Here we are with another barge wreck/ spill on the James. This time it was carrying 1 million gallons of hot liquid petrolium asphalt. Last time it was fuel oil. This time they SAY only 9000 gallons leaked out into the river before they contained it. Like that is OK. Who is training these guys to drive barges? I really dont think they recognize or even care about the environmental impact of their careless driving on our fishing. Any one of those barges has the potential to cause a fish kill and set our fishery back 30 yrs. It could be devastating. I have personally witnessed a tug lose control of its barge and it slammed ashore near Osborne. Not too much damage unless you just happened to be anchored and fishing there, then it would be a different story. Just seems to me like the controls are not there. I dont want to lose the catfishery that has taken 30 yrs to develop these giant fish.
Bill

Looks like now it may be as much as 63,000 gallons spilled. They dont really know. Let me clarify my position here. I certainly understand that commerce has to travel and the river is a highway, like it or not, its been that way for hundreds of years. I know that fuel and products need to be moved as cost effectively as possible. I sure dont want to have to pay any more for gas than any one of us has to.
Im just saying that both of the latest reported wrecks, and the one I witnessed, that they recovered,without reporting, were all in the same stretch of the river. Right about at Osborne landing.
There was an article in todays paper saying that spills arent the danger to our river, its the pollutants and industrial discharges that we dont see
that choke the river and do the damage. All I know for sure is that in the 1970's they put blue catfish in the James. Right now those fish are pretty dang big cause they live for decades. I would like to think a 100lb'er could come out of there. I would just like to keep it that way, thats all.

I was out on the river today and went by the wrecked barge to check it out. Thats a BIG barge. It was run agound hard and the bow is sunk just up river of Osborne. Two HazMat companies out of NJ and NY had several boats in the water tending to it. They were not the friendliest of folk, although they did say that they recovered 750,000 gallons of the stuff today. The river was a mess today with the flooding. I think we were the only boat fishing.

I was out on Friday afternoon for a few minutes. I trailered my boat up to Gloucester to run the river that my parents just bought a house on (salt water), so on the way home we dropped in at Osbourne to rinse the trailer, brakes, etc with fresh water. Not a soul to be found anywhere. There was one trailer in the parking lot when we put in, and we passed a black Bass Cat heading up river towards Osbourne, but that was it. No other boats to be seen. We were going to run up river and check out the barge, but was too cold and windy, especially after battling the York river in the morning.

Lots and lots of debris in the James right now, and the water was waayy up. Be careful running for the next week or so until it clears.

I was sad to hear about this. I would like to have put my boat in to ride up there and take a look but just haven't had time.

Hopefully this won't affect the fisheries too much.

I was curious as to how exactly the barge could have a hole torn in it's hull.....the river bottom isn't exactly full of boulders or anything there, it's mostly muddy/sandy bottoms...I figured if anything ever got out of the channel it would just get stuck in the mud.