Month: May 2012

A map from the city parks department shows existing multi-use trails in green. Red lines mark pending trail projects, all of which Charlottesville Parks and Trail Planner Chris Gensic hopes to see completed in 2014. (Image courtesy City of Charlottesville)

When Chris Gensic has his way, park-hopping in Charlottesville will be as easy as getting on your bike.

After years of acquiring land parcels, planning, mapping, and securing grants, Gensic, the city’s park and trail planner, is poised to launch a spate of projects that aim to link a string of parks and greenways on the north side of Charlottesville within two years, creating more than seven miles of continuous off-road paths.

Gensic was hired in 2006 to help implement Charlottesville’s 2003 Bicycle and Pedestrian Master Plan, which outlines the city’s cycling and walking infrastructure needs, from bike lanes to off-street trails.

One key aspect of the plan involves creating a network of multi-use paths—flat, commuter- and family-friendly, and free from the traffic that so often scares off people otherwise eager to use something besides a car to get around.

So far, only scattered sections have made it to completion. The quarter-mile Schenk’s Greenway path along McIntire Road is done, as are two sections in McIntire Park West. To the east, a finished path along the Rivanna River traces a section of the popular, but only partly city-owned, Rivanna Trail, the volunteer-built footpath that circumnavigates Charlottesville.

The dead-end sections of crushed gravel and asphalt trail seem far from being part of a greater whole. But in 2014, bikeable paths are expected to connect Pen Park and the Downtown Mall to a united McIntire Park, the western section of the restored Meadow Creek, Greenbrier Park, and the Meadowcreek Parkway, with bike-and-pedestrian-only bridges spanning streams, roads, and rail beds.

So why the piecemeal approach? The main problem, said Gensic, is that it’s hard to back into bike infrastructure. In the central and western U.S., newer cities were built for bikes as well as cars, he said, and miles of abandoned railways have been reclaimed as trails. But Charlottesville poses some problems.

“We’re hundreds of years older,” he said, “and we don’t have abandoned railroads”—freight and passenger trains still use the tracks that criss-cross the city on a daily basis—so there are few opportunities for rail-to-trail projects.

“We’re retrofitting an old, old city that used to be a little town, and became much more populated,” Gensic said.

David Stackhouse of the Charlottesville Area Mountain Bike Club said the persistence of a car-centric design culture here has been a stumbling block, too.

“We’re in an age when we really need to encourage cycling, especially within the city limits and its close surroundings,” Stackhouse said, but too often, two-wheeled travel is an afterthought at best. Consider, he said, that 50 years after the completion of the 250 Bypass, there’s still no way into the east side of McIntire Park except by car.

“It’s mind-boggling,” Stackhouse said.

Attitudes about what’s feasible are shifting, though, said Scott Paisley of Bike Charlottesville, another cycling group that continues to put steady pressure on the city to build better bike and walking routes.

When he and other volunteers led a push for more bike lanes a few years back, “a lot of people said, ‘That would be wonderful in a perfect world, but there’s no room,’” said Paisley, who co-owns Blue Wheel Bicycles. But after volunteers hit the streets with measuring tape to prove that existing roadways could support a sliver of space for cyclists, he said, more city leaders got on board.

In January, the city hired Amanda Poncy as a part-time bicycle and pedestrian coordinator to help build on existing infrastructure and make the bike and pedestrian master plan a reality. Poncy said it’s a slow process. Bike lane additions are tied to repaving projects, so they’re getting built bit by bit. All the while, the city’s working to tie on-street cycling routes into the developing network of trails.

“We’re doing everything we can to try to close the gaps in the network as quickly as we can,” Poncy said. “All this stuff takes time.”

Gensic knows that all too well. The walls of his cubicle in the City Hall Annex are papered with maps that chronicle years of efforts to greenlight and build the trail system.

There are still question marks in some spots. It’s unclear whether the city will be able to build a railroad underpass to close a gap in Greenbrier Park. Parts of the Rivanna Trail, which Gensic hopes will eventually have publicly-owned, multi-use path paralleling much of its mileage, are in the hands of property owners who don’t want to sell easements to the city. And the closing of section of his northern loop relies on the construction of a controversial interchange at the planned Meadowcreek Parkway and the Route 250 Bypass, a project that would offer the much-looked-for access to McIntire Park East, but which is currently tied up in federal court. Some of the outstanding “hyphens” in the loop should be closed by 2015, Gensic said.

But the plan is to go on building, piece by piece. The city dispenses $100,000 a year for new construction, and Gensic has so far successfully sought more than $1 million in federal and state grants that will pay for the lion’s share of the more expensive bridge projects—some of which will be done as early as July.

Gensic said he’s aware that most city residents won’t know what’s in store until they stumble across a new path themselves, but he believes people will come to use and value the trails once the parts become a whole. It’s satisfying, he said, to be able to move from the low-hanging fruit to the serious sections of trail he’s been planning for so long.

“Now it’s finally at the point where I can start building the big ones,” he said.

