53 mgd


Tandem Friends School students test Rivanna River water with technical direction and apparatus provided by Rivanna Conservation Society executive director Robbi Savage.
The students canoed to Riverview Park from an undisclosed location on the north fork of the Rivanna.

April 6, 2011, the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors will hear from Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority executive director Tom Frederick about locating a new, fifty-three million gallon per day sewage pumping facility in this park.
If you are a county resident, please communicate with your supervisors about this bad idea. Riverview Park and Darden Towe Park are our community’s only gateways to the Rivanna River. Not good locations for sewage infrastructure.
To petition the Board of Supervisors on this issue click here.
Architect’s rendering of the proposal for the park.

quercus alba


Received a box of bare root oak trees middle of last week from Musser Forests. Traveled to Slabtown to plant. The threat above the ground is from deer, it’s hard to establish an oak forest where there hasn’t been one for 200 years. The threat below the ground is from voles. Saplings get up to 3 feet tall and fall over, all their roots chewed off.
I planted 22 trees, slow going on account of armoring them against critters. Mostly I planted white oaks. Hoping they get six feet above the ground before I get six feet under.
The Virginia Department of Forestry was out of white oak seedlings by the time I called.


Today wouldn’t be as good a day for planting, snowed in CHO

quercus macrocarpa

brick house

512 Rives ST
The house associated with the Rives Street store was torn down last week.

The third little pig met a man with a load of bricks, and said:
‘Please, man, give me those bricks to build a house with.’
So the man gave him the bricks, and he built his house with them. So the wolf came, as he did to the other little pigs, and said:
‘Little pig, little pig, let me come in.’
‘No, no, by the hair of my chiny chin chin.’
‘Then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in.’
Well, he huffed, and he puffed, and he huffed and he puffed, and he puffed and huffed; but he could not get the house down. When he found that he could not, with all his huffing and puffing, blow the house down, he said:
‘Little pig, I know where there is a nice field of turnips.’

fence


In the world of small town zoning there is the concept of the “buffer”. The buffer is akin to the roll of super absorbent paper towels produced on the home-front after an accident has occurred.
So, lets say the City planners locate Industrial zoning in a low income neighborhood next to houses. Such a fence can be required as a buffer.

Screen 3 (“S-3”).  The S-3 buffer/screen requires an opaque landscaping scheme, one that blocks views between two adjacent properties. This type of screening is for use between dissimilar land uses, where the maximum amount of visual shielding is desired. The plantings allowed by the S-3 designation consist of the following…
…With the approval of the director, an opaque wall or fence may be utilized for, or as part of, a required S-3 screen. Where allowed, such wall or fence (including any gate(s) forming a portion of such structure) shall be at least six (6) feet tall, or an alternate height deemed necessary by the director to protect required sight distances along a public right-of-way.–CHO Code 34-871

Does the fence stop the noise? Does it stop the smell? Does it block the view of the 85 foot tall manufacturing facility? No.
But it makes the planners feel they have done their job.

Asphalt

every fire chiefs' dream
How much asphalt is enough?

After graduating from college with a civil engineering degree, I found myself working in my home town for a local engineering firm doing mostly municipal engineering (roads, sewer pipe, water pipe, stormwater). A fair percentage of my time was spent convincing people that, when it came to their road, I knew more than they did.–Charles Marohn, “Confessions of a Recovering Engineer”, Strongtowns blog

This urban landscape would be a dream come true for any fire chief. Ample room for the trucks to cavort, lots of defensible space, gigantic turning radii accommodated. The ultimate product of a standards and design manual, a landscape where automobiles feel at home.