C-VILLE Weekly

What purpose does a gate serve but to limit access? Depending on the setting, a gate can forbid freedom or promise a new horizon. Or, if you live in Keswick, Glenmore, Lake Monticello or any of the ersatz gated subdivisions around Charlottesville, a gate can rise as a shining symbol of such lifestyle amenities as electronic surveillance devices, swimming pool complexes, clubhouses and steeply rising property values. From the outside, the gates send a hearty message of “Do Not Enter.” From the inside, they signal a distinctive brand of “community.”

But whereas other parts of the country have experienced a rush on wrought iron, so to speak, as concerns about crime and privacy drive families out of the cities and into the suburbs, Charlottesville has become home to hundreds of sequestered houses apparently for different reasons.

“We have a giant bubble over our community,” says Charlottesville Albemarle Association of Realtors President Pat Jensen. “With so many beautiful and safe places to live, gated communities simply don’t mean the same thing here as they do in other parts of the country.”

Still, Charlottesville’s gated enclaves share at least one feature with similar neighborhoods around the United States: They practically guarantee an above-average return on investment. Whether it’s the presumed prestige factor or an epidemic of golf enthusiasm, houses in places like Keswick appreciate at a rate that observers say is greater than the County’s annual 7 percent norm.

Not surprisingly, gated communities inspire vehement opposition, too, among those who believe they promote isolation and homogeneity, not to mention an “us”-and-“them” mentality.

 

Down and out in Fluvanna County

The oldest gated community in our area, Fluvanna’s Lake Monticello, which was built in 1970, doesn’t seem to be constructed on the Who’s Who foundation of other gated enclaves. With more than 3,500 acres filled with 4,500 homesites, the local price of the fortress mentality, in this neighborhood at least, is less than one might think—$75,000 to $500,000, according to Greg Slater, a manager at Lake Monticello. (Lake Monticello also offers three areas that are not gated for those who would prefer access to the golf, pool, lake and clubhouse facilities without the manned porthole experience.)

And, claims Slater, that budget price can buy individuality. “We have no cookie-cutter homes here,” he says.

Close enough to Charlottesville to be convenient but far enough away to be more affordable, Lake Monticello, says Jensen, is a place where “you can simply buy more house for your money than in the rest of Albemarle.”

Not only that, but for an annual owners association fee of $490, you buy access to a 352-acre man-made lake with more than 22 miles of lake shoreline for swimming, fishing and boating; an 18-hole championship golf course; three clubhouse eateries ranging from formal to casual; private campgrounds; tennis courts; and several playing fields. Lake Monticello even has its own closed-circuit informational TV channel. In a mini town like that, why (aside from earning a living) would anyone want to venture past the gate?

For at least one resident, however, a man originally from New Hampshire who would be interviewed only on the condition of anonymity, neither the amenities nor the gate were the appeal. He retired to Lake Monticello six years ago after buying his house sight unseen, he says, because “the biggest draw was the reasonable price.”

“I rarely even use the lake, golf course or pool,” he says.

Jeane Rashap and her husband moved to Lake Monticello about nine months ago from a home they rented near Charlottesville’s Rugby Road. Although they loved living in the City, when it came time to buy, there was just nowhere else they could find a 2,700-square-foot home for around $200,000. “The golf has been nice for my husband,” says Rashap, “but we wouldn’t have chosen Lake Monticello if we’d found something affordable somewhere else.”

 

Privilege or necessity

Glenmore, the 10-year-old gated colony in Albemarle, east of Charlottesville and on the other end of the pricing spectrum, draws its residents not out of affordability (prices for houses can soar past $1 million), but sheer exclusivity. And nearby Keswick, considered one of the area’s most elite communities, offers 300 homes ranging in size from 1,200 to 10,000 square feet at prices that can be upwards of $4 million.

Evidently, there’s something of value to keep secure behind those gates.

“With all that’s going on in the news today,” says Jeff Gaffney, the supervising broker for the section of Real Estate III that manages Glenmore, “people are looking for that extra safety factor.” Like Lake Monticello, Glenmore has a manned front gate. The gatekeeper will let you pass only if you have been authorized to enter by a resident. Also, all entrances are equipped with security cameras that monitor which cars pass through.

Still, Jensen figures that what really lures people to Glenmore and Keswick are the special amenities like a championship golf course and an equestrian center. Translation: You might live in a glorified subdivision, but you’ve come a long way, baby.

At present, there are 500 residences in Glenmore, with developers hoping for a total of 800 to share what the promotional literature describes as “the beautifully laden emerald-green pastures, gentle knolls and rolling hills reminiscent of a Scottish landscape.” And besides the Platinum MasterCard aura and the manned front gate, something else fortifies Glenmore’s appeal—real estate values.

