Month: May 2008

Dozens of supporters and detractors of the $143 million plan to meet city and county water needs until 2055 came out to join the public record May 19. City Council billed the public hearing as the last chance to make a statement, and 34 people addressed the topic, including environmentalists, business interests, citizens worried about costs—and a former city mayor.

“In all of my years, I do not remember any controversy like this,” said Francis Fife, who was mayor 36 years ago. “I’m astounded that the Rivanna [Water and Sewer] Authority has not explored the dredging possibility, at least in any thoroughly professional way.”

“Dredging [the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir] need not interfere with accomplishing the approved water supply plan, and the water supply plan need not preclude dredging,” said Morgan Butler of the Southern Environmental Law Center, which re-affirmed its support of the water supply plan.

In fact, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) has had a professional engineering and consulting firm, Gannett Fleming, examine dredging, among a number of different options, as part of the 50-year water supply plan. But critics like Fife don’t trust Gannett Fleming’s conservative estimate that dredging, in order to maintain capacity of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir over 50 years, could cost between $199 million and $223 million. Those large numbers are based on significant expenses involved in disposing of the sediment dredged at the reservoir. Two weeks ago, a local consortium led by Dominion Development Resources announced that it had a disposal site—a rock quarry owned by Dr. Charles Hurt’s investment company—and could dredge approximately two-fifths of the volume referenced in the Gannett Fleming report for $24 million to $29 million.

“At this moment, no one can be sure of the real number,” said Fife. “However, there’s entirely too much evidence that the real number could be a fraction of [Gannett Fleming’s] amounts.” He asked that RWSA spend $275,000 to study dredging.

Fife and others in the recently formed group, Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan, have advanced the idea that dredging can be cheap enough to reduce the dam height at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir and would remove the need to build a pipeline between it and the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. Those are the basics of the current plan to which they are so staunchly opposed. But the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors re-endorsed that plan last week. The state Department of Environmental Quality has approved that plan, too. Indeed, even City Council approved the plan, albeit two years ago. The plan still needs approval from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, and, apparently now, the re-affirmation of City Council.

“Even a first grader could come up with the plan,” said Kathy Wesson. “This plan for the Ragged Mountain is so complete in its destruction of wildlife and trees that we should all be hanging our heads in shame.”

Plenty of people came out to support the plan. “I’m old enough to have, as a child, been on the site of the Sugar Hollow Dam in 1947 and being told by my family that it would take care of all our problems in perpetuity,” said Jim Cannon, an Albemarle resident. “I think there’s a message there for us. …To defer further simply adds to cost.”

In general, the public comment was relatively civil, and some speakers appreciated the nuances on both sides. Those for and against argued for the needs of both dredging and water conservation—they just disagreed whether it should be part of the water supply plan.

“I will have to admit, it was not my favorite plan to begin with,” said Bob Hodous, former chair of the city Republican Party, “but I am willing to accept what was done because I think it was a tremendous job…in bringing together different groups that had different opinions behind one plan, and I’m sorry to see that some of those groups are now fractioning, trying to stall this plan.”

Despite any fractioning, a lot of groups (perhaps strange bedfellows, in some cases) gave their endorsement to the plan: The League of Women Voters, the Rivanna Conservation Society, The Nature Conservancy, the Southern Environmental Law Center and the regional Chamber of Commerce. The groups opposed to the plan included the North Downtown Residents Association and the Ednam Forest neighborhood association. The Piedmont Group of the Sierra Club “neither opposed the plan nor endorsed an alternative,” in the words of the group’s conservation chair, Tom Olivier, but the group is calling for dredging to be looked at again as part of the water supply.

Kathy Wesson, a resident of Ednam Forest, a county neighborhood that borders the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, gave the most dramatic comment. “This problem, mark my words, is just the tip of the iceberg—more development, more people, more water needs,” Wesson said. Looking around the room with accusatory eyes, Wesson invoked the tragedy of the commons and prophesied a monumental slaughter of animals at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir. “We need to be asking why—all of us, all of us out here—need to be asking why, why we’re allowing so much growth to take place and who exactly is making money on this growth.”

In addition to former official Fife, former city councilor Kevin Lynch opposed the plan. Before the meeting, he passed out a six-page memo outlining alternative concepts, which Lynch estimates would cost between $81 million and $112 million, that involve dredging and not building the pipeline between Ragged Mountain Reservoir and the South Fork Reservoir. Later last week, Rich Collins and other members of the Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan traveled to Richmond to meet with officials from the Department of Environmental Quality to discuss whether alternatives could get permits. Collins invited members of City Council and the Board of Supervisors to attend.

Yet even with 34 speakers, basically split between plan supporters and detractors, City Councilor Holly Edwards noticed that not one African American spoke (or was even in the audience). “That concerns me,” said Edwards, who is black, “and I wonder if it’s because there’s a disparity in the way that information is provided or even that the location of the reservoirs and the trails are not in the African-American communities.”

City Council will vote June 2 on both how to move forward with the plan and the increases in city water rates. Mayor Dave Norris has said he sees three options: Move forward with the plan as is; move forward, but work together with the county and RWSA to put together a plan for maintenance dredging; or move forward with the replacement of the aging infrastructure and the dam, which the state says must be replaced by 2011, while studying dredging as part of the water supply plan.

