Month: June 2008

Despite going through what some might consider an offseason by UVA’s standards, baseball Head Coach Brian O’Connor and his team fought inexperience to make it to the ACC tournament finals and to the NCAA regional tournament. Overall, O’Connor was happy with his team’s play.

“I thought it was a good season,” says O’Connor. “There were some tough times throughout the year, but I was really proud of our players and how we played at the end of the year.”

The regular season was less than kind to the Wahoo squad. The team took fifth place in the conference while posting a 15-15 record in the ACC. Virginia was 19-9 the year before.

“The ACC is considered the No. 1 baseball conference in the country,” O’Connor says. “To be No. 5 in this league is quite an accomplishment. This year, we were playing four true freshmen every day and some days five.” However, as the team’s young players improved, so did the team’s prospects.

Baseball Head Coach Brian O’Connor had to help his team overcome inexperience this season.

Going against long odds at the ACC tournament, the team was able to defeat No. 3 seed North Carolina and No. 2 seed Florida State. The 8-7 victory over UNC was especially memorable, as the win came in 11 innings, following late runs from both teams at the end of the game.

“I thought it was our best win of the year,” says O’Connor. “How we won the game was impressive.” The two wins clinched a spot in the finals, where they fell to No. 1 seed Miami 8-4.

The team’s impressive ACC tournament run earned the team a bid in the NCAA regional tournament. The regional took the team to California, a place no Virginia baseball team had played before. Despite beating Rider, losses to Cal State Fullerton and UCLA sent the Cavs packing. The team’s regional exit was the fifth in five straight NCAA tourney appearances.

O’Connor was discontented by the team’s inability to advance past regional play. “There isn’t some magic formula for advancing past the regionals, it’s just continuing to recruit good players and playing good baseball,” says O’Connor.

Last week, the Major League Baseball draft took a toll on the team’s starting lineup. Second baseman David Adams and starting pitcher Jacob Thompson, both juniors, were drafted in the first five rounds and are expected to sign professional contracts with the New York Yankees and the Atlanta Braves, respectively. Shortstop Greg Miclat was also taken in the first day of the draft, though he may weigh his options before signing with the Baltimore Orioles. Three other Cavaliers were picked in the second day of the draft.

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Giselle Childs

Age: 21

Year: Rising senior

Major: French and foreign affairs

Hometown: Great Falls, Virginia

What’s in your backpack? The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon, notepad, mints, Trident gum, lots of chapstick, plastic knife, Purell, Sex and the City movie stub, Band-aids, camera, sunglasses case, headband, iTouch, headphones, Blackberry, green tea.

When county Supervisor Sally Thomas met with dredging consultants Gahagan & Bryant Associates last month about the possibilities of dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, they said the first question to answer was, Why are you dredging?

“That’s a very obvious sort of thing, and yet it was also kind of eye-opening,” says Thomas. “Ever since then, I’ve been using it as a mantra. We’ve got to know why we’re dredging before we go into this dredging business.”

The South Fork Rivanna Reservoir is losing about 1 percent of its capacity per year because of siltation.

Now that City Council has reaffirmed its support of the 50-year water supply plan, which involves involving a bigger dam at the Ragged Mountain Reservoir and a new pipeline from the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, local officials face a decision about maintenance dredging the South Fork Reservoir. Because of its large, 259-acre watershed, that reservoir has been silting in rapidly since it was created in 1966, at a rate of approximately 1 percent per year. It has never been dredged.

Dredging means sucking out that silt, but the process is complicated because there has to be a site to dewater and store the sediment, which could be resold depending on its contents and the market for fill material. Those uncertainties have complicated cost estimates. Possible reasons for dredging include expanding its capacity for potable water storage; clearing out lanes for rowing and other recreational activities like fishing; and preventing potentially smelly wetlands from building up and decreasing property values for those who live around the reservoir.

As part of its resolution reaffirming the water supply plan last week, City Council included a call for the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) to “undertake a study of the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir and the viability and merits of maintenance dredging, siltation prevention and any other appropriate initiatives” that would improve the reservoir, and asked that the county do the same. At the supervisors’ June 4 meeting, the Board kicked around the idea of adopting the same resolution about dredging passed by City Council, and will likely approve similar language at its June 11 meeting.

Mike Gaffney, chairman of the RWSA board, says that the organization’s No. 1 goal is to provide water and wastewater services to the city and county. “This is a little bit outside of that goal, but our two customers and their customers pay for everything we do,” says Gaffney. “So if they asked us to do [dredging studies], we’d certainly want to do that. We truly are committed to the long-term viability of South Fork Rivanna Reservoir and certainly maintenance dredging should be a part of that.” He says that RWSA will need direction from the county, but that the topic will likely be discussed at the Board’s June 23 meeting.