“When you’re looking at increased property values,” says Gaffney, “while all of Albemarle County has appreciated, Glenmore is at the top of the list.” With land values that have doubled in the last decade compared to the 8 percent increase of the county average, a pad in Glenmore has proven to be a good investment. One home that sold for $170,000 in 1993 recently sold again for $300,000. Another going for $500,000 in 1993 went for more than $750,000 this year. According to recent nationwide real estate studies, in fact, gated community-style housing can fetch anywhere from $50,000 to $100,000 more than comparable non-gated housing.

 

State your business here, sir

Even where the lines of secluded turf are not drawn solely by wealth, the message to the public at large remains, “keep out.”

By the same token, however, Glenmore has been praised by some for creating “communal bonds” within the gates themselves. With pedestrian-friendly streets and public spaces like the clubhouse or fitness center, “It is so easy to meet other residents here,” says Gaffney. “It’s like stepping into a built-in social life.”

Tom Pace, who is the sales manager of Glenmore and a longtime resident, agrees. “One can get as involved or not involved as one wants,” says Pace. “It truly is a social lifestyle choice.”

Pace says his clan was the seventh family to move into Glenmore, and, although he has moved three different times within the community, he has never left.

Still, where insiders see “community,” critics on the other side of the gate see an elitist “members only” club.

Dave Norris, chair of the Charlottesville Redevelopment and Housing Authority Board of Commissioners, believes gates serve only one of two purposes—to keep people in or out. Gates can wall off very poor communities and very wealthy communities, all the while eliminating the public spaces in which different social classes might combine. Typical melting pots such as Darden Towe Park or Fridays After Five have been replaced by private soccer fields within the gates and black-tie events at the clubhouse.

“One of the main reasons a neighborhood such as Belmont works so well,” says Norris, “is you have a mix there—an integration of poor people, middle class people, middle-upper class people, residential and commercial retail. Walled-off enclaves removed from services and others kinds of people just don’t work.”

Ron Higgins, the City’s planning manager, also maintains that a city needs to be connected, especially a smaller city such as Charlottesville, which holds dear the value of congruity. “As a 30-year resident of the City,” says Higgins, “I imagine gated communities have their place; it just seems more isolated.”

 

Don’t fence me in

For some people, of course, isolation is exactly the point.

“The gate is definitely a selling feature,” says Slater. “It is nice when not just anyone can drive up on your property at any given time.”

“We have people like [UVA basketball and football coaches] Pete Gillen and Al Groh living in our community,” says Real Estate III’s Gaffney, “and they don’t want just anyone walking up to their front door.”

Yet there are those occasions when the rules and regulations that are the price of admission to the box seats can be real downers. “Sometimes these communities with their homeowners associations,” says Jensen, “can be limiting to people’s freedom of choice.” Want to stack wood in front of your house? Well, that’s just too bad if you live in Lake Monticello. You can’t.

One Lake Monticello resident (who also refused to have her name published) says she came home one day to a “citation” for verboten pipes exposed in her yard. “We are unsure if the complaint came from a neighbor, or from the owners association,” she says, “but either way, there are times when we really have issues with all the rules.”

Lake Monticello is also the only gated community in the area to employ a private police force, a measure often too expensive for other communities, which choose an electronic gate system instead. The Lake Monticello Police Department, on the lookout for any suspicious elements in this forest by the lake, make alien infiltration difficult, unless of course you are the Domino’s delivery guy, the Lake Monticello Fire Department or a construction vendor—these folks have bar codes to get in at any time.

“The gates can be irritating, especially if they aren’t working correctly,” says Lake Monticello resident Rashap, “but they serve their purpose—to protect the residents and their amenities.”

 

Go jump in a lake—but only if you’ve paid your dues

There’s no hiding the fact that Lake Monticello residents, like others in gated communities, want their amenities to remain their amenities. “The gates are necessary for the people paying dues,” says Slater.

The gate at Glenmore was built for $200,000, and yearly maintenance is another $170,000, which includes not only salaries for guards, managers and staff, but electricity and computers, as well. “Although it’s certainly not fool proof, it’s worth it for the peace of mind it gives people,” says Gaffney.

Again, some observers see the situation differently. A gate does not a great community make. As Jensen points out, Charlottesville has plenty of historic and stately areas such as Ivy, Park Street and Rugby Road. Some area residents occupy both worlds. Developments such as Bellair, Farmington, Ednam, Dunlora and Forest Lakes have many of the makings of a gated community, minus the uniformed man (or bar code) raising the gate.

Dunlora, for example, which is fronted by a large brick entrance and a gate-like aura, has some of the same amenities as Glenmore (minus the ACC coaches): community swimming pools, clubhouses, annual dues and basic rules and regulations. But, in theory, anyone could drive through.

In the end however, for whatever reason, communities such as Glenmore, Keswick and Lake Monticello succeed in attracting residents. Fluvanna County, still considered primarily rural, is now the second-fastest growing county in Virginia. With a population of 21,200, it has grown by more than 60 percent during the past decade. “Most of this growth is thanks to Lake Monticello,” says Slater.

