Category: neighborhood

Mr. Jefferson’s River

Rivanna River
In 2005 the RWSA “discovered” that in wet weather events leaky pipes and insufficient “transmission capacity” meant that they were losing around 20-25 million gallons of sewage. Where was this liquor going? Into Mr. Jefferson’s river.
Some leaky pipe fixing was begun, 25% of the leaks are slated to be fixed by 2020.
But, that leaves a whole lot of mixed liquids and suspended solids (yeck) burping into the waters of the State of Virginia.

Tonight, Charlottesville City Council holds a public hearing on the subject of how best to deal with this environmental catastrophe.
From the beginning, RWSA has solicited input from the public, “give us your ideas. Think outside the box”. The public has responded with some good ideas which are generally dismissed.
For instance, the Public said “fix the leaky pipes”. Nope, too expensive, no one in the sewage industry tries to fix all the leaky pipes.

One of the RWSA fix options (they call them concepts) was dismissed by City Council, that concept was to locate a massive sewage pumping plant (53mgd capacity) in Riverview Park, the Community’s primary gateway to the river.
Now RWSA is advocating locating the pumping plant at the foot of Monticello Mountain, 6/10ths of a mile from Mr. Jefferson’s crib, this plan is known as option D.

Locating the pumping plant on the northwest face of Monticello Mountain would require the destruction of the riverine environment visible on the left side of the river above. All those trees have to go.

The public has suggested option E. which avoids destroying environmental resources and threatening the architectural resources of the Woolen Mills Village National Historic District. Option E doesn’t threaten anyone or anything. Option E is a bored pathway, in existing easements, to the Moore’s Creek Wastewater Treatment Plant.
Option E will be expensive. It is cheaper to leave the burden of transmitting the sewage from 43 square miles of County, City and University land squarely on the shoulders of property owners and residents in the Woolen Mills.

What will City Council recommend? What will the RWSA Board vote for?

We long for the day when fact based decision making trumps politics and when our community is reconnected with its River. Voting for option E would bring that day closer.

What is the city but the people?–Shakespeare

ouch, road-kill

I walk a lot, When home I walk this section of road everyday. My neighbor Roy (pictured here)
recalls driving his aunt Emma Amiss‘ dairy cow from her house on Woolen Mills Road
to the pasture on the south side of the railroad tracks via this lane.
Nowadays, this isn’t an easy or safe path because of traffic short-cutting
through the neighborhood. Back then, Roy remembers the cow herding as challenging,
this was a dog-trot, a rustic footpath with stones in the way.

Tonight, the Charlottesville Planning Commission and City Council have a scheduled
joint public hearing on how to prioritize pedestrian facilities.
From an urban planning perspective there have long been guidelines to direct these City improvements, there are over fifty mentions of sidewalks in
Charlottesville’s Comprehensive Plan (a few are listed here).

So which pedestrians are blessed? We like pedestrians, but some more than others.
And when it’s a question of cars versus pedestrians, for whom do we provide?

The street above, Franklin, is a neighborhood street, carrying around 1600 vehicles per day.
Of those vehicles, 74% are not local traffic, traffic arising from the neighborhoods on
either side of the railroad tracks, they are from elsewhere.
They are piloted by Outlanders cutting through, using neighborhood streets to
avoid the pesky street lights on the arterial streets and collector roads.

If Franklin passed through nice neighborhoods it is likely that these issues
(pedestrian safety and cut-through) would have been addressed long ago.
What do I mean by nice neighborhoods? Neighborhoods with some money.
Glance at the street in the photo below, it is in the tourist section of town,
not a CDBG neighborhood, lawyers carry briefcases instead of kids toting fishing poles.
The street below was made one way. It has pedestrian provisions on both sides of the street.
No danger of being run over by a potato-chip or a shit-hauling truck on that street.

7th Street
When cities address capital improvement investment, where does the money go?
There is an amazing map technology, GIS, that some localities employ.
With the input of data, one could see the geographical correlation between say,
the dollars spent on capital improvement in a region of the city and the financial
clout of residents in that part of the city.
Are our parks, pedestrian facilities and municipal improvements as accessible
to the poor as to the rich?

find the pedestrian
The process proposed for discussion tonight before our planning commissioners
and elected officials suggests creating a sidewalk list every five years.
Rather than keeping a permanent list, in the sunlight of the Internet,
a permanent list that records when projects were logged on and completed,
a transitory list is proposed.
Thankfully, there was deep thinking on the priorities for the first iteration of this process,
whose needs are to be addressed, poor folks might git somewhere to walk.

What I don’t like is the ephemeral nature of a five year list:

Is there any way to remedy how to include additional citizen requests in a
systematic way? One purpose in creating a new list is to limit it to the amount
that can be built within a 5 year period (in lieu of the 1997 list of 99 projects) so
that citizens can reasonably expect their next opportunity for adding new
projects. Interested persons could submit a request at any time during the 5-year
time frame, the submittal to be kept in a file, and all then evaluated once the next
review cycle approaches.–staff memo

Suppose the Franklin Street Walkers are amongst the chosen, and the sidewalk in their
neighborhoods is slated for construction in the next five years. Oops! but the
sidewalk doesn’t get built. What then? It will be reevaluated, possibly with new criteria,
when the next review cycle comes along? The scheduled project will be unscheduled
and possibly blessed once more?

It’s a smart process, akin to a filing cabinet that every five years
transmogrifies into an incinerator.

Kicking the can down the road. We know how this game gets played. We beg, we plead, we excoriate. And sometimes, change happens.

Rivanna Pumping Station

At their January 25, 2011 board meeting, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority heard from four members of the public regarding proposed improvements to the Rivanna sewage pump station. RWSA's Tom Frederick provides an introduction to the comments.

Frederick Intro
Ewing comment
Hayes comment
Chester comment
Emory comment
Frederick summary

Photo above illustrates the proximity of the pumping station to residences.

Audio clips above pulled from the complete podcast of this board meeting available at Charlottesville Tomorrow
Map

Information from RWSA regarding pumping station project

Platanus occidentalis


In tree care, there is the notion of the unhealthy unstable tree. Such trees are slated for removal.
This tree was such a tree. It had the anthracnose fungus, so some of its leaves would fall off early. Additionally, it had some dead branches in its crown.
The solution? Take it down.
I know a lot of people that have a bit of dead wood in their crown, androgenic alopecia, dental caries, neuropathy, gray hair, short-term memory loss… This is something we humans call “aging”.
In humans, this process is allowed to go on until something called “death” occurs, usually about half of a lifetime after the onset of the unattractive aging symptoms.
We hold trees to a different standard.