Month: January 2011

Nothing is dead on Davis Avenue, a cozy stretch of brick homes north of the Downtown Mall. However, you wouldn’t know it to look at the massive birds that roost in a group of trees nearby.

“So, you’re here to see the vultures,” says one resident, who spoke briefly with a reporter last week while walking his dog. As many as 100 gather in trees surrounding Davis Field, a soccer pitch on the street. They shellac the ground with their waste, and group together at dusk in a way that’s a touch sinister.

Central Virginia seems to be in the midst of a vulture boom. Last week, Staunton news sources reported that the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) had authorized representatives to kill up to 200 vultures in that city, 40 miles west of Charlottesville. The state Department of Game and Inland Fisheries has begun tagging black vultures that roost at the Dutch Gap boat landing in Chesterfield County, after the birds began to create hazardous work conditions at a nearby Dominion Power plant.

In 2010, the USDA received 224 complaints about vultures from Virginia residents—down from 299 the previous year, but a net increase in five years’ time. According to Dr. Scott Barras, the state director of USDA Wildlife Services, only six complaints of the 224 came from Charlottesville or Albemarle.

“The complaints involved predation to livestock, damage to residential structures, and excessive fecal droppings from vulture roosts,” says Barras by e-mail. He adds that neither the city nor the county required “on-the-ground assistance” last year, and the USDA has no plans for such actions at present time.

Jennifer Gaden, former president of the Monticello Bird Club, also coordinates Charlottesville’s annual Christmas Bird Count—part the National Audobon Society’s efforts to track avian populations in North America. Volunteers help cover a 50-mile radius of Charlottesville and tally both the number of species and total number of birds. “Every year,” says Gaden, “we get hundreds of vultures on our count.”

The Christmas count began in Charlottesville in 1924. That year, volunteers counted seven turkey vultures and no black vultures. The local vulture counts peaked in 1978, when volunteers spotted 987 turkey vultures and 376 black vultures. Results, says Gaden, depend on the skill and number of volunteers, and can vary wildly. After the 1978 peak, the number of turkey vultures spotted in 1981 fell to 126.

This year, 50 volunteers counted 81 species of birds, overall. And while the Christmas counts have a Big Bird-sized margin of error, this year’s count totaled 167 turkey vultures and 103 black vultures.

“Over decades, we’ve seen an increase in vultures, because their range has increased,” says Gaden. “More road kill makes for more food.”

Charlottesville Public Works Director Judy Mueller says she has received no complaints from residents. Perhaps, in their roost off of Davis Avenue, local vultures know how to keep to themselves.

The industrial kitchen at Charlottesville High School is a comfortable fit for a large-batch cooking session with city school kitchen managers. Martha Stafford, owner of the Charlottesville Cooking School, has her sofrito recipe on hand, and shows the managers how she cooks green bell peppers, onions and cloves of garlic together.

The training session is something of a special occasion. Stafford’s black bean and brown rice taco, tested by students and parents as a new vegetarian lunch option in city schools, will make its debut in the next two months.

Stafford, who created the recipe, says the meal received a “very positive response.” According to premilinary data, about 91 percent of all tasters gave the recipe a thumbs up. Negative feedback stemmed largely from students’ lack of familiarity with ingredients like black beans.

City schools have already introduced fresh fruits and vegetables in lunch lines, and the movement to improve the health of students has taken off. The School Health Advisory Board (SHAB) is revising city schools’ one-page Wellness Policy, designed to address student and faculty nutrition and fitness, says SHAB Chair Ivana Kadija.

“What we are looking at is being more clear, as a division, about what the expectations are for nutrition and physical activity,” says Kadija, who adds that the majority of SHAB members would like to see the Wellness Policy address student access to junk food. SHAB would also like to involve the community in the process, as schools in Williamsburg have done.

Schools dietician Alicia Cost says parents are excited to see changes in the lunch menu and are pushing to have the taco as a main entree in the city’s rotation.

“When we taste-tested at the elementary level, we were worried about peer pressure,” says Cost. “Parents and volunteers were looking [at plates] to see how much was consumed. That was really what we were looking for.”

With the taco success under their belts, Stafford and Cost will expand the vegetarian school lunch options with a new recipe: butternut squash soup.

“It’s a recipe that I have used for teaching, because we get really good butternut squash here. There is an abundance of it, it can be stored and it’s delicious,” says Stafford, who adds that she is trying to streamline the recipe to make it easy to implement in school kitchens.