 

Access and egress

Whether gated communities promote homogeneity or a secure environment, Gaffney advances the standard market-bearing rationale for their existence around here: If people didn’t want gated communities, then developers wouldn’t be building them. “It’s a ‘move up’-type market and people are choosing it left and right,” he says.

CRHA’s Norris, though, raises doubts about the health of gates for the community at large.

“These gated communities are just a form of ghettoization,” he says. “You’ve got ghettos for the poor and ghettos for the rich.” As an example, Norris points to a new fence, of sorts, at Westhaven, a low-income housing development in the neighborhood of 10th and Page streets. One side of Westhaven borders the rear entrances of West Main Street businesses, some of which have started to complain about graffiti and vandalism and responded with a new divider. “There’s a stairway that ends with a fence now,” says Norris, “just a further sign of the isolation of Westhaven.”

The fences might obstruct graffiti, but they’re roadblocks to progress, too, says Norris. “As long as both the rich ghettos and the poor ghettos remain isolated,” he says, “how can we ever broaden the community, embrace diversity?”

Pace, the Glenmore sales manager, maintains that his community is more than diverse. With residents of every age hailing from places like China, Hawaii, Canada and England and participating in local politics and schools and boards, Pace says it is wrong to think that the people of Glenmore have chosen to lock themselves out of society.

“Living in Glenmore, or any gated community for that matter,” says Pace, “is simply a lifestyle choice, that’s all. It has nothing to do with isolation whatsoever.”

Rain…The word alone forms a complete prayer. Spoken as a plea or demand, the simple invocation has been a common mantra across the Southeast this year. The congregation of thirsty supplicants included, until recently, those of us living in the Rivanna Watershed, which in the past four years has been shy about 40 inches of rain.

To everyone’s relief, our prayers have been answered. In the past two months, a blessing from the jet stream dropped roughly 10 inches of rain on the Watershed, bringing this year’s precipitation levels in line with annual norms. Around here, perhaps no one is more relieved to see the drought subside than the City and County water officials responsible for keeping a clean, cheap supply of life’s elixir swirling down our toilets.It’s refreshing to again see full reservoirs and real dinnerplates in Charlottesville. Yes, the rain soothed a shortage and mitigated an emergency. It did not, however, solve the real problem, which is this: The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has seen this crisis coming for more than 25 years, and yet now, coming out of it, our water supply remains at the mercy of divine intervention.

 

When in drought…

Charles Ancona has lived in Albemarle County since 1967, and in that time he has seen, he says, “many brown Augusts.” He remembers a drought in 1976 that prompted government conservation ordinances. It also convinced many people that, although water had been taken for granted as a “natural resource,” dominated by technology to serve economic growth, water might begin to limit the region’s blossoming development.

“All these years later, and we’ve still done nothing,” says Ancona. Although he draws his water from a well in rural Albemarle, he has followed the water situation for 30 years, and he’s mystified by the response of local officials.

“You can’t have the growth we’ve had, and the reduction in supply, and expect to have sufficient water,” Ancona says.

The last time Charlottesville impounded a water supply was in 1966, when the City built a 1.68 billion-gallon reservoir on the South Fork Rivanna River. Since then, the region’s population has more than doubled, to at least 124,000. But along the way, rather than meet increased demand, the South Fork reservoir has lost about 500 million gallons of its capacity, thanks to sediment filling in its bottom.

In 1972, Charlottesville and Albemarle launched the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority as an independent agency to manage the region’s shared water resources. Within a few short years, when studies showed that demand would outpace supply sometime early in this century, one of the RWSA’s main jobs became to provide enough water to satisfy the growth.

The RWSA met this challenge like an ostrich, Ancona says: “They must have their heads stuck in that sediment.”

Indeed, the rain has been followed by a deluge of criticism for local officials, who critics believe are as culpable as God for the recent water shortage.

“What are you going to do when it’s gone? Vote your ass out of office!” says local bartender Al Zappa, playing on the City’s cartoonish conservation posters. They depict a man examining the dry nozzle of a garden hose, apparently unaware that he’s standing on the hose with a bulge of water building up behind his shoe. Is that cartoon Charlottesvillian supposed to be us, Joe and Jane Car Washer? Is the City saying we’re morons, dumbly pinching off our hose, about to get squirted in the eye?

Many people say the cartoon better represents the RWSA. Some say the water officials must be truly idiotic––after all, they’ve seen a water crisis coming for decades, and yet they’ve done nothing to increase or maintain supply.

Others believe the RWSA feigned surprise at the water shortage. Henry Weinscheck, for one, thinks public officials are the ones standing on the hose, intentionally blocking our water.

“Was it bad planning, or a determined effort? That’s the question,” says Weinscheck, who owns Express Car Wash on Route 29. “The water shortage was not ineptitude. It was deliberate.”

Granted, Weinscheck has never been a cheerleader for the City. He’s a member of the North Charlottesville Business Association (comprising mostly people who own land or operate businesses on 29N), a group most famous for unilaterally supporting the Route 29 Western Bypass. Weinscheck himself defied City Council’s order on August 23 to shut down all commercial car washes.

