The collection covers Mr. McSweeney's involvement in water issues in the Richmond area from 1958-1987. There is only one item from 1958 and the bulk of the collection ranges from 1977 to 1985. The collection particularly covers his involvement with the R.R.P.D.C., which he joined in 1977. The R.R.P.D.C. water materials cover many topics. The bulk of it concerns the Richmond-Crater 208 program, which was a coalition of Richmond and Petersburg R.R.P.D.C. members as well as private citizens concerned with water problems in the metropolitan area. The 208 program concerns Sewage Treatment Plants (STP), James River Water Quality Management Plan, and James River Water Quality Monitoring Program (both abbreviated JRWQMP), Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO), and Non-Point Source (NPS) pollution. There are also a great deal of correspondence and reports concerning the National Pollution Discharge Elimination System (NPDES) Permit, a federal permit about which there is some controversy over Richmond's compliance. Materials in the collection include correspondence, notes, reports, agendas, minutes, some legal documents, publications and newspaper clippings. The newsclippings that could be identified by source, date and page and are held in the James Branch Cabell Library periodicals collection were discarded and are noted in the series listing. The correspondence is largely between Mr. McSweeney, the R.R.P.D.C. and the State Water Control Board (SWCB).

The collection contained audio cassettes of two meetings, one of the SWCB and the SWCB and the R.R.P.D.C. These have been transferred to M15, series 16, numbers 205 and 206. Also removed from the collection was a Style magazine, v. IV, # 21, May 1986. This can be found in the Department's collection of Style. The program "The James River as Commonwealth--A Public Symposium" can be found in the Department's University Publications file under Environmental Studies.

Of some interest are letters to and from Senator John Warner, Senator Harry F. Bryd, Jr., Rep. Dan Daniel, Rep. Robert W. Daniel, Jr., Rep. J. Kenneth Robinson, and Rep. Thomas J. Bliley.

The materials in this collection cover on-going projects and additional material will be added in the future. Until then, the newspaper is a good source of information pertinent to the collection.