Kadija applauds Stafford’s effort. “I think it’s tremendous that the division has been able to do this within the limitations of the school’s food system,” she says.

The soup will be subject to taste testing in March, which is also National Nutrition Month. If successful, it will be offered in school cafeterias starting next fall.

In the meantime, Cost says she is looking to maximize the success of Stafford’s taco recipe.

“We have tweaked the recipe so we could do it year-round with vegetables that [Stafford] has chosen,” she says. Kadija says that although these recipes are progress, the community needs to help support city schools “in figuring out systemic issues that are standing in the way of every meal being cooked from scratch.”

In less than 48 hours, the waterlogged debate between Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials over the Lower Ragged Mountain Dam became measurably different for every person involved.

Last Tuesday, Schnabel Engineering, the firm behind the county-favored 42′ earthen dam proposal, lowered construction cost estimates to between $15.9 million and $19.5 million—an average reduction of approximately $5.8 million. Hours later, three city councilors—David Brown, Satyendra Huja and Kristin Szakos—voted to amend an ordinance passed in September to phase construction of Ragged Mountain Dam. The amendment raises the first phase of a Ragged Mountain Dam to 30′ from 13′ an increase approved by Council four months ago.

Both City Council and the Board of Supervisors unanimously approved a $143 million water supply plan in 2006. That plan included a pipeline linking the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir and the Ragged Mountain Reservoir, expanded water treatment plant capacities, and a new 45′ dam at Ragged Mountain. However, the plan has been on hold while City Council considered instead dredging the reservoir and renovating the existing Ragged Mountain Dam, an essential component of the water plan.

Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris, a vocal dredging proponent, told Charlottesville Tomorrow that the height increase approved by Council last week makes dredging a less attractive option for restoring capacity to the Ragged Mountain Reservoir. Norris told C-VILLE in 2008 that dredging Ragged Mountain could potentially save money, acreage and trees.

If the 30′ compromise irked a few members of local dredging advocates Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan, then it prompted one member of the Albemarle County Service Authority (ACSA) board to try to meet City Council’s compromise. In 2006, Jim Colbaugh advised the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority (RWSA) board to avoid phased construction of Ragged Mountain Dam. Phased construction, said Colbaugh, could tear up the land around the reservoir several times over. Ultimately, he added, “a big bucket of water out there is a whole lot more comforting than having half a bucket of water.”

Two days after Council’s 3-2 vote, ACSA board member Colbaugh saw the same bucket of water as half-full.

“I would suggest that we go with a 30′ pool,” Colbaugh told the ACSA board, “and agree that we have no more than a 30′ pool until certain triggers are set.” The ACSA board, Colbaugh added, could direct Schnabel to prepare a design for a full-height earthen dam with a 30′ operating level as an alternative to the 42′ reservoir pool—an action he was ready for. Chris Webster, a principal with Schnabel, said an additional design would likely cost less than $30,000.

“I believe that we can all make a reasonable decision once we see those two alternatives,” said Colbaugh.

Perhaps so, but the ACSA board was not prepared to agree to a 30′ reservoir pool. Webster told the ACSA board that building an earthen dam to 30′ would cost an estimated $17.5 million, or 99 percent of the construction cost of a full-size dam. A second phase would add roughly $1.6 million, and move the projected cost to 108 percent of a one-time, full-size build.

“I agree with those folks who said they prefer to wait” on setting a 30′ reservoir pool, said Ann Mallek, chair of the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. Mallek, who attended the ACSA meeting, said she was there “as a student, to learn as much as possible.”

RWSA Executive Director Tom Frederick said he is willing to ask the Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for “flexibility” on 2008 permits awarded for the previously approved water plan. “I think it’s very important that we lock in the initial pool height,” Frederick told the ACSA board. However, a more complex permit amendment could mean a longer wait for a DEQ response, Frederick added.

City and county officials still need to settle on a cost-sharing agreement, as well as a dam design—whether it will be constructed on the century-old Ragged Mountain Dam or built anew from material excavated from the existing reservoir.

Frederick told C-VILLE he would not take positions on items that the Albemarle County Service Authority and Charlottesville City Council need to discuss further. However, said Frederick, he “didn’t hear anything unreasonable.”

“I’m trying to be flexible with the permitting agencies,” said Frederick. “I need to know which design, and what size reservoir pool for the permits.”