“It was a knee-jerk reaction [by Council] to get people’s attention,” he claims. “It didn’t do much to reduce water consumption.”

City public works director Judith Mueller admits she doesn’t know how much water was saved by closing car washes. “People understood that car washes were not a good use of our drinking water,” she says. “No one ever called me to complain about it.” Most car washes, she says, imported their own water and reopened.

The notion that some leaders of the RWSA have conspired to limit water and stifle growth is popular among business owners, real estate developers and others for whom growth means profit. Their official house organ, The Daily Progress, parroted the sentiment in a series of editorials last month. But it’s not solely the usual pro-growth advocates who express skepticism about the RWSA.

“It’s all about keeping people out,” says Stephanie White, a UVA-trained climatologist who works at Perrin Quarles Associates. “It’s outrageous.”

Indisputably, there was a drought. White, however, points out that local reservoirs, including Sugar Hollow and Ragged Mountain, were full in July, and it took merely a couple of dry summer months to drain them. Drought or no drought, she says, such a dry snap could happen anytime. “In the summer, the weather is much more volatile,” she says.

The skeptics have some pretty damning evidence on their side. It’s been established that for 30 years the RWSA knew demand would skyrocket. Yet only now, with doomsday on the horizon, did the RWSA move to expand the region’s supply with what most observers characterize as a “Band-Aid” solution.

The RWSA denies any conspiracy––to a point. The current Chairman of the Board, Rich Collins, along with former chairs Treva Cromwell, Francis Fife and Jack Marshall, this year founded Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population (ASAP). They called for a debate on how to slow and ultimately cap regional growth. Collins and Cromwell say the chairs have never forced their agenda on other board members. But Collins admits he likes a soapbox.

“I look at my role as a voice for stewardship of the watershed,” says Collins. “To say that growth is a holy grail is absurd, and to be concerned merely with supply at all costs is a short-sighted vision for the future. We don’t have unlimited supply. We need to include growth in our planning. I use the pulpit that’s there, for good or bad, to highlight these ideas.”

Conspiracy or not, water shortages disturb our quality of life and can seriously dampen the region’s economic prosperity. The RWSA blamed the drought, but rainfall wasn’t actually the issue. The drought merely exposed our real problems, which now lie in the open like dead tress strewn across the crusty mud at the bottom of an empty reservoir.

Water provides; growth consumes––when the two balance, there’s no problem. The RWSA’s dams and pipes have restrained and shaped the Watershed to fulfill dreams of unlimited growth. For the past 30 years, however, Charlottesville and Albemarle have failed to take water into account as the region grew.

The drought just proved something the RWSA should have already known, that water can destroy as well as create. Similarly, the deluge didn’t resolve the conflict between growth and water. It just submerged the tension once again—for now.

 

Water fight

The simple, miraculous liquid from which all life springs has been the source of some bitter disputes between Charlottesville and Albemarle. On the surface, the arguments seem to be about land and money. In truth, the real font of City-County tensions has most often been the question of water.

Before a revenue-sharing agreement reached in the 1990s helped the two jurisdictions fairly divide tax revenue, the question of who pays for water was answered by land grabs and courtroom battles. Pre-RWSA, the City built water infrastructure (such as reservoirs, treatment plants and pipes) for both localities. To help pay for those costs, Charlottesville would occasionally annex portions of Albemarle where business had boomed—along the water and sewer lines—thus bringing more property tax revenue into the City. Annexations had to be approved by a judge, and these hearings, which the City almost always won, were bitter, say those who recall them. The courts’ reasoning was that since Charlottesville incurred the cost of growth, it should reap the spoils.

After losing a particularly vicious annexation battle for businesses on 29N in 1961, Albemarle grew tired of Charlottesville triumphantly using water to justify territorial incursions. The County wanted to build its own network of pipes and treatment plants, and it applied for federal funds to do so. But when the State bureaucrats who doled out the cash saw that Albemarle wanted to duplicate City services, the Commonwealth withheld support for funding until the two jurisdictions learned how to play nice.

“They said the City and County share a common resource in the Rivanna River,” recalls Bill Brent, director of the Albemarle County Service Authority since 1971. “It wasn’t in our best interest––or the river’s––to compete.”

In 1972, the two jurisdictions created a corporation, the RWSA, with a dual mission: provide water and sewer services for the expected growth rate, as determined by City Council and the Board of Supervisors; and protect the Watershed. The RWSA is led by a board of directors (comprising two City officials, two from the County, and a non-affiliated, appointed chairman) as well as an independent executive director.

“Some referred to it as a shotgun wedding,” says Brent. The RWSA’s marriage of convenience solved long-running spats between the two jurisdictions. The epic struggle between water and growth, however, has proved far too complicated for any single agency.

Those two goals clashed soon after a brief, cooperative honeymoon during which the RWSA succeeded in vastly improving the region’s sewage treatment capabilities.

Before the RWSA, most of Albemarle didn’t have water and sewer lines. County leaders tried to make do without them, allowing developers to build subdivisions using well water and septic tank systems.

