Daily Press - By Mark Di Vincenzo

  KING WILLIAM - In the 1950s, when Carl Custalow was a boy, his father would sometimes knock on the schoolroom door, stick his head inside and point to Carl.
  Webster Custalow would tell the teacher, "I need him," and Carl would get up, walk home and untangle his father's cotton fishing nets.
  Back then, nearly everyone on the Mattaponi Indian Reservation agreed that going to school was important, but fishing was more important. Especially in the spring, when the shad rushed into the Mattaponi River to spawn.
  The Custalows and the other families who made up the Mattaponi tribe depended on shad and other fish as a source of food. Those who fished shared with those who didn't. They never knew when the lean years would come, so they salted it and smoked it so it would last for as many as three years after it was caught.
  Today, Webster, an 86-year-old widower, is still the Mattaponi's chief, but he no longer fishes. About two dozen of the 62 indian who live on the 150-acre reservation fish. They say the river, which flows past their houses, is no less important to them now than it was in the 1950s. It not only provides them with a reliable source of food, but it also connects them to their past.

  That's why they're so worried about what might happen to the Mattaponi River.
Newport News Waterworks, which sells water to homeowners and businesses throughout the Peninsula, wants to pump water from the Mattaponi into a wooded valley in King William County to create a 12.1 billion-gallon reservoir. Waterworks officials say the reservoir would ensure the water needs of the Peninsula well into the 21st century.
  The Mattaponi say the project would ruin the river. They say when the waterworks pumps water out of the Mattaponi, salty water from the York River would move into the Mattaponi, forever changing its ecology. The plants, fish, turtles, muskrats and waterfowl in the Mattaponi will die or leave the Mattaponi if its waters get salty, the Indians say.
  Of the creatures that use the river, shad has received the most attention. Shad, a bony fish, lives in salty ocean waters, but when it spawns, it seeks freshwater rivers, such as the Mattaponi. Shad won't use the river to spawn, the Indians say, if the saltier water from the York mixes with the Mattaponi's fresh water.

  Waterworks officials say their studies show that won't happen.
"We come from two different cultures," said Dave Morris, the waterworks' project manager. He has taken college courses on Indians to try to understand them better. "We are comfortable with our science and engineering, and they are comfortable with the knowledge from their past experiences."

  It's true the Mattaponi don't trust studies that try to predict how Mother Nature will act and react. Look how man messed up the Florida Everglades, they say.
  The Mattaponi also point to a peace treaty signed in 1677 by King Charles II and 12 Virginia Indian chiefs. To keep Indians and Englishmen from killing each other, the treaty established a three-mile buffer between "any Indian Towne" and any English enterprise. That includes reservoirs, the Mattaponi say.

  But the treaty is a side issue -- at best. The federal government had nothing to do with it, so it is not formally recognized by Col. Alan Carroll, district engineer of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers in Norfolk -- and the man who will decide whether the reservoir can be built.
  The project won't happen unless Carroll grants a permit to Newport News Waterworks. He has not said whether he thinks the project will harm the river or cause too many ecologically valuable wetland plants to be destroyed, a concern shared by environmentalists who oppose the project.
  Carroll's goal is to make a decision in June, "and he hasn't changed that goal," said Pam Painter, the corps' project manager since 1990.
Morris, who insists he has no inside information, said he is hopeful.
  "The corps grants permits," he said. "That's what they do."

If Carroll grants the permit, the Mattaponi say, they will appeal it in the courts.

  "This is our river," said Todd "Big Eagle" Custalow, Carl's son, "and we're gonna fight as hard as we can to keep it."
  Custalow, a strapping 30-year-old who works as the tribe's director of economic development, has rounded up lots of help to fight the fight. He has found hydrologists, geologists, lawyers and historians who are working for free for the tribe, as well as indian from Virginia and beyond who are giving money.

One look at the reservation, and it becomes clear why they would need help.

  The vast majority of the 62 indian on the reservation live in beat-up trailers or weathered single-story wooden houses with worn roofs. The only tepees are in front of the Mattaponi Indian Museum. Broken-down cars are not hard to find on the reservation, and most of the ones that work are several years old.
  Todd Custalow -- who lives in Bon Air, west of Richmond -- guesses that most of those who live on the reservation are at least 50 years old. They attended school on the reservation in a tiny schoolhouse where one teacher divided her time among children of all ages, making it difficult to get a good education. College was out of the question, and few of them landed high-paying jobs. Many work in factories or do manual work for the Virginia Department of Transportation.
  Carl Custalow, a 55-year-old manager for State Farm Insurance, lives in a 9-year-old brick rancher he built with some help from his family and friends. Custalow, whose Indian name is Lone Eagle, is the Mattaponi's assistant chief, and its unofficial chief spokesman.

  Before the sun rose on the first day of May, he left his house and drove to the boat ramp, where he met up with his brother, Leon, his long-time fishing companion. They put the boat in the Mattaponi, where Carl slowly lowered one nylon fishing net into the water and then another. The Custalows have used the first net since the 1960s, and about 15 years ago, Webster caught a 71-pound striped bass in it.
  On this cold and windy morning, Carl and Leon, wearing baseball caps and winter coats, didn't have much luck. They caught a catfish and a dozen mud shad -- undesirable cousins of the shad -- but no shad. They think that when it's windy, shad swim along the river bottom -- under the nets. It has been windy since late April.
  Carl and Leon returned to the shore. Leon drove home, and Carl and Todd stopped in the Mattaponi's 12-year-old hatchery, which is about the size of a master bedroom. The Mattaponi have had a shad hatchery since 1917. They say they want to do their part to help the shad return to spawn in the Mattaponi and in other freshwater rivers. Last year, the hatchery produced more than 8 million fish.

  Of the two dozen Mattaponi who still fish, half fish for the hatchery. That means they take the eggs and sperm from the shad they catch to the hatchery to try to fertilize them.
  If they catch female shad, they squeeze the eggs from their bellies and put them in a white pail. Then they put a drop or two of shad sperm in the pail and stir it with a turkey feather. After the sperm fertilizes the eggs, they are placed in a clear cylinder -- like a giant test tube -- that has river water running through it to try to simulate the movement of water in the river. About a week later, the fish hatch, and they swim down a drain and through a pipe back into the river. One in 400 will survive. The others aren't strong enough or are eaten by other fish.

  Next spring, the Mattaponi plan to begin operating a recently built fishery that is three times larger than the one they use now. They will keep the fish longer and inject a dye in their ears so they can be tracked to see if they return to the Mattaponi to spawn.
  Carl and Todd Custalow walked into the new hatchery and talked about the reservoir and Newport News Waterworks and God.

  "God made and designed the Earth," Carl Custalow said, "and He heals it as long as it's a change He made. When man comes in and messes it up, he's messing with the natural environment. The Bible says man will destroy himself. He will use up the natural resources. Man is using it, abusing it and capitalizing on it."

  The Custalows worry that development and all of the problems that accompany it -- crime, pollution and traffic -- will come if the reservoir is built.
  "When crime comes to a neighborhood, indian can move, but we can't," Carl Custalow said. "We can't pick up a reservation and move it."

  Despite this gloom-and-doom talk, he said he is optimistic about the future. He said he thinks Col. Carroll of the Army Corps of Engineers will side with the Mattaponi.

"In my heart," Custalow said, "I feel like the corps is going to deny this permit."

  Morris said he hasn't allowed himself to think what the waterworks will do if the permit is not granted.
  "We've put a lot of good work into this," he said. "We've got to be patient and wait."