While the vote on the relocation of a sewer pipeline into McIntire Park to make room for the Meadowcreek Parkway (MCP) was deferred last week until the next City Council meeting, opponents of the MCP are holding out hope that members of Council will deny the ordinance to grant the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (RWSA) the right to tear down trees and any additional “obstruction.”
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On Sunday, Meadowcreek Parkway opponents gathered in McIntire Park. “Hands Across McIntire,” as their demonstration was dubbed, was meant to give a visual representation of the Parkway’s route. |
RWSA owns a sewer collection line that runs for approximately 7,000′. RWSA’s Schenk’s Branch sewer line is currently a 21" terracotta pipe, considered “undersized” for current use. According to staff reports, the line will need to be increased to 30" and sunk deeper in the ground, about 15′. In addition to replacing and relocating about 640’ of the line, 1,075′ will be relocated by the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) to make way for the construction of McIntire Road Extended, an aspect of the MCP.
The replacement of the line will cost the City $815,730, with about $455,000 going toward excavation.
“I think they should defer without making any decisions,” says John Cruickshank, president of the Piedmont chapter of the Sierra Club and member of the Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park. “There are so many uncertainties regarding the McIntire Road Extended and the interchange that it would not be a good decision to approve the easement this time.
At the first meeting on the topic on September 8, Daniel Bluestone, a UVA professor of architectural history and avid preservationist, argued that because the easement calls for whoever owns the line to maintain it too, “the Rivanna Sewer and Water Authority is on the verge of becoming a main player in the maintenance of our park.”
According to the ordinance, “trees, shrubs, fences, buildings, overhangs or other improvements or obstructions shall not be located within the Sewer Easement.” Because Councilor David Brown objected to the definitive and strict language of the ordinance, the new draft of such a document includes an agreement between the RWSA and City Council to create an “acceptable landscaping plan” with plantings selected from the RWSA’s approved list of flora for these kinds of easements and “low ground cover in the area ten (10) feet on each side of the centerline of the proposed sewer line.”
Bluestone believes it is counterproductive to guess how the council will vote, but says that it is important to go back to the drawing board and start the easement process again. Because some of the fewer trees will be cut to make way for the line, “Why hasn’t there been any census of trees to see whether there are alternative less destructive route for the sewer?”
Yet, at the center of the controversy is the construction of the city portions of the Meadowcreek Parkway: McIntire Road Extended and the 250 Interchange. Cruickshank says that because the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers temporarily denied VDOT a permit to build McIntire Road Extended due to the project’s lack of a south terminus, approving of the easement would be a mistake.
“We are going to do whatever we can to stop the bulldozers to get into McIntire Park,” he says. “And as it is delayed more and more, who knows, we may have different people on City Council in January,” shifting the vote to a favorable 3-2.
Colette Hall, president of the North Downtown Neighborhood Association and a member of the coalition, is not so optimistic. “I think the Council will vote the easements in,” she says. “I am so angry. I don’t know what else to do. I am beside myself.”
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