“You could see a water crisis coming,” says Peggy King, then president of the local League of Women Voters.

That’s because just beneath Charlottesville’s Downtown Mall and a few feet below the County’s spectacular rural vistas, local geology is a hostile foundation for big developments. Under a layer of topsoil and finely crushed stone, there’s a chaotic pile of impermeable rock laced with crevices. The only groundwater the land can contain is what fills up these cracks. In Western Albemarle, groundwater is especially scarce.

“I think a scientist told us the geology was confused,” says Gerald Fisher, chairman of the County Board of Supervisors between 1976 and 1987.

Local geology makes it nearly impossible to discern whether wells for subdivisions like West Leigh will last three years or 30. During the drought of ‘76, that and other subdivisions ran dry, and the RWSA had to truck in water for several weeks.

To make things worse some residents woke up to raw sewage on their lawns––Albemarle’s geology also makes it hard to tell whether wastewater from septic systems will filter deep into the ground.

“The residents eventually had to pay to get connected to the water and sewer systems, at a considerable expense to them,” says Fisher.

 

Turning off the tap

In 1976, drought brought water shortages and government-imposed restrictions to Charlottesville for the first time in recent memory. Newspapers reported that the crisis made people aware of water’s “true value.” Some people wondered how much more growth Albemarle could tolerate. The RWSA promised to take action.

Sound familiar?

When that drought hit, the government was already using its control of the water supply to manipulate free enterprise. “We never talked about limiting the supply of water,” says former County Supervisor Fisher. “We talked about limiting where it would be delivered. At first, the Albemarle County Sewer Authority would hook up services wherever they could, and that caused sprawl. Then we tried to set some limits.”

Albemarle made baby steps toward integrating water and land-use planning. By the mid-’70s, officials knew the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir was rapidly filling with sediment trapped by dams (according to current data, the SFR can safely provide 16 million gallons of water per day; by 2050, sedimentation will reduce that to 5 million gallons daily). At the time, experts believed that erosion caused by development was exacerbating the siltation process.

So between 1975 and 1980, the County Supervisors passed ordinances designed to protect the Rivanna River from the effects of development. They enforced erosion control methods and put most of the public land around the reservoir into conservation easement. Supervisors also down-zoned all the rural land in the Rivanna Watershed, about one-third of Albemarle, drastically reducing the County’s supply of commercial-ready real estate.

Developers revolted. In those years, Fisher says, developers fought the new rules with lawsuits, and some took litigation to ridiculous extremes.

One developer sued every individual supervisor personally, for $1 million each, says Fisher. Another developer sued for libel several members of the League of Women Voters and Citizens for Albemarle, two groups that had opposed development projects during public hearings. None of the developers won, says Fisher, but the experience was expensive and traumatic nevertheless.

“Trying to hold a public meeting at that time was agonizing,” says Fisher. “You’d have the developer up there speaking, and all these people with clenched teeth and intensity in their faces. But they were afraid to say anything. That’s a period I hope we don’t have to relive.”

“The question then was pretty much the same as it is now: How many people can we support?” says the League of Women Voters’ Peggy King. “Looking out for the good of the overall public went against the grain for a lot of locals.”

But in the ‘70s, no-growth or slow-growth voices were muted by RWSA promises to build a new reservoir on Buck Mountain Creek, a waterway originating in the northern Albemarle mountains, then flowing down through Free Union to the South Fork Rivanna River. Numerous studies said Buck Mountain was a prime spot for a dam.

After arguing for months on how to divide the project cost, the City and County settled on a surcharge system. New water customers still pay a $200 surcharge to cover the $6 million of land RWSA bought along Buck Mountain Creek.

Treva Cromwell, who chaired the RWSA between 1978 and 1986, said at the time that the new reservoir could not be developed overnight—and she didn’t think that should be a problem. After all, studies predicted the existing water supply could meet demand until 2012; the RWSA predicted it would take eight to 10 years to build the Buck Mountain facility. They were so confident that when Cromwell retired from the RWSA, she received a plaque engraved with an image of the Buck Mountain reservoir.

In the early 1990s, the RWSA began the long process of applying for State and federal permission to build the reservoir. In the ‘60s, it only took four years to build the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir. By the 1990s, however, State and federal regulators at the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality and the Environmental Protection Agency were no longer keen on new reservoirs.

“The regulatory agencies reflected the new national mood, that you don’t build dams on creeks and change the hydrology cycle,” says Cromwell.

On top of that cultural shift, in the mid-’90s, scientists discovered an endangered species, the James River spinymussel, living in Buck Mountain Creek. The rare invertebrate effectively killed the Buck Mountain Reservoir.

“The DEQ said they wouldn’t permit a reservoir until we had tried everything else first,” says Cromwell. “If there ever was a shock that went through the community, it was when we couldn’t build the reservoir.”

So the RWSA hired new consultants to figure out the best alternatives to a new reservoir. By then, the doomsday scenario was moved up to about 2000, when consultants predicted water demand would eclipse supply. The consultants, Vanasse Hangen Brustlin, Inc., further predicted that by 2050, the County’s growth rate and the reservoirs’ siltation rate would combine to produce a water shortfall in the neighborhood of 12 million gallons per day.

But the RWSA had other problems, namely the Ivy Landfill, which had polluted nearby groundwater. It needed to be closed and monitored at high cost to the RWSA and, ultimately, to taxpayers.

“Landfill issues were taking so much of Rivanna’s time for so many years,” says former City Councilor David Toscano. “Council was not as engaged in water issues as it should have been. But, until a crisis emerges, people aren’t focused on it very much.”

 

An unchanging tide

It’s said that there are no new problems in government––just the same issues appearing and disappearing in the public’s field of vision. Conflicts between development and resources have been around a long time, but as Toscano implies, only in times of shortage do people pay heed.

The recent crisis reminded us, once again, that water is not unlimited. It also showed that people can work together to protect a common resource. For that reason, the experience was valuable, says Downtown restaurateur Tony LaBua.

“The City did exactly as it should have done,” he says. “People really stepped up to the plate.” LaBua says that after the deluge he’s keeping the waterless hand sanitizer in his bathroom at Chap’s. The posters––”If it’s yellow let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down”––are staying up indefinitely, too.

“It’s nothing a little incense can’t take care of,” LaBua says.

People’s willingness to conserve water is certainly part of the drought story. On August 23, when the City and County first passed mandatory water restrictions, the municipal water system used about 12.5 million gallons per day; by October 25, consumption had dropped below 7 million gallons per day. Water officials laud the public for their efforts while simultaneously “rewarding” them with hiked water rates––from $3 per 1,000 gallons last summer to $7.48 per 1,000 gallons in November.

“People feel like they’re being punished,” says leading City Republican Jon Bright, who keeps close tabs on public sentiment at the Downtown branch of his Spectacle Shop business. “I’ve heard so many people say that we’ve sucked it up, we did our part, and now we’re being punished.”

The rate characterizes RWSA’s Catch-22. Because all the Authority’s money comes from water sales, when people conserve water, the RWSA has to raise rates to keep up its revenue.

The money is also helping to pay for the $13.2 million, three-part plan to dredge sediment from the South Fork Rivanna, raise the dam by four feet and re-open a pumping station on the Mechums River—a plan widely viewed as a quick but temporary fix. RWSA Executive Director Lawrence Tropea says raising the dam will take at least two years. The pump station should be open by next summer. There’s no telling how long it may take to clean out some 70,000 cubic feet of silt. Right now, the RWSA is waiting for the Service Authority’s Bill Brent and the City’s Public Works Director, Judith Meuller, to hash out a cost-sharing scheme.

Clearly, the deluge hasn’t solved our water crisis. Groundwater, which feeds the streams that flow into our reservoirs, is still below normal. More significantly, there are no clear solutions to the long-term conflict between growth and water.

Any government efforts to slow down growth would be “disastrous,” says Leigh Middleditch, an attorney for McGuire Woods who serves on a water advisory committee. “Growth is inevitable, and managing growth should not be dependent on the water supply. What’s the best approach beyond these temporary fixes? Anything is going to be terribly expensive. The community’s got to debate these things.”

RWSA Chair Collins agrees with Middleditch’s call for a public debate. He believes it would be best to talk about limiting demand as well as increasing supply. Given the State and federal reluctance to approve new reservoirs, building new water impoundments won’t be easy; nor will it be simple to stop growth, either.

“Anyone can come, but not everyone can come,” says Collins. “At some point, we’re going to have to plan and seek the optimum level of population.”

These debates may go on for another 30 years. But by then, water, in its own soft way, will have attacked Albemarle’s solid trend of human and economic growth. In the past 30 years, Charlottesville and Albemarle haven’t made much progress resolving their liquid arguments. That trend likely could continue if the recent deluge dilutes the public water consciousness, which lately made everyone so proud.

Two years ago, Charlottesville carpenter Louise Finger packed her tool belt and sized up a new project. She put aside her usual routine of building swanky homes for Central Virginia’s well-to-do and embarked on what she says is a more rewarding path: constructing no-frills public structures for communities in need.

Ilove that kind of work, but day after day of building high-end homes for people who already have another home wasn’t very fulfilling,” Finger says. “Building a medical clinic for a community that doesn’t have one is more valuable to me than building something else for lots of money.”

With that attitude in mind, two years ago Finger flew to Fort Liberté, Haiti, and spent 10 days lending her craftsmanship to an ongoing medical clinic project. She worked with more than two dozen Haitian laborers hauling loads of concrete in a bucket brigade, looking for lumber in a fairly desolate land, and bending and reusing nails due to the lack of available resources. She loved it, and in the end felt that she had used her skills to produce something desperately needed. That’s the whole design of Building Goodness.

Officially incorporated in 1999, the Building Goodness Foundation assists community-based construction projects in Third World countries by providing planning and implementation services, as well as on-site expertise. Founded by a group of Charlottesville builders eager to give back, local contractors, craftsmen and surveyors now put their years of experience building high-end houses in neighborhoods like Farmington and Glenmore toward figuring out how to build a hillside school in a remote part of, say, Guatemala. And in addition to five current projects in two different countries, the group has finally started to bring those lessons back home by helping Charlottesville’s needy as well.

 

The idea for Building Goodness came, in part, from Jack Stoner, a founding partner of construction firm Alexander Nicholson. Stoner was doing well for himself in the late ’90s. His business worked on more than $60 million worth of construction projects in the past 20 years, including such community landmarks as Kegler’s, the massive ACAC facility at Albemarle Square and the new Catholic school on Rio Road. His firm also works on ritzy houses in some of the area’s most elite subdivisions; clients come to Alexander Nicholson with money, they make it happen.

It was lucrative, but it wasn’t enough. “You reach a point in your life where you say, ‘Is this the point of my existence?’” Stoner explains.

But growing dissatisfaction didn’t immediately lead to a new way of life for Stoner. Six years ago, Lawson Drinkard—a former partner in the influential VMDO architectural firm and a one-time director of the Virginia Student Aid Foundation—asked Stoner to join him on a mission trip to Haiti. Stoner initially declined due to a heavy project load at Alexander Nicholson, but once the projects fell through or were put on hold, Stoner was on a plane heading toward perhaps the most desolate country in the Western hemisphere.

Stoner was dumbfounded by what he found. A near total lack of stability and infrastructure was further starving an already famished country. Charities with good intentions and funding struggled to turn the tide amid limited local resources and facilities.

“There aren’t any general contractors in these areas,” Stoner says.

Upon returning to the United States, Stoner was visited by the big idea: Send teams of Charlottesville contractors to Haiti to build a compound in L’Acul for one of these charities, Haiti Fund—a network of churches and private individuals across the United States that sponsored certain communities on the island nation.

Alexander Nicholson was one of the initial firms to sponsor its employees for the project, paying to send a group to the island and maintaining their wages while there. It went so well—and, according to Stoner, built morale and pride among Alexander Nicholson’s crew—that like-minded contractors decided to charter an organization to make further projects a reality. Other contracting firms that participated in individual projects include Ace Contracting, Inc., Greer & Associates, Central Virginia Waterproofing, Safeway Electric and Sugar Hollow Builders.

“Most people seemed to think they got more out of it than they put into it,” Stoner says.

The positive reactions encouraged him to take the idea and turn it into Building Goodness. With a focus on building structures for the general community, the group works with charities that pay for the materials and organize on-site manpower, while Building Goodness and its member firms provide planning, implementation and on-site expertise.

Stoner has been pleasantly surprised by the willingness to get involved by members of the Charlottesville community. There are lessons to be learned from other communities, he says, as well as ideas about community that can be exported abroad.

“There’s a sense of community in Haiti where if you have a bowl of rice, you’re going to share it,” he says. “But there’s not a great sense of community on the political level as far as being able to band together to improve something.”

Stoner banded together with a friend and former religious adviser to improve Building Goodness. He asked Jay Sanderford, an ordained Presbyterian minister and former youth minister at the First Presbyterian Church on Park Street, to come on as executive director of the foundation after he returned to town in 1999.

Now, Sanderford says, “I don’t have a congregation, but I have lots of partners in building an organization from the ground up. So that’s a pretty exciting challenge.” Long-term, the foundation hopes to export its plan and form satellite groups in other communities, although the local chapter is the only one in operation so far.

Sanderford spends most of his time developing the organization by seeking donors and interested and craftsmen for future trips. Area donors like Mountain Lumber, Monarch Concrete and L&D Association Plumbing help to fund the group’s $125,000 budget, while a string of suppliers, like Better Living, Gaston & Wyatt, and H.T. Ferron Concrete Suppliers, that the builders deal with in their regular line of work provide supplies and logistical assistance for work sites.

Sanderford also writes grants for individual projects and helps organize trips. Since its founding, as many as 50 people have participated in one or more of 19 total trips to Haiti, Guatemala, Bolivia and Nicaragua; so far the group has concentrated on works in Central and South America and the Caribbean since those areas are more cost-effective and accessible than other global locales. Sanderford estimates that a total of 150 people have been involved in some way or keep in touch with the group’s progress.

 

Enoch Snyder became heavily involved with the group. Snyder grew up around missionaries in a small town in eastern West Virginia. In high school, he took an exchange trip to Costa Rica. Little surprise, then, when he threw himself headlong into helping to develop Building Goodness shortly after taking a job as a project manager at Alexander Nicholson.

Snyder’s main contribution to the foundation has been advance scouting. So far, the project manager has taken six trips to four countries (Haiti, Guatemala, Nicaragua and Bolivia), and plans to lead another trip to Guatemala in January. Unlike many of the craftsmen who travel under the Building Goodness banner, Snyder doesn’t always have a group project on his plate. In Bolivia, for example, Snyder performed consulting work for another group building a hospital for Mission of Hope, Bolivia, a Charlottesville-based religious non-profit..

