold the riverbank as much as possible, with a plan to move out of the way when sea level rise reaches a point where the best that could be— here is a swamp.” she says
In the meantime, the project uses the building as a tool to educate not only the public, but also the design and construction community to create structures that are resilient to the impacts of climate change. “I think it’s safe to say that the Ryan Lab is the benchmark for resilient design in the region,” says lab director Luísa Black Ellis, a certified Chesapeake Bay landscape educator and professional.
With Mayfield Jackson announcing his retirement at the end of 2024, Lacy Shirey, former executive director of the Chesapeake Humane Society, will lead the Elizabeth River project starting in February.
David White, executive director of the Virginia Maritime Association, says Mayfield Jackson has left a lasting legacy. “The success of Marjorie’s philosophy and leadership cannot be disputed,” he notes. “While the port and maritime industry has continued to grow, it has also improved the health of the Elizabeth River and once again unimaginable environmental life and vitality has been restored.”