To answer the “why” question, Thomas envisions a meeting of major stakeholders—South Fork residents, RWSA, the county Parks & Rec Department, rowing clubs, the Ivy Creek Natural Area, and other city and county officials. “I’m not in favor of a great, long, dragged-out taskforce,” Thomas says, “but I tend to think in terms of a visioning session or two in which we all lay it on the table why we want dredging.”

Ken Boyd, chairman of the Board of Supervisors, plans to meet with city Mayor Dave Norris to figure out how to move forward. Norris wants RWSA to go ahead with a sediment study of the South Fork, which would cost at least $100,000, as soon as possible. He believes that conversations about why we should dredge happen concurrently rather than holding up the study.

Norris also thinks that dredging could make for a lower dam at Ragged Mountain. “If in that [dredging] process, we’re going to free up, even inadvertently, some water supply, then I think we have an opportunity there to save some money on the height of the dam and save some trees and acreage [at Ragged Mountain].”

But Tom Frederick, RWSA’s executive director, says that the final decision of the dam’s height needs to be made in the coming months. Consulting firm Gannett Fleming is in the midst of designing the base of the new dam, but “there will come a point in the coming months where we have to complete the design and put the project out to bids,” says Frederick. “What is the height we’re actually going to build? At this point, we haven’t been given any direction other than to build it to the full height.”

“I’m not in favor of a great, long, dragged-out taskforce,” says Supervisor Sally Thomas, “but I tend to think in terms of a visioning session or two in which we all lay it on the table why we want dredging.”

One big question looming on the horizon is who pays for dredging. RWSA is funded by ratepayers—water users in the city and county—and it makes sense for them to foot the bill if it’s only a question of providing adequate water supply. But if key drivers to dredge include recreation or county property values, then part of the bill could go to area taxpayers.

“I’m not sure that the bill for maintenance dredging should be paid through the water rates,” Gaffney says. “I think that may need to be paid through something else. But again, that’s part of the discussion that we need to have.”

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As growth extends throughout the city and county, the roads around and through Charlottesville have become ever more crowded. To alleviate some of the congestion, area officials have moved forward with two controversial projects, the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP) and Eastern Connector. Both would pass through a city park—McIntire and Pen parks, respectively.

City Council held a June 4 work session on the intersection for the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP). After failing to approve the roundabout design ratified by the Interchange steering committee, Council chose a smaller diamond intersection and directed the engineering team to refine that option. The work session came two days after a 3-2 Council vote to grant an easement for city-owned land in the county for parkway construction. Almost five acres will be permanently used for the road, while another 3.7 acres will be temporarily held during the project’s construction.

A steering committee has picked an alignment through Pen Park for the proposed four-lane Eastern Connector.

The narrow vote has led Stratton Salidis, longstanding opponent of the Parkway, to question its validity under the state constitution. He believes that the vote required a “supermajority,” three-fourths of Council, for approval.

In 2004, the state attorney general ruled that a “supermajority” was not necessary to put a nine-acre stretch of McIntire Park in temporary easement. The most recent vote, however, concerned a permanent easement and involves a different parcel, so the requirement of a higher consensus could apply.

Meanwhile, the Eastern Connector Steering Committee recently decided to move forward with a plan for a four-lane connection between Rio Road and Route 20, but over the objections of Committee member and former city councilor Kevin Lynch.

“I don’t want to see four lanes used as a reason to not build the Eastern Connector,” he says. From his vantage, the decision ignores a political reality that will mean the road’s defeat. Instead, Lynch has proposed a two-lane alternative that would still cut through Pen Park but along an access road that already exists.

Various residents of the area, most notably Sarah Hendley, have already mounted opposition to the connector because it goes through Pen Park. Lynch believes that the access road route would minimize the impact.

“It’s the least bad alternative,” he says. “That’s what we’re down to.” The city and county will not be presented with the steering committee’s recommendations until this fall at the earliest.

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Diane Behrens

Worked for the county for: 33 years

Resides in: Greene County

Job title: Executive director of support Services for Albemarle County Public Schools. Oversees building services, which includes maintenance and upkeep of building and planning for redistricting and new additions and buildings. Also oversees child nutrition programs, school athletic directors and school nurses.

Best of times: Seeing a project come to completion. “For instance, when we have a brand new building or a new addition that’s finished, and you see people excited to be in that building. Cale Elementary is an example. Last August, we opened a new addition to Cale and students were excited to be in their new classrooms.”

Worst of times: Making safety decisions —such as whether to close schools for inclement weather. “You always wonder whether or not you’ve made the right decision.”

Strangest moment on the job: “I guess when you think you know all the answers, some new question pops up, and you think ‘I thought I’ve heard everything, but I really haven’t.’ There have been some strange questions I’ve had to answer.”

If she were a superhero, she’d be: Indiana Jones. “I’d like to be known for having grace under fire, being graceful under the heat and pressure.”
C-VILLE welcomes news tips from readers. Send them to news@c-ville.com.