Category: environment

utility scale solar factories

LanCoVa Courthouse

I attended a Lancaster County Planning Commission meeting September 16. One of the items of business was edits to the draft Chapter 6 of the LanCoVa Comprehensive Plan.

The Commissioners voted to strike what I considered to be good and necessary language from their Comp Plan.

Why did I consider the language important? Take the time to watch this video from WTVR.

Comprehensive plans should support the residents and the environment of an area, not the rich and powerful.

quercus macrocarpa

new leaves in April
Bur oaks primarily grow in a temperate climate on the western oak–hickory forested regions in the United States and into Canada. It commonly grows in the open, away from dense forest canopy. For this reason, it is an important tree on the eastern prairies, often found near waterways in otherwise more forested areas, where there is a break in the canopy. It is drought resistant, possibly because of its long taproot. At the end of the growing season, a one-year sapling may have a taproot 1.37 m (4 ft 6 in) deep and a lateral root spread of 76 cm (2 ft 6 in). The West Virginia state champion bur oak has a trunk diameter of almost 3 m–Wikipedia (10 ft).

If you are only going to plant one tree in this life, make it a quercus macrocarpa.

there goes the neighborhood

LHS Red Devil cafeteria
slide presenting a fraction of the 1000’s of acres of habitat to be destroyed for solar “farms” on the Northern Neck of Virginia.

“We must recognize the serious nature of the industrial solar farm threat and strongly urge that our local planning commissions and boards of supervisors reject proposals for solar farms in zoning districts that are intended to preserve farmland and forestland​.” Essex County Conservation Alliance

fish hawk

eye on the threat
Worldwide!
Taxonomy and systematics
The osprey was one of the many species described by Carl Linnaeus in his 18th-century work, Systema Naturae, and named as Falco haliaeetus.[2] The genus, Pandion, is the sole member of the family Pandionidae, and used to contain only one species, the osprey (P. haliaetus). The genus Pandion was described by the French zoologist Marie Jules César Savigny in 1809.[3][4]
Most taxonomic authorities consider the species cosmopolitan and conspecific. A few authorities split the osprey into two species, the western osprey and the eastern osprey.
The osprey differs in several respects from other diurnal birds of prey. Its toes are of equal length, its tarsi are reticulate, and its talons are rounded, rather than grooved. The osprey and owls are the only raptors whose outer toe is reversible, allowing them to grasp their prey with two toes in front and two behind. This is particularly helpful when they grab slippery fish.[5] It has always presented something of a riddle to taxonomists, but here it is treated as the sole living member of the family Pandionidae, and the family listed in its traditional place as part of the order Falconiformes.–Wikipedia

uneasy marriage

CA stack CO tracks
It struck me this morning that the park I walk through owes much of its existence to successive technologies. The streetcar technology (smokestack above) has been abandoned. The other technologies that undergird this public space are sewage collection and high voltage electrical transmission.
dog running in snow woods
Rivanna trail, winter weather.
Geology and topography have graced the park with a river. So far, in our political wisdom, we have discouraged building in the river’s channel.
The industrial and the natural features maintain an uneasy balance, remarkably it feels like a park.

Rappahannock Wharf

east high oblique view
8. RAPPAHANNOCK WHARF, LLC, #20-0920 Requests authorization to re-develop a deteriorated commercial wharf to include removal of a failed timber bulkhead and concrete slab, installation of a 70-foot long quarry stone and rubble breakwater with associated clean sand fill and wetland plants to create a living shoreline…
452 linear feet of timber replacement bulkhead, a 16-foot wide gravel boat ramp with flanking timber jetties, a 32-foot long timber wave screen, repair of one 12-foot wide pier, replacement of two (2) other piers at 8-feet wide…
herons's favorite shore
and installation of 205 linear feet of quarry stone riprap revetment to create a commercial marine construction facility base of operation on Town Creek at the end of Callis Road in Lancaster County. The project is protested by an adjoining property owner and another individual in the area.