 

 

Housing renewal: Last week, LEAP (the Local Energy Alliance Program) announced its new Energize 250 campaign, a twist on Charlottesville’s 250th anniversary celebration. The effort aims to get 250 local homeowners to pledge to improve their houses’ energy efficiency by 10 percent within 250 days. “We’re looking forward to another 250 years,” said LEAP director Cynthia Adams, right, also a contributor to this week’s Green Scene, pictured here with homeowner Laura Merricks. (Photo by Carissa Dezort)

Can’t go home again

Last weekend, visiting my family in southwestern Pennsylvania, I saw something shocking. I was driving a mile up the road from my mom’s house, and passed a house where I’d spent a lot of time as a kid—the house of my friend Stephanie and her mother Dian, who cared for me and my brothers. But the house no longer existed. There was just a flat place on the ground and a nearby pile of smoldering wood.

Apparently, a new owner had bought the house and discovered a bad mold problem, so he had it torn down.

It was only one such moment in a weekend full of vertigo. My hometown happens to be in one of the most active areas for hydro-fracking in Pennsylvania. There’s more drilling evident every time I go home—more than 500 gas wells dotting the rumpled topography of my home county. Many of these are on hilltops and ridges and, thus, can be seen for long distances. The wells consist of narrow metal towers, but they require several acres of surrounding flat ground to support storage containers and a parade of large trucks.

Therefore, those hilltops have to be massively reshaped before drilling can begin. After a well is done producing, the tower can be removed and the truck traffic will cease. But the manmade mesa will remain. The soft shapes of the hills are being changed quickly and forever.

Fracking is a possibility in Virginia, too; as near a neighbor as Rockingham County came close to approving a fracking permit in 2010. The U.S. Forest Service is considering allowing limited fracking in Virginia’s George Washington and Jefferson National Forests, too, with a final decision expected in July.

Razing a house might be a necessity, though it does violence to the memories and experience of people who spent time within. When we tear down the hills, what is the reach of our violation?—Erika Howsare

 

BULLETIN BOARD

Heritage on film: Grad students at UVA have spent the semester making short films about Virginia’s food heritage, and you can see them on May 2 at 7pm and May 3 at 5pm. The latter event will also include presentations about ideas for food-based economic development. See vafoodheritage.com for locations.

Feeling crabby: The Chesapeake Bay Foundation released good news last month about the blue crab population in the Bay. Namely, it’s up. The total crab count is 764 million—the highest level since 1993 and a 66 percent increase since 2011.

Drawing a line: Local activists will join others worldwide for a May 5 rally organized by the climate change network 350.org. Demonstrators intend to “connect the dots” between climate change and extreme weather patterns. They’ll gather at the Down-
town Free Speech Wall from 5-6pm.

Baby spinach: The Local Food Hub hosts a plant sale at Scottsville’s Maple Hill Farm, May 5 from 10am to 3pm. Hear music, munch food, and paint murals (besides, of course, buying plants and produce).

 

Chronicling progress

When Tanya Denckla Cobb set out to write a book about local food, she didn’t intend to create a field guide to a movement.

An environmental mediator and the author of books on organic gardening, Denckla Cobb was developing a course on food systems planning at UVA when she met Will Allen, whose Milwaukee-based urban farming initiative Growing Power has inspired community gardening projects all over the country.

Denckla Cobb said she was so inspired by his methods—which include using compost to keep winter beds warm, and establishing inner-city apiaries—that she decided to chronicle his organization’s efforts in a book.

But Allen helped convince her that the story was bigger than his group alone, “so we set out to cover the breadth and depth of the food market,” said Denckla Cobb. Her book, Reclaiming Our Food: How the Grassroots Food Movement Is Changing the Way We Eat, has been named one of Booklist’s top ten titles on the environment for 2012, and offers a comprehensive look at how and why small, local farming and food distribution projects are succeeding around the country.

With help from a team of graduate students and colleagues, Denckla Cobb researched and found hundreds of operations across the country tackling all aspects of the food-supply chain. Eventually, they narrowed their focus to a few dozen projects, many of which are succeeding against the odds in challenging climates and difficult environments.

The book features Nuetras Raices, a farming co-op created by Puerto Rican Americans in Holyoke, Massachusetts, who channeled their agricultural heritage into a project that could feed their families and sustain their community. It explores the Janus Youth Urban Agriculture program, which gives poor and homeless kids in Portland the chance to grow their own food and profit from it. And it touches on efforts to encourage sustainable farming from the Arizona desert to southern Wisconsin.

Denckla Cobb said that against her expectations, she found a common thread.
“People are coming at local food projects for a host of different reasons,” she said, “but they’re being used everywhere as a catalyst for healing our land and healing our communities, and helping build neighborhoods where there weren’t any.”

At a time when the national discussion about the way Americans eat is so often bleak—hunger, obesity, food safety fears—Denckla Cobb’s book is packed with good news about real people whose efforts to farm locally aren’t just succeeding, they’re thriving.

But her hope is that the book is more than a feel-good read. She aimed to offer up a practical guide to kickstart similar projects in all corners of the country.

“Everyone needs to eat, and everyone relates to food,” she said. “How people spend their time and how they choose to eat is a way that they can reclaim power in their lives. I really do think it’s democracy in action.”—Graelyn Brashear

 

Efficiency comes forward

Years ago when I ran a green construction company in a resort town in Idaho, most of the customers we worked with wanted a home that had character and taste. They wanted hardwood floors, exposed beams, and high ceilings. Aside from the givens of separate bedrooms and bathrooms for the kids, they preferred tile that was or resembled stone, granite countertops, black or stainless appliances, big windows to take in the views, and real wood siding.

Energy efficiency was an afterthought, although they did think about it. Five solid months of winter will have you giving some consideration not only to where you store your snow toys, but also what those utility bills are going to look like—especially if your vacation home will be mostly sitting empty.

Still, we did not sell our custom homes or remodels by touting energy efficiency. Sustainability and green, yes, but no one really cared about efficiency. Today, things are a bit different.

Gas prices are on the rise again, and policymakers are worried about the recession’s impact on people’s budgets. Homebuyers are beginning to have conversations around the operating costs of the home—as in, how much extra per month will this home cost to live in over that home.

Seriously, who wants to live in an inefficient home? Um, sign me up for the draftier-in-winter and stuffier-in-summer property, please. I prefer noisy too, and I really like mild to major indoor air quality issues; sneezing and coughing are a major pastime of mine.
No thanks! If you knew you had a choice (and many don’t know), wouldn’t you just say at the outset, I want a nice kitchen AND an energy efficient home?

Here in Charlottesville, LEAP and the Charlottesville Area Association of Realtors recently held a stakeholder luncheon on valuing energy efficiency in the real estate market. Attendance was cut off at 75 because every seat was taken. This is a hot topic for real estate agents in our area. We have already had one LEAP customer who believes her home sold quicker because of energy improvements, and others who will be uploading their Home Performance with ENERGY STAR certificate onto their MLS record for potential buyers to see. It’s something to consider for both sides of the real estate equation: investing in a home’s energy performance pays off.—Cynthia Adams, executive director, LEAP.

 

Former Fifth District rep Virgil Goode is, however improbably, a presidential candidate. (Photo by Coe Sweet)

As longtime readers well know, former U.S. Congress critter Virgil Goode was one of the founding inspirations for this column, and has remained our patron saint ever since.

Even as he faded from the headlines following his unexpected 2008 loss to Tom Perriello, we secretly longed for his return. There was just something about his well-coiffed, incredibly simplistic, aw-shucks brand of hate politics that fascinated us. In many ways, he is the perfect encapsulation of the earnest, intolerant, know-nothing politician—a man who flipped from Democrat to Independent to Republican to xenophobic lunatic, yet kept the same avuncular, disarming expression on his face every step of the way.

Which is why Goode’s recent triumph over lesser adversaries to win the Constitution Party’s nomination for President has filled us with unbridled joy. The idea of Virgil sharing a debate stage with Mitt Romney and President Obama gives us paroxysms of pleasure, and we will do whatever we can to make it happen.

There’s only one problem: Nobody knows what the hell the Constitution Party is. Making matters worse, the party has currently managed to get Goode’s name on the Presidential ballot in only 15 states. But we’re not going to let that faze us, because we have devised a brilliant plan.

The idea came while perusing a recent article about voter fraud in the Richmond Times-Dispatch. As it turns out, even though documented cases of voter fraud are almost non-existent nationwide, Virginia has charged 39 people (out of around 3.7 million votes cast) for committing fraud during the 2008 election. And even more amazingly, not one of these cases would have been stopped by the so-called “voter ID” bills currently awaiting Governor McDonnell’s signature.

How is that possible, you ask? Well, as you may or may not know, the Old Dominion is one of only 13 states in which convicted felons permanently lose their right to vote (unless pardoned by the governor), and a large majority of the fraud cases involved a felon registering to vote or actually voting. (Of course, the fact that a person, having paid his debt to society, can be sent back to prison for exercising his constitutional franchise is completely reprehensible—but that’s a subject for another column.)

So here’s our foolproof idea: Since well over 7 million U.S. citizens are currently either in prison, on probation, or on parole, all Virgil Goode has to do between now and election day is persuade Virginia, along with 47 other states, to follow the lead of Maine and Vermont and allow not only ex-felons, but currently incarcerated individuals to vote. Then, in a mass show of gratitude, felons everywhere (along with their extended families) will throw their support behind Goode, easily pushing him past the 10 percent threshold needed to be included in the debates.

To be sure, this devious plan is completely antithetical to everything Virgil Goode professes to believe. But hey, we figure the guy went from Blue Dog Democrat to far-right, Muslim-bashing nutjob in record time, so a little thing like suddenly championing the voting rights of prison inmates should be no problem at all.

See you at the debates, Virgil!