Scouting projects is a natural extension of his job in Charlottesville, but Snyder says that monitoring the intricate details of stateside projects pales compared to the logistical nightmares of building even simple structures abroad; there are no Allied Concrete trucks backing up to work sites in Haiti, for instance. For that reason, Building Goodness has on occasion turned down solicitations from charities they deem to be disorganized or naive.

“We’ll feel them out by asking things like, ‘What’s your 10-year plan?’” Snyder says.

But while planning out and executing projects can be difficult and time-consuming—combined, Snyder spends a full month a year traveling, meeting, planning and designing just for Building Goodness—he says the reward is great in the human sense.

“Clients around here will thank you, but their expectations are so high that it can be hard to please them,” he says. “Then you can go to Guatemala for a week to work on a school building and be overwhelmed by the peoples’ response.”

Project managers aren’t the only ones who benefit from this interaction; the craftsmen reap the biggest benefits from the exchange.

“Carpentry skills aren’t really valued here. Carpenters are kind of second-class citizens behind doctors and lawyers, for instance,” Snyder says. “But if you go to a Third World country, you’re at the top of the food chain if you can work well with your hands. These craftsmen come back with a whole new perspective on their lives.”

But Building Goodness doesn’t just go to a community to look for what it feels is a problem and then try to fix it. Rather, Snyder says the group typically waits for a community or a charity to come forward with an identified need, one that can be met by a mixing of American expertise and local elbow grease.

“We like to enlist a lot of community labor because of the obvious benefits to the process,” he says.

Sometimes, identified needs can come as a complete surprise to a visiting American. For example, Snyder recalls a project the foundation did in a bayside town in Haiti. The town was built on top of a hill; at the base was its water supply and the home of an elderly woman regarded as a community leader. When the Building Goodness team arrived, the Haitians informed them that they preferred the group construct a set of concrete steps linking the two locales. They put away ideas of grander construction and helped the locals build their vision.

Snyder says his experiences have helped him to not be blind to other cultures. “You are the same person, in better circumstances, than the people you meet over there,” he says.

 

Carpenter Louise Finger learned that lesson during her time working with Building Goodness in Haiti, and more. For her it was a life-changing experience, she says—not just in some abstract, spiritual sense, but in how she lives her day-to-day life.

After returning from Haiti, Finger revamped her priorities. She no longer does contract work and is only a part-time carpenter. Instead, Finger works part-time for the Department of Forestry in the stream-restoration field.

“I probably do more carpentry work for charity than I do for income,” she says.

While the Haiti experience left her thirsting for more opportunities to use her skills to serve others in need, these days Finger donates her time and expertise to local projects. Whereas Building Goodness’ overseas projects advance slowly and take lots of planning, Finger can organize and get a project going around here with minimal planning and expense. Some of her opportunities have come through organizations like Habitat for Humanity, but others stem from Building Goodness’ budding local projects team.

That local program may work to placate skeptics who argue that while Building Goodness’ overseas projects fill a need, there are plenty of people in and around Charlottesville who could use a community center or better medical facilities, too. And while the organization has yet to work on any major public facilities in the area, it is starting to make its presence known through private works.

One such local project in late October led Finger and five other Building Goodness members to a house in North Garden that was in desperate need of attention. The Albemarle Housing Improvement Program (one of the organizations Building Goodness has worked with locally, as well as the Jefferson Area Board on Aging and Christmas in April) had the house in mind for a renovation but couldn’t get the approvals lined up. “We weren’t constrained by their funding limitations,” Finger says.

The result: The local craftsmen ripped off the house’s porch, replaced all 12 windows, and poured and placed a cement stoop to help the older woman who lived there come and go more easily. Not bad for a Saturday.

“We could do a lot around here in one day if we had six to eight people who would dedicate their days,” she says. Sanderford says the group has done three such monthly projects, called craft service days, in which Building Goodness rehabilitates dilapidated private homes referred to them by community agencies. The most recent craft service day occurred on November 23 in the Greenwood community. The local approach will be a growing part of the Building Goodness strategy—thus closing the circle on Stoner’s initial idea with benefits being felt right here in our backyard.

Finger says Charlottesville tends to have an excellent sense of community, but that the area’s residents have to guard against facets of their lifestyle that can tear down that mutual caring.

“All in all, it’s a wealthy area,” she says. “With wealth, I think we tend to let go of the importance of depending on others, or looking out for others. You’re less likely to call out to others for help and support, which in turn can make you less mindful of others’ needs.”

But for Finger anyway, her Haiti experience has created a new community here for her—one of friends from different backgrounds whom she might never have met otherwise.

“I didn’t know a soul, and now I’ve met some of the coolest people,” she says. “I’ve definitely made some great friends.”

Yes, he says finally. That will work.