“The only thing that I will say is that I want us to make a decision,” said Councilor Julian Taliaferro at the May 19 hearing. “This thing has gone on far too long.”

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Two years ago, Colin Steele and his wife thought they had conceived of the ideal product: ice cream made from all local products. Most important would be the use of milk straight from the cow. The business would be called A Perfect Flavor and would be customized ordering. That settled, Steele began to look into how to incorporate raw milk. And that’s when it got difficult.

“If I would have known how hard it was when I started, I don’t think I would have done it,” he says. In Virginia, selling raw milk is largely illegal, though that’s not the case in 28 states.

Adding to Steele’s difficulty is the scarcity of milk processing plants. Decades ago, small areas like Charlottesville and Waynesboro (where A Perfect Flavor is produced) had their own dairies. But as the industry has become more and more regulated, big companies have been able to buy smaller competition and stamp them out. Consolidation means that there are only six or seven milk processing plants in the entire state.

Because of regulatory hurdles and the complexities of the market, Colin Steele had a difficult time finding local milk for his ice cream business.

As a result, Steele decided he would process his own milk. That meant getting certified by the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS).

“To start like this with no knowledge of the business, they were taking a real chance,” says Carroll Jones, one of four inspectors Steele ultimately had to satisfy. “We met with them several times even before they found the building.”

According to Jones, once they found a site, they then had to go over the plans for the building with VDACS. For instance, the floor where the pasteurizing would take place had to be graded and its drains protected. Then Steele had to purchase a pasteurizer—which typically costs between $15,000 to $30,000—that alone must be inspected every three months to make sure it is up to snuff.

An additional challenge was finding a raw milk supplier. Most dairy farmers in the area must sell their milk through a co-op, which ships the milk to a processor. The process was hampered by the state of milk production in America. In the summertime, heat in Southern states severely cuts down on cow’s production of milk and has created a system where much of the milk produced in Virginia ends up in the Southeast. As a result, most of the milk bought in area stores comes from as far away as New England. Organic milk is even further removed.

After bugging the nearest co-op for six months, Steele says, they finally found a nearby dairy farmer named Dan Holsinger.

“He gets just a little dab,” says Holsinger of Steele. That dab is acquired when Steele visits Holsinger’s farm to get milk straight from the cow’s teat. That same day, it is taken back to A Perfect Flavor, where it is pasteurized and used in ice cream.

Finally, Steele and his wife were able to open this past February and have already had success with their high-end product. They were nominated for a breakthrough award from the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council and were recently added to Virginia’s Finest Directory, a listing of producers and processors located in the state who offer a vast array of products that are “the best of the best.”

VDACS’ Jones is still impressed A Perfect Flavor decided to process their own milk: “It was a big step to start a business like that.”

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A week after the county Board of Supervisors decided to consider changing the land use tax program, local farmers are still distraught. Since 1975, Albemarle has granted landowners a tax deferral for a minimum of five acres that meets prescribed standards of agricultural use. Basically, the land must be used for the sale of crops and/or livestock, or be in an approved soil conservation program.

For a small farmer like Kathryn Russell, it can make for a patchwork of tax statuses. Her Majesty Farms falls into various categories, with 19 of 21 acres falling under the deferral system. As part of the land use tax, she must pay full tax on her house and at least one surrounding acre. With the reduced rate, she paid $2,702 for the 21 acres. “I would have to pay twice that much if I didn’t have land use,” Russell says.

Small farmer Kathryn Russell says that the county should extend land use tax to smaller parcels. “You can do a whole lot on two acres,” she says.

Meanwhile, on an adjoining four acres on which she rotationally grazes sheep, she must pay full price, which came to $900 last year. Russell also has another five acres on which she built a house that she plans to sell. While she grazes cattle on much of that land, it is not put under land use because of the presence of the house, which makes for a tax bill of $3,100 a year.

One supervisor has proposed that farmers put their land in open space conservation easement, which bars the owner from ever building on the land, in order to qualify for the land use program. But because many farmers rent the land they farm, that measure would bring its own problems.

“If land use is changed, then they can’t afford to rent to me,” says Dan Holsinger, a dairy farmer in Augusta County, which has a land use tax system similar to Albemarle’s. Holsinger says he can’t afford to buy any more land at today’s prices, especially when he is barely scraping by. “Land use is the one thing that keeps me in business.”

Another reason given for scrapping the tax deferral is the fear that the exemption is being exploited by landowners looking for a tax break.

“Folks may not be following the letter of the law,” says county assessor Bruce Woodzell. He has eight assessors at his disposal, many of which spend a good deal of time out in the county assessing land, and as they do so, checking the land use. Woodzell estimates that assessors view every parcel in the county every 18 months. That will be changing as reports are now required on an annual basis, instead of biennially as they were before.

“They won’t be in the field as much as they used to be,” he says, estimating that it may take up to three years for a parcel to be inspected. Theoretically, that would increase the opportunity for abuse. Still, he cannot remember when was the last violation of land use.

As a result, farmers like Russell reject the suggestion that the land use tax system be changed. In fact, she thinks it should be broadened.

“If [supervisors] were really for small farms like they say they are,” Russell says, “they should extend land use to be helpful to those who work on small projects. You can do a whole lot on two acres.”

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