The Laricobius beetle is small, but its impact on protecting the area’s towering hemlock trees could be large. Image by National Park Service.
On a warm day early in spring, a group of volunteers led by the National Park Service is surveying Sugar Hollow Reservoir, hoping to find a new resident living on hemlocks in the forest. They hold broad, white sheets under a tree and knock the needles with a long stick. What they’re looking for is so tiny that they need to use magnifying glasses to identify it.
Laricobius osakensis is a dark brown beetle between 2 and 3 millimeters long. It may be small, but its impact on the forest could prove to be quite large, particularly for the area’s towering hemlock trees. The beetle preys exclusively on hemlock woolly adelgid, an aphid-like insect that has been ravaging hemlock trees up and down the East Coast. The hemlock woolly adelgid has no natural predators in the area. So, in an effort to control the pest’s population, biologists with Shenandoah National Park released 500 Laricobius beetles at Sugar Hollow Reservoir in 2017.
“We call them Larry beetles for short,” says Rolf Gubler, a biologist with the park service. “As long as there’s hemlock infested with HWA, those little Larry beetles will disperse and find hemlock that’s infested. It has to be infested so they have a food source.”
Larry has been introduced to several sites in the park after being studied, and eventually reared, at Virginia Tech.
“We have over 13 different release sites throughout the park,” Gubler says. “We’ve released over 6,000 beetles since 2015, working closely with Virginia Tech and their entomology department.”
Scott Salom, director of entomology at Virginia Tech, first found and collected Larry beetles in British Columbia. Later, a Japanese source was found and started to be released in 2012. Salom says the Japanese version is preferred now to limit genetic variability in the area.
Larry’s prey, the hemlock woolly adelgid, also came to the area from Japan. It was initially found in an ornamental garden in Richmond in 1951. Shenandoah was the first park to encounter an infestation in 1988. A few years later, the park’s hemlock trees were rapidly declining and eventually dying.
“During that time, we lost a number of hemlocks,” Gubler says. “Hemlocks are typically found along streams, in riparian areas, or on northeast facing slopes, moister slopes, so they’re not that common. They were less than 1 percent of the cover type. But we saw this precipitous decline and mortality. By 2002, 2003, the park had lost anywhere between 90 to 95 percent of its hemlocks.”
Gubler says the decline looks like a gradual withering in the crown of the tree over the course of several years. If you stood under the branches looking up, over time you would see more and more light as the leaves turn yellow and fall.
The insect attaches to the base of the leaf where it meets the wood and penetrates the tree with a long, straw-like needle.
“The adelgid is sucking the sap, the sugars and the starches, out of the tree,” Gubler says. “It’s making it difficult for the tree to transport nutrients and water.”
Shade is actually a crucial ingredient that eastern hemlocks add to the forest ecosystem. Its tentlike cone of dense foliage creates a pool of shade around it.
“The hemlock creates this unique, cool microclimate that has a year-round canopy,” Gubler says. It creates cool, moist conditions that are important to the preservation of a number of different species.”
That includes the eastern brook trout, the black-throated green warbler, the red squirrel, and many others. Eastern hemlocks are considered a foundational species, meaning they occur in the mature stages of the forest, when the ecosystem is at its most complex and a wealth of species rely on ecological factors that have grown over time.
“They’re the mothership,” Salom says. “They’re the dominant species among a diverse collection of species. Another term would be a climax species. They’re the species that a lot of other plants and animals rely on, and they are critical in a lot of riparian habitat.”
Hemlocks can live for hundreds of years, which means they significantly shape the character of the forest around them, and their loss leaves a giant hole.
“We had 300- to 350-year-old hemlocks at Limberlost Trail,” Gubler says. “There were 100 old-growth trees in there, just beautiful trees that were 3-and-a-half, 4-foot wide at the base. We lost all of those due to HWA.”
The hemlock woolly adelgid is hard to control because its population can rebound quickly. In fact, extreme cold events in winter have killed up to 99 percent of the adelgid’s population in the past, but they built back up in a couple of years.
The adelgid population goes through two reproductive cycles each year. A spring generation hatches in April, matures in mid-June, and lays eggs. Those eggs hatch in early July, go dormant around August, and reactivate around the middle of October. That winter generation then lays eggs in March for the spring cycle to start again.
Larry beetles are active in the winter too and go dormant in the summer. “So, they’re really well adapted to their prey,” Salom says.
The beetles are effective in controlling the winter generation of adelgids, but since they’re dormant in the summer, that leaves a gap where the spring generation is able to rebound.
“Virginia Tech and others have always wanted to look for a complementary biocontrol to address that feeding gap,” Gubler says. Other potential predators are being studied to fill that gap, most notably the silver fly. But the park is looking to Larry as the primary biocontrol for the hemlock woolly adelgid.
Fortunately, there’s a good chance that Larry will make a home in Shenandoah as a protector of hemlocks. After examining the sheets, the group of surveyors counts 21 adults among their samples.
Gubler deems that a success. “We’re only sampling a small percentage of that hemlock tree’s foliage, so that’s pretty good,” he says. “If we’re recovering that many adults, that’s pretty decent.”
The Southern Environmental Law Center’s Senior Attorney Nate Benforado is leading the nonprofit’s campaign to return Virginia to the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative. Photo by Tristan Williams.
By Laura Vogel
The Southern Environmental Law Center has fought—and won—some mighty environmental battles in its 35 years of existence. Right now, though, it’s in the midst of one of its biggest legal challenges: Pulling Virginia away from the brink of leaving the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative for good, after Governor Glenn Youngkin encouraged the state Air Pollution Control Board to repeal the regulation.
RGGI (sometimes pronounced “Reggie”) is a 2009 Northern creation that was making great headway in the South. The first group of states to join the greenhouse-gas-fighting, regional intergovernmental market included Connecticut, Delaware, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont.
As a program, RGGI works by mandating a cap on CO2 emissions from fossil fuel-powered stations within each states’ borders by making facilities buy allowances equal to the pollution they produce. The funds collected by RGGI then go toward investments in their communities: Residents get help with home improvements like weatherization, bill assistance for lower-income households, and other clean-energy benefits.
A study by the Clean Air Task Force on public-health benefits of the program found that the transition to cleaner energy in RGGI-member states saves hundreds of lives, prevents thousands of asthma attacks, and lowers citizens’ medical expenses by billions of dollars. As well, more than $6 billion has been raised in RGGI states from sales of CO2 allowances.
But Virginia’s Air Pollution Control Board removed the commonwealth from RGGI in June 2023. That August, the SELC filed a petition on behalf of four clients challenging the action. In a November 3 ruling, the Fairfax Circuit Court dismissed three of those clients—Faith Alliance for Climate Solutions, Appalachian Voices, and Virginia Interfaith Power & Light—and transferred the case to Floyd County, where the SELC’s fourth client, the Association of Energy Conservation Professionals, is headquartered. Now, the pending state budget proposal includes a provision that would require Virginia to rejoin RGGI. At press time, Youngkin had not made a decision on the budget.
For the SELC, these are promising steps forward. Senior attorney Nate Benforado, who is the leader of the nonprofit’s initiative to get Virginia back into RGGI, says, “We are pleased with [the court’s] decision, which allows this case to move forward and will ensure the administration’s decision to leave RGGI—which we have repeatedly alleged is unlawful—will be reviewed by a court. We look forward to the next steps in this action and will work as expeditiously as possible to get Virginia back in RGGI.”
Some may wonder why the Youngkin administration is against what seems to be an overwhelmingly positive environmental program. When asked by C-VILLE for a statement, the governor’s press office replied with a quote from Secretary of Natural and Historic Resources Travis Voyles, who says, “RGGI functions as a regressive tax that does not do anything to incentivize the reduction of emissions in Virginia. Our state Air Pollution Control Board has concluded that Virginia is not required to be in RGGI and that the citizens of Virginia should not be forced to pay higher energy bills to support the previous administration’s failed programs. The Office of the Attorney General confirmed the state Air Pollution Control Board has the legal authority to take action on the regulatory proposal using the full regulatory process—and the board voted to do just that—furthering Virginians’ access to a reliable, affordable, clean, and growing supply of power. Virginians will see a lower energy bill in due time because we are withdrawing from RGGI through a regulatory process.”
Cale Jaffe, the director of the University of Virginia’s Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic, filed an amicus brief for Virginia Clinicians for Climate Action and the Virginia Energy Efficiency Council in support of RGGI in Virginia in the Fairfax hearings. When questioned about the Youngkin administration’s repeal of RGGI, he says, “It’s impossible for me to conjecture what their motives are.” When asked if he believes SELC and other stakeholders will reinstate RGGI, Jaffe says, “There’s a really strong argument in the law that participation in RGGI is in the Virginia code, which makes it more than just an easy-to-repeal legislation. It was codified in statute, a legislation that had passed both houses and was signed by the governor, not just a simple law that a past governor [Democrat Ralph Northam] approved and the next one can repeal.”
Cale Jaffe, director of UVA’s Environmental Law and Community Engagement Clinic, filed an amicus brief in support of RGGI. Photo by University of Virginia Law School.
The positive effects of RGGI are quantifiable. “The science and the policy are clear: We need to reduce carbon pollution, and generating power is the largest source of this pollution in our atmosphere,” Benforado explains. “RGGI gives flexibility to power-plant owners. It’s not micromanaging, it’s giving a market-based solution to reigning in greenhouse gas. In RGGI’s first two years in Virginia—we joined in 2020—carbon emissions from power plants dropped a whopping 22 percent.”
The state of Virginia gives about half the proceeds of RGGI fees to communities along coasts and rivers that face the threat of flooding. The remaining 50 percent goes to new energy-efficient, affordable housing, reducing pollution and lowering utility bills for families—most of whom are lower-income.
“Most of our effort is aimed at monopoly utility companies, like Dominion and Appalachian Power,” says Benforado, “as they produce 70 percent of carbon emissions. RGGI is focused on pollution going down, steadily reducing emissions over time. Since we’re in active legislation, I can’t really go into the defense; the Youngkin administration says it’s not working. It obviously is. This is a very successful policy tool, bringing down emissions, bringing in cleaner energy.”
When asked how RGGI is benefiting the Charlottesville area, Benforado excitedly talks about the energy-efficient redevelopment of Kindlewood (formerly Friendship Court), the downtown low-income housing complex. “One of the really cool things that RGGI money has done for our town is helped fund the complete renewal of this community-owned property,” he says. “The Piedmont Housing Alliance was able to use RGGI proceeds to make new units with super-efficient HVAC systems as well as weatherizing and updating the systems in older housing. So, instead of, say, $100 a month in utilities, a tenant may now pay as little as $10.”
Set just a few blocks southeast of the SELC headquarters, Kindlewood was initially a Section-8 complex. First built as a 12-acre master block after the previous African American neighborhood fabric was erased during “urban renewal,” the community has largely remained economically and physically isolated from the rest of the city, but the Piedmont Housing Alliance is working to change that. The 150-unit structure has recently undergone new-unit construction and energy-efficiency upgrades funded by RGGI capital.
Sunshine Mathon, executive director of the Piedmont Housing Alliance, is the leader of the Kindlewood renovation and new construction. “We are driven to promote deep energy efficiency and affordable housing benefiting lower-income Charlottesville residents,” he says. “For about 20 years, we have worked diligently to highlight the good stories and impact of RGGI funds.”
Sunshine Mathon, executive director of the Piedmont Housing Alliance, says RGGI proceeds have helped to build Kindlewood. Photo by Eze Amos.
“Each state has its own control over its RGGI funds—here, 50 percent goes into HIEE [Housing Innovations in Energy Efficiency], so a lot goes into weatherization for low-income houses,” Mathon continues. “One of the beautiful things about RGGI is that it pairs HIEE program funding parallel with other sources. Rental projects that would be out of our reach are made possible by RGGI money. It’s a game-changer. Before Virginia officially joined RGGI we were learning about deep energy efficiency, and now we are able to put that knowledge to use for people that need it most.”
When asked about the Youngkin administration’s repeal of RGGI, Mathon says, “It doesn’t make sense. I don’t know why he did it.”
The cool office that’s cooling the planet
Started in Charlottesville in 1988 by environmental lawyer Rick Middleton, a native of Birmingham, Alabama, the SELC has always been at the forefront of environmental law in the United States. Many organizations had given up on fighting environmental injustice in the South due to its conservative politics, but SELC flourished, and grew from a small office in downtown Charlottesville to also encompass centers in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee, with over 200 employees in total. The Charlottesville office remains its headquarters, with a sprawling new modern space, and a team of over 50, just south of downtown on Garrett Street.
Apex Plaza at 120 Garrett Street is the largest mass-timber building on the East Coast. Encompassing the entire fourth floor of the building, the SELC offices are LEED Gold–certified.
The building is made of structural wood harvested from fast-growth timber, and the building is actively helping the environment: Much like a healthy tree stores carbon dioxide, one square meter of cross-laminated timber can remove approximately one ton of the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere. Additionally, the building’s 875 solar panels produce approximately 364,000 kWh per year of electricity, the equivalent of 88 tons of recycling being saved from landfills.
The SELC offices at Apex Plaza are LEED Gold-certified. Photo by Hourigan Group.
The SELC headquarters was awarded Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Gold certification in August 2022, and features progressive amenities such as bike parking, a shower and changing room, and EV charging stations. Apex Plaza was constructed on an underutilized lot in Charlottesville, just a five-minute walk from downtown’s existing amenities, helping to reduce sprawl and promote dense, multi-use neighborhoods.
During construction, emphasis was put on reducing waste and repurposing materials. To that end, more than 60 percent of the furnishings, by cost, were reused or salvaged and contractors diverted more than 70 percent of their waste from the landfill. Recycling stations for paper, cardboard, plastics, aluminum cans and metals, batteries, and e-waste are distributed throughout the space to continue minimizing what is sent to landfills.
Other more subtle design choices with a green impact include window placement to maximize natural light, and toilets, faucets, and dishwashers all chosen for their efficient use of water.
Additional features contributing to the office’s LEED status are hydration stations to avoid single-use water bottles, sensors that turn lights out when a room isn’t being used, compost collection, and power sourced from solar panels.
The Wood Frog, with a call that’s similar to a turkey’s, is one of several species monitored by FrogWatch. File photo.
Members of central Virginia’s FrogWatch are putting their ears to the ground and leaping into action.
The FrogWatch program—started by the Akron Zoo—monitors trends in frog and toad populations by training volunteers on the calls of local species. The central Virginia chapter of FrogWatch is run collaboratively by the Thomas Jefferson Soil and Water Conservation District and the Rivanna Conservation Alliance, and is starting strong with its first training session at full capacity.
“The Central Virginia FrogWatch chapter has been in the planning stages for nearly a year now,” says TJSWCD Environmental Programs Coordinator Courtney Harlow-Humphreys. “We are thrilled with the local interest in frogs and toads and expect our chapter to grow in the next few years as we are able to offer more trainings.”
While there are more than 6,000 species of frogs and toads worldwide, area amphibian auditors will focus on learning the calls of 15 locally prevalent species, including the Wood Frog, Fowler’s Toad, and Pickerel Frog. By monitoring the tiny creatures from February to August each year, researchers learn more about local environmental and ecological health.
Frogs and toads are key indicators of environmental trends and dangers, due to their highly permeable skin and amphibious nature. Their famously slimy skin easily absorbs bacteria, chemicals, and other contaminants, making frogs and toads some of the first to be impacted by changes to the environment.
“If frogs and toads are absent, it could tell us that there may be problems with the water quality in that area,” says Harlow-Humphreys. “Frogs and toads serve two basic important functions in the ecosystem—controlling insect populations and sustaining predators. They are a vital piece of the food web and are necessary to keep it in check.”
Though Central Virginia FrogWatch just started collecting data, Harlow-Humphreys is enthusiastic about both the group’s future and research contributions. “We are excited to start monitoring sites throughout Charlottesville and the surrounding area so that we can get an idea of what our current local populations look like, as well as how they might change over time,” she says.
The environmentalist says she has already heard a number of species singing this season, including Eastern Cricket Frogs, Upland Chorus Frogs, and Spring Peepers. Harlow-Humphreys says volunteers will monitor the Eastern Spadefoot, a reclusive species in need of moderate conservation, according to the Virginia Wildlife Action Plan.
Beyond local implications, the data collected by FrogWatch volunteers helps researchers monitor national amphibian and environmental trends. Over 15,761 people have contributed to the national project, with more than 182,089 frog and toad observations to date. The volunteer nature of the project enables researchers to collect data on a much larger scale than otherwise possible.
Froggy friends interested in volunteering can sign up for the next Central Virginia FrogWatch training session on March 1 from 5:30 to 8:30pm.
Alexis Zeigler works the strawberry patch at Living Energy Farm, which grows the majority of its own food. Supplied photo.
In the fall of 2010, Alexis Zeigler and Debbie Piesen set out to see if they could live independent of fossil fuels. On land just north of Louisa, they started building Living Energy Farm, their vision of a self-sufficient, off-grid community with zero carbon footprint. Last March, the off-grid systems and technology they developed won honorable mention and a $5,000 prize from Empower a Billion Lives, a global engineering competition aimed at designing energy solutions for the poorest 1 billion people on the planet.
When Living Energy Farm started, Zeigler had already helped a few friends in Charlottesville build off-grid homes and worked on some engineering projects at Twin Oaks, an intentional community in Louisa County, so he had a pretty good idea of what it would take.
“All of those systems failed over time,” Zeigler says. “You buy a big battery bank, you hook it up to the inverters, and it’s expensive, it turns off, it just doesn’t work very well.”
The pair knew they couldn’t just plug in solar panels in place of natural gas and expect the system to last. Living Energy Farm needed to be designed differently to truly be sustainable. The first step was to bring their energy consumption down.
The majority of an American household’s energy consumption comes from heating and cooling. Zeigler and Piesen knew handling heat would be a key part of their design. That meant building to a community scale, since larger systems for heat storage are more energy efficient, and giving the walls 18-inch straw bale insulation.
“If you get the cooperation part right, as much shared use as you can manage, and you get the insulation right, you bring your energy use way down, and then renewable energy becomes a very powerful thing,” Zeigler says. “If you just throw renewable energy at a mainstream middle-class house, you’re doing more harm than good.”
The other key was to store solar energy in places other than batteries, which are expensive and likely to break.
Non-electric solar panels collect heat from the roof during the day and a fan blows the hot air under the floor where it is stored in the dirt and rock through the night. A water pump draws water from the well in the day and stores it in large, pressurized tanks, where it is ready to go at night. The refrigerator cools only during the day and its thick insulation keeps it cold all night.
“I can take a hot shower all year round,” Zeigler says. “It works great.”
But the breakthrough came when Zeigler realized how much more durable a direct current solar energy system is than the conventional alternating current. Everything at LEF, from the ovens to the saws, everything except lights and laptops, is powered through direct current from the solar panels with no batteries.
“Without expensive solar kits that break, I didn’t think we could keep the lights on,” Zeigler says. “I had no idea we could do what we’ve done here.”
Zeigler found that the DC system tolerates extreme voltage swings in a way that would shut down an AC system, meaning they can work on the energy supply they have, in cloudy or clear weather, and share energy among multiple devices. The devices just speed up or slow down depending on how much energy they’re getting.
“I had no idea you could do that,” Zeigler says. “With an AC motor, if you hook up an AC motor to a voltage supply that’s swinging all over the place, it’ll smoke and burn up right in front of your eyes. It won’t last 30 minutes.”
But with the DC system, Zeigler is able to run multiple motors, up to 5 horsepower, that overload his 1.5 horsepower supply, and they work just fine. Even in a heavy haze, he can run multiple devices at once. On a sunny day, he could have every device in his shop running at once.
“So, it means you can have a radically smaller system powering a bunch of different tools and it works. Can’t do that with AC,” Zeigler says. “Everything you learn as a mainstream electrician you have to unlearn with our systems. If you would have told me 15 years ago you were going to do something like this, I could have given you a very clear lecture on why it would never work.”
That system, called the Direct Drive DC Microgrid by the farm, is radically simple, affordable, and durable, Zeigler says. He believes that if more communities adopted the method, it would drastically reduce carbon output and increase energy independence.
Engineers at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, which sponsored Empower a Billion Lives, agree—at least in some measure. The farm itself is proof of the concept.
Zeigler, however, is skeptical that mainstream engineering designs are actually headed toward progress. He argues that renewable energy products are not truly sustainable solutions.
“What’s happened is, buildings are way better insulated than they were, but we’re occupying so much more square footage, cars are more efficient but we drive more, appliances are a little bit more efficient, but we use more of them. We’re not gaining any ground at all. And sustainability is not difficult. Compared to building rocket ships and flying people to the moon and building nuclear weapons and all these things we do, it’s easy. It’s a lifestyle choice.”
LEF’s major goal for its DC Microgrid is to help more communities adopt it. They’ve installed their system on Navajo/Hopi land in Arizona, communities in Jamaica, and are currently working on a large project in Puerto Rico with organizations focused on food and energy independence.
A late-February 82-degree day followed by a stretch of mornings in the frosty 30s? Yep, we’re talking about winter 2023 in central Virginia. After a mild several months (except for that low of 6 degrees in December), it seems like any weather event or temperature is possible. Does this mean we’ll have a scorching summer? Sadly, there is no good way to predict that, says Robert Davis of UVA’s Department of Environmental Sciences. The only sure thing is weather variations, twice a year.
Weather variations
Both spring and fall transition times are when you would expect big changes, Davis says.
The Northern Hemisphere is warming up in spring, but arctic air blasts from the north hit our area and often late winter and early spring nights are very cold. “So we are getting into the season where you can have cold front passages that are strong. There will be several cold days before it warms up again.” Morning frosts can be continual.
Davis says it’s difficult to comment on whether we are seeing greater variability than in the past. “You can’t look at any particular event and say, ‘That is unusual,’” he explains.
Michael McConkey, owner of Edible Landscaping in Afton, agrees that central Virginia weather is up and down, but is sanguine about the struggle involved. “Peach and plum trees here have always been subject to late frost and changes in the weather, mostly because they evolved as arid Persian plants,” he says. Some trees from Japan and China, however, do well here because of climate similarities. Examples are persimmons and jujube, which is a popular fruit in China, brown on the outside and white on the inside, with a sweet apple taste.
“Everyone growing fruits is aware of weather patterns, and they have changed dramatically” for fruit growers, says McConkey.
Ken Bezilla of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange agrees, and says the variations are hardest on fruit growers. Plum trees, often first to flower among trees here, can amount to “the annual sacrifice to the frost gods,” he says.
In general, as the entire planet warms, we would expect less variability overall, Davis says. That may seem counterintuitive. In many parts of the U.S., as the country warms up, the transitional temperature swings are not as great.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration keeps monthly records of high and low temperature for counties in each state. Notably, Albemarle County was at its warmest ever for the period January to February 2023. According to NOAA, our two-month average was 45.0 degrees Fahrenheit—our warmest-to-date record for those months together, and 9.8 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than the 1901 to 2000 mean of 35.2 degrees Fahrenheit for those months together.
Pam Dawling, a farmer at Twin Oaks Community in Louisa, has been tracking several first appearances of the spring season over a 20-year period. Her data on phenology, the study of cyclic and seasonal natural phenomena, is interesting. Many plants over the past 15 years have made a first appearance in three different months, often March, April, and May. Late frost for the year ranges from April 8 to as late as May 11, with an average date of April 29, Dawling’s records show.
Climatologist and biometeorologist Davis reminds, “I would be very reticent to make anything out of the variations other than this has been a strange winter, and these are the kinds of changes we would often see in the spring.”
Michael McConkey, owner of Edible Landscaping, thinks growers are well-equipped to handle sudden shifts in weather. Photo by Eze Amos.
Climate change in the region
NASA defines weather as the conditions of the atmosphere over a short period of time, while climate is how the atmosphere “behaves” over relatively long periods of time.
How has our climate changed over time? There are explanations thanks to scientists, farmers, and others who keep track.
The federal Environmental Protection Agency says overall that our state has warmed about 1 degree Fahrenheit in the past century (from a 2017 report). Carbon dioxide levels and other gases that keep heat close to the ground account for higher temperatures, the EPA notes. “Evaporation increases and the atmosphere warms, which increases humidity, average rainfall, and the frequency of heavy rainstorms in many places—but contributes to drought in others.”
The EPA reports that our state can expect more energy usage, because electricity consumption is on track to increase over time because of additional air conditioning. “Seventy years from now, temperatures are likely to rise above 95 degrees Fahrenheit approximately 20 to 40 days per year in the southeastern half of Virginia, compared with about 10 days per year today,” the EPA says.
Another indicator of climate change in our region is that our region’s U.S. Department of Agriculture hardening zone officially changed. SESE’s Bezilla says we have moved from winters of zone 6b (-5 to 0 degrees Fahrenheit/-20.6 to -17.8 degrees Celsius) to zone 7a (0 to 5 degrees Fahrenheit/-17.8 to -15 degrees Celsius) as temperatures rose over time.
Lettuce is now a year-round crop in this area. “Recently I revised our lettuce schedules, partly to take account of hotter weather arriving earlier in the year, and also to even out the harvest,” writes blogger Dawling, author of Sustainable Market Farming: Intensive Vegetable Production on a Few Acres.
In another blog post, the Twin Oaks community farmer recorded observations for the future: “I live and farm in the southeast,” Dawling wrote. “Sea level rises and heavy downpours in our region are already obvious. Dangerously high temperatures, higher humidity, new pests and diseases are moving in. … The growing season is ten days longer than it was in the 1960s.”
For the 48-month period from September 2018 to August 2022, Albemarle County was at its warmest, with a value of 47.0 degrees Fahrenheit compared with a value for the mean of 43.5 degrees Fahrenheit for the same 1901 to 2000 period, per the NOAA charts. (This tied for warmest with the same period ending in 2020.)
Trees in Charlottesville bloomed early during winter’s patches of warm weather. Photo by Stephen Barling.
Effects on agriculture and animals
Local growers work hard to protect their fragile plants. For example, Crown Orchard has installed wind turbines at its farms, and Barboursville Vineyard has put in wind machinery to keep cooler air from settling onto its future produce.
Sometimes the fight can seem futile, however.
Susan Smith Ordel, a longtime local gardener, says, “I have noticed just being outside all of the time, the nights in August would cool off. You felt watering was doing some good. Now the plants don’t get a break” from evaporation.
Adaptation is a solution. Crown Orchards is taking advantage of more sun with solar panel arrays near Carter Mountain Orchard, on the rooftop of Chiles Peach Orchard in Crozet, and at the production facility in Covesville, the company’s website notes.
Southern Exposure Seed Exchange creates huge trial tracts each year to see what grows best, and which plants and seeds do best in particular in Virginia and surrounding states. SESE’s trial fields, based in Mineral, are the launching pad for the 28 new varieties the exchange added to its 2023 listings. Among the new winners are Okinawa Pink okra (from Japan), Greek pepperoncini peppers, Gulag Stars kale (from Russia), and Florida conch southern pea. (The SESE website has a category that central Virginia gardeners might do well to peruse: “Especially well-suited to the Southeast.”)
Spinach is a crop that has become too tender for our hot summers. Bezilla says some spinach varieties make for good planting over the winter.
McConkey says native trees like mulberries and pawpaws do well. Still, many shoppers love their peach, pear, and plum trees, which can be marginal here.
Ordel planted five camellias in her yard that she wouldn’t have touched 10 or 15 years ago, she says. “Usually you think of camellias as being in the deep South, in South Carolina, Georgia, and Alabama, but now we’re starting to be able to see them bloom and thrive here.”
She does mourn a favorite plant that just can’t hack our climate. “Now it is clear we can’t plant hydrangea macrophylla any more” (also called French hydrangea). “The hydrangeas have to have cool nights, and I still have clients asking me for the beautiful blue blooms. We’ve had later frosts, and if the buds don’t get nipped in the spring, the early hot weather either deforms the blooms or keeps them from being realized.”
Winemaker, vineyard, and tasting room owner Michael Shaps can speak to the vagaries of wine production, both with his grapes here at Michael Shaps Wineworks and in Meursault, France, in the Burgundy region. Fortunately, Virginia’s changes are not as dramatic as those he has witnessed in France.
“What I have really noticed in Virginia is the intensity of storms we have seen over the past few years,” Shaps says. The amount of rain and the intensity of storms has been much more severe than in the past 30 years in general, he says. A big fear is hail damage, which has happened at times, but he says is “not significant” for his Virginia vines. The pattern of weather lately has been Gulf of Mexico moisture from the south, rather than storms flowing across the country from the west, he says.
Deforestation, which removes trees that modulate how fast storms move over an area, can also increase storm intensity, Bezilla explains.
On top of that, farmers and growers need to worry about earlier appearances of pests. For example, Dawling’s phenology chart tracks when the harlequin bugs first come out to sip the sap from kale, cabbage, and collards, which has been as early as March 13 for the years 2006 to 2020.
Any year that is warmer earlier may result in extra generations of insects, Bezilla says. This can be detrimental when pests multiply, but also helpful if there are additional pollinating bees.
Ken Bezilla of Southern Exposure Seed Exchange says that spinach can’t take the heat, and some varieties actually plant well in winter. Photo by Irena Hollowell / Southern Exposure Seed Exchange.
Human hardship
There is proof that weather changes also affect human health. Davis and Kyle Enfield, M.D., who works in the Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care at the UVA School of Medicine, examined 19 years of daily admissions at UVA’s hospital for respiratory reasons. For the first time ever, a measurement called the Acclimatization Thermal Strain Index was applied to human disease. ATSI measures strain on the lung system.
Davis and Enfield learned that there is a definite relationship between seasonal strain stemming from warm, humid air changing to cold, dry air and hospital admissions, on a seasonal scale and on a weekly time scale. Their work, published in 2017 in the International Journal of Biometeorology, showed the adjustment from cold air to warm air didn’t affect health as clearly as during the fall season.
The EPA 2017 report notes that warmer temperatures can also increase the formation of ground-level ozone, a major component of smog. Because ozone can aggravate lung diseases such as asthma, and increases the risk of premature death from heart or lung disease, the EPA and the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality have been working to reduce ozone concentrations, which will become more difficult with warming trends.
In 2022, Ordel had her first bout of heat exhaustion because she cannot stay hydrated no matter how much water she drinks. “Even starting early, now I have found that past 2pm it’s just too brutally hot.”
Respiratory difficulties and heat emergencies aside, living with weather changes can cause higher expenses, as air conditioning in longer summers and heating in longer springs extends energy needs.
Ordel’s family depends on a wood stove in their Keswick home. “It was like clockwork for decades that we would start all-day wood in mid-October and go until tax day,” she says. “Now we start full-time fires in the full month of November and go until mid-May, and that’s consistently true now for about five years. It is clear to me there is climate change.”
The camellia flower has migrated up from the Deep South, says gardener Susan Smith Ordel. File photo.
Cultivate Charlottesville believes that its work in food justice is inseparable from racial justice. Access to affordable food, as well as the ability and wealth to be able to use and work land to grow food, it says, are all affected by racial inequality. Photo by John Robinson.
Why isn’t more public green space used to grow food? Highway medians, the small lawns between sidewalks and apartments, public parks, all have the potential, and Richard Morris thinks about this more than most. The co-executive director of the food justice organization Cultivate Charlottesville knows the challenges and rewards of choosing a good garden location.
The group manages a community farm plot on West Street, one on the corner of Monticello Avenue and Sixth streets, and a new location behind the Charlottesville-Albemarle Technical Education Center.
Since 2018, Cultivate has been working with residents and city departments to locate a new plot for community gardening and food justice initiatives after the loss of agricultural land to needed housing redevelopment. At the top of the list is Booker T. Washington Park. In the summer months, the organization will facilitate discussions with community members about how urban agriculture could contribute to the park.
The 9.3-acre Booker T. Washington park is not the largest park in Charlottesville, but it is one of the most heavily used. It’s home to a sheltered picnic area, a pool, basketball courts, a baseball diamond, and a playground. Since 1989, the African American Cultural Arts Festival has been held in the park annually.
Washington Park’s strong culture is tied to its history, a history that is entwined with that of the 150-acre McIntire Park. In 1926, both plots of land were gifted to the city by Paul McIntire to be used as segregated parks, with McIntire reserved for white residents and Washington for Black residents. To this day, Washington Park receives a large amount of use from Rose Hill residents on the site of the former Rose Hill plantation.
“In [1944], there was a botanical exhibit at Washington Park, and there were something like 200 entries in the exhibit,” Morris says. “We don’t know exactly how many people participated, but the point is that at one point there were a lot of Black farmers in and around the Charlottesville area, certainly way more than we have now.”
Cultivate Charlottesville’s work in food justice cannot be separated from racial justice. The land to grow food, the wealth to buy food, and low-wealth neighborhoods’ access to affordable food, have all been dramatically impacted by racial inequities. Washington Park is embedded in that legacy.
“We’ve actually gone backwards, because if you look at Black land ownership today, and even home ownership, you just don’t have that,” Morris says. “You could not recreate that event today because there are not enough Black landowners, not enough Black farmers, not enough Black gardeners.”
Cultivate Charlottesville’s mission of food equity intersects issues of financial security and affordable housing. Providing food is important, but so is community wealth building, access to transportation and green space, and access to education.
Numbers for food insecurity are drawn from an aggregation of sources including the number and kind of grocery stores, and the use of SNAP benefits or other forms of aid. School lunches also provide important data. Schools with high percentages of requests for aid with school lunches receive universal free or reduced lunches.
“So there’s six elementary schools [in Charlottesville],” says Aleen Carey, outreach and resource program director for Cultivate Charlottesville. “At four of them, the entire student body is eligible for free and reduced meals. In three of those four, the majority of students are Black. So there’s definitely a correlation by neighborhood to free and reduced meals at schools. And that’s one way you can look at it a little bit.”
Charlottesville’s food insecurity numbers are unacceptably high, Carey says. The city ranks above the state average. According to Cultivate Charlottesville’s website, 17 percent of families experience food insecurity in the city, while in the state of Virginia the number is 11 percent. Additionally, 33.3 percent of people live below the poverty level, while the national average is 13.1 percent.
“When you think about how many restaurants there are, wineries, farms, I mean people come here specifically for food,” Carey says. “So to have that high of a level of food insecurity in a place with unbelievable resources, to have a food insecurity rate that’s higher than the state, that is unbelievable.”
Cultivate Charlottesville’s Urban Agriculture Initiative seeks to partner with residents to build community health, power, and resilience by facilitating access to healthy food and building a sense of ownership of that community space.
The organization’s schoolyard gardens are education focused, with students eating food that they plant and harvest, but the urban agriculture plots are focused on production. The food grown there is shared on market days at no cost to anyone who lives in public or subsidized housing. The organization runs one to two market days each week, rotating the location between different neighborhoods, including Friendship Court, Westhaven, Midway Manor, Crescent Halls, South First Street, and Riverview, where anyone can come and get the produce for free.
Once the battle over the Atlantic Coast Pipeline was won, environmental activists turned their attention to a variety of other issues, including western Virginia’s Mountain Valley Pipeline and rising sea levels in Hampton Roads. Photo: Mountain Valley Watch.
Environmental activists celebrated last summer when Dominion Energy announced it was canceling the Atlantic Coast Pipeline, which would have brought natural gas 600 miles from West Virginia to North Carolina, crossing right through central Virginia and disrupting a historically Black community in rural Buckingham County. Activists have since turned their focus to the many other environmental issues across the state, from the controversial Mountain Valley Pipeline in western Virginia to rising sea levels in Hampton Roads.
Last week, state legislators learned more about the importance of addressing such issues through an equity lens at the first-ever Virginia Environmental Justice Retreat, hosted by the Climate Equity Work Group. Founded in 2019, the organization—composed of representatives from activist groups Appalachian Voices, New Virginia Majority, Progress Virginia, Chesapeake Climate Action Network, Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, and Virginia Organizing—advocates for environmental reforms with a strong focus on racial and economic justice in Virginia.
The two-day virtual retreat featured a dozen speakers, including activists, lawyers, scientists, and more. Thirteen legislators were in attendance, including state Senator Creigh Deeds, who represents Charlottesville and part of Albemarle County.
“Our goal was to meet with, convene with, co-learn, collaborate, and have shared dialogue with our state leaders who have been clearly supportive on these issues in the General Assembly, [and] in their districts,” says Tyneshia Griffin, environmental policy research analyst for New Virginia Majority, a progressive legislation advocacy group. “We really wanted to come together with them, and go a little bit deeper on these issues, so we work from the same foundation and values.”
“This was a way [legislators] could take a bird’s eye view of their work, and why it’s so important they center climate and environmental justice,” adds Faith Harris, co-director of Virginia Interfaith Power & Light, which encourages religious communities to adopt sustainable living practices. “They can accomplish most of their environmental goals by centering climate and environmental justice.”
The retreat focused on the equity issues that come with transitioning to renewable energy, like wind and solar, and the communities often left behind, such as coal miners.
“There needs to be thought and expertise given to how we make that move without bringing harm to those communities that have been based in the fossil fuel industry,” says Harris. “How do we retrain people, recreate services, and rebuild communities based on the loss of the fossil fuel industry?”
Speakers also highlighted a new environmental-justice mapping tool, commissioned by the Virginia Environmental Justice Collaborative, which identifies communities in Virginia that face a disproportionate pollution burden, and therefore could require strategic investment and resources. According to the tool, parts of Charlottesville have a high pollution burden, including Ridge Street, Cherry Avenue, and Greenbrier Drive.
“It was great to learn there are tools that can actually map out communities,” says state Delegate Sam Rasoul, who also attended the retreat. “There are related policies that will hopefully be able to be crafted with all of that in mind. As we’re developing the communities of the future, we need to ensure we have these tools at our disposal.”
State Delegate Sam Rasoul participated in last week’s Climate Equity Work Group conference that emphasized the importance of environmental justice. Supplied photo.
“Any environmental plan must be environmentally just, in a sense that it must be socially just, and racially and economically uplift communities,” he adds. “We must have these conversations in an intersectional way.”
Throughout the retreat, speakers emphasized how environmental issues around the state intersect with ongoing efforts to improve equity in the state. For instance, the transition to electric cars must coincide with a drastic improvement in public transportation, particularly for low-wealth communities that cannot yet afford electric cars.
“In trying to think through what their priorities ought to be, [politicians] hear these as separate issues,” says Harris. “What we’re trying to do is help them see from a larger framework that they’re all connected.”
The Climate Equity Work Group hopes to host the retreat annually, and feature more speakers and legislators next year.
“I hope that we will be able to take what we learned and really integrate it into our policies,” says Rasoul. “It’s not just enough to advocate for renewable energy—we have to be more holistic in our approach and make sure that environmental and intersectional justice is front and center.”
“I took away a sense of hope about what’s possible for Virginia, and ultimately for our planet,” says Harris. “What we do here has a long reaching impact.”
Building a bluebird box is a good project for a hobbyist woodworker, but most people don’t tackle quite as many boxes at once as Clark Walter. At certain times of the year, Walter’s woodworking shop in Ivy is packed nearly to the rafters with the parts and pieces that make up his bluebird box assembly line. Since 2012, he’s supplied homemade boxes to a growing contingent of naturalists and bird enthusiasts in central Virginia and well beyond.
It started when Walter took the Virginia Master Naturalist course. Based at Virginia Tech and sponsored by a raft of state agencies, the VMN program is well-known for training citizen scientists in 40-hour courses that cover everything from ecology to geology to native flora and fauna. “It’s much like taking a couple of college courses,” says Walter.
The idea is to train volunteers who can then take on projects around the state, doing conservation, education, and so on. A master naturalist must log at least 40 volunteer hours per year to remain certified, so as he went through the course, Walter was considering how to spend those hours.
A presentation by Ann Dunn, of the Virginia Bluebird Society, caught his attention. He had a background with birds: Before retiring, he’d worked with various nonprofits that did endangered- species conservation, including programs to reintroduce birds to their native habitats. “In the state of Ohio,” he says, “we built a collaboration to reintroduce trumpeter swans…that was very exciting and has shown great results.”
Bluebirds, as it happens, are a species with a fraught ecological history, having suffered a heavy blow to their population after the arrival of Europeans in North America. The introduction of invasive starlings and house sparrows means stiff competition for nesting spots; like bluebirds, they’re cavity nesters and raise young in openings like you’d find in a standing dead tree.
Meanwhile, the number of available nesting sites has declined. “As we develop more areas across Virginia, and it becomes an increasingly urbanized state, we don’t tend to leave standing dead trees in our yards,” says Michelle Prysby, director of the VMN program. Indeed, bird populations in the U.S. and Canada are suffering huge declines due to habitat loss: They’re down 29 percent since 1970.
For decades now, a coordinated conservation effort has tried to counteract these forces for bluebirds (and, along the way, their fellow native cavity nesters like chickadees and tree swallows) by providing artificial nesting sites. A relatively simple wooden box, affixed to a pole or tree in the right spot—bluebirds prefer open land to forest—can make a big difference to a nesting pair and their offspring.
Over time, thanks to individuals who put up boxes in their backyards, as well as organizations like the Bluebird Society that establish clusters of nest boxes (called “trails”) and assign volunteers to monitor what happens there, the population of bluebirds has made a real comeback.
For VMN volunteers, says Prysby, “Bluebird projects are really popular across all of our 30 chapters, because people really enjoy going to monitor the boxes, and they feel like they’re getting a tangible result when they see that a bluebird or a chickadee is using it.”
It doesn’t hurt that, as Dunn says, “Bluebirds are very attractive.”
That first year after completing the VMN course, Walter built 10 bluebird boxes for a trail he and Dunn established on the short street where he lives in Ivy. He placed them in backyards and fields, bringing his neighbors on board. “We’ve gotten a great response,” he says, “and the population density in our area seems to be growing.”
Simple enough. But that was only the beginning. “I mentioned the project to the class and took orders for another 25,” Walter says. When he delivered those, more students, and instructors, placed another 40 orders.
Clark Walter has built over 2,000 bluebird houses.
Fortunately, Walter has a woodshop and a genetic advantage: His grandfather was an inventor and industrial engineer—“a brilliant guy,” Walter says. “I sort of have his organizational thing behind me.” He figured out how to streamline the box-building process, cutting all the pieces at once, then assembling. That was a good move, because the number of orders is still blowing up.
Bird clubs and conservation groups in Charlottesville lined up to buy. Then groups in nearby counties. “A year later, VMN and the VBS were promoting it statewide, so within three years people were driving from Blacksburg and all corners of the state to pick up their orders.” Word spread to other states, from New York to Kentucky. The year the magazine of the North American Bluebird Society ran an article about Walter, he ended up building almost 700 boxes. “It got a little out of control,” he says modestly.
How did he become the go-to guy? For one thing, he sells all the boxes at cost: $35-39, including the mounting pole. For another thing, he builds the boxes to official specs—the opening just the right size to admit bluebirds but keep out starlings, plus a predator baffle to keep snakes from eating hatchlings.
“You know you’re getting a product that meets the right specs for providing a good habitat,” says Prysby. “You don’t want to be attracting animals to something that’s not a safe artificial habitat for them.”
“He’s a remarkable guy,” says Dunn. “He’s made a very big difference to the VBS.”
Having built more than 2,000 boxes, Walter has, it’s fair to say, made a difference to the bluebird population well beyond Virginia. He rattles off some stats: “Last year there were 41 official VBS trails in Albemarle and Fluvanna counties, and we had a total of 470 some nest boxes on those trails. They produced over 1,600 bluebird babies that successfully fledged and another 1,000 of other species.”
And one more number: Per year, he spends about 400 hours building boxes. No worries about staying certified with VMN: “I’ve got my quota.”
In Charlottesville, carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average. Photo: Skyclad Aerial
In the words of Kermit the Frog, it’s not easy being green. Though the Muppet references the color of his amphibian skin, the famous line is a sentiment that also rings true for Charlottesville, where carbon emissions per household are more than a ton above the national average.
With 10 tons of carbon emissions per home annually, the United States trails the considerably more environmentally-friendly Europe by nearly five tons, but “as a city, we’re even further behind,” says Susan Kruse, the executive director of the Charlottesville Climate Collaborative.
Charlottesville lags behind both America and its neighboring continent by clocking in at 11.2 tons of greenhouse gas emissions per household, according to local environmentalists like Kruse, who used an emissions calculator from the California-based Community Climate Solutions.
“We have a lot of work to do,” she says.
City data shows that local greenhouse gas emissions have decreased by nearly a quarter since 2000, from approximately 470,584 metric tons to 362,192 metric tons in 2016. But according to an Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator, that’s still enough carbon dioxide to match the greenhouse emissions from 76,899 cars in one year.
Why is an ostensibly progressive community like Charlottesville doing so poorly? Kruse has a few theories, including that the city’s current emissions reduction goal is weak, and the average income here is greater than the national average, so more people own bigger homes and additional vehicles.
“Another factor is that our city was not designed around a robust public transportation system,” she says. “Without an adequate base of affordable housing to serve our community, those who cannot afford to live in Charlottesville rely on their cars to get to work.”
Time for a change
There’s a bit of history to the city’s various attempts to reduce its footprint. In 2011, it committed to a community-wide greenhouse gas reduction goal of 10 percent below those 2000 baseline levels by 2035, a far less ambitious goal than other Virginia cities like Richmond, which has pledged to reduce emissions by 80 percent by 2025. But when city leaders signed on to the Global Covenantof Mayors in June 2017, they agreed to tackle a more aggressive, three-phase goal, which started with an inventory of citywide gas emissions, and will now require setting a new target for reduction, and the development of a climate action plan.
The time may be right, says Susan Elliott, Charlottesville’s Climate Protection Program manager. Given the changes in available technology, cost improvements, utilities integrating more renewables into their fuel mixes, and the city’s increased focus on affordable housing, “Charlottesville is both capable and at a timely point to adopt a new and more ambitious reduction goal,” Elliott says.
She gave the most recent update on this initiative to City Council in November, when she said the inventory phase was finished, and that residential energy, commercial energy, and transportation were the highest contributors to carbon dioxide emissions—at 29.8, 27, and 26.6 percent, respectively. The city then accepted public comments through March to give community members a chance to weigh in on a draft recommendation for an official reduction target and action plan, which will be presented to council May 6.
The Charlottesville Climate Collaborative is one of several groups urging what it calls a “best in class” climate goal of a 45 percent reduction (of 2010 emissions levels) by 2030, with the additional objective of total carbon neutrality by 2050. This is the threshold recommended by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and one that Elliott says she expects her draft recommendations will reflect.
Albemarle officials recently proposed the same net zero goal for 2050.
But Anna Bella Korbatov, chair of the Cville100 Climate Coalition, says environmentalists are urging local leaders to do more than just set robust climate goals. In order to meet their target, she suggests committing to conducting a greenhouse gas inventory every two years, benchmarking progress, and making the data clearly available to the public to make the process more transparent.
And while Charlottesville is already taking steps to address climate change, areas in which the city could use some work include addressing equity issues, tree cover, and transportation, she adds.
Making goals a reality
“Energy efficiency work is really at the nexus of affordable housing and climate change action,” says Chris Meyer, the executive director of the Local Energy Alliance Program “It is not very sexy, but it delivers immediate results to reduce energy bills [and] related greenhouse gas emissions, and increases a low-income household’s quality of living.”
LEAP is tackling this issue head-on, and in 2018 it delivered free energy efficiency improvements—such as new insulation, LED light bulbs, and aerators for faucets and shower heads—to 475 low-income homes in Charlottesville and Albemarle, with financial support from the city, county, and Dominion Energy.
Charlotte and Ralph Terrell are grateful to the Local Energy Alliance Program for improvements that keep their home warm in the winter and cool in the summer. Photo: Eze Amos
Over the past several years, LEAP has made multiple improvements to Charlotte and Ralph Terrell’s home in the 10th and Page neighborhood, including insulating multiple walls, ceilings, and closets. They’ve also made safety enhancements to their dryer hose, installed an upstairs heating and cooling unit, and replaced 13 60-year-old windows.
“Our gas bill has gone down considerably because the house is holding the heat in the winter,” and staying cool in the summer, says Charlotte. “We are very, very thankful for that.”
One of the major challenges Meyer’s organization faces is identifying those in need. “There are resources available, we just have a tough time connecting with those who are eligible,” he says.
Another way to make a home—and a city—more efficient is quite simple, says Wild Virginia board member and lifelong nature lover Lil Williams. Look no further than the trees.
“You don’t have to recreate the wheel,” she says. “You have to plant the right kind of trees in the right place and you have to maintain them.”
Cities are heat islands that absorb and retain warmth, and are generally a few degrees warmer than rural areas. Planting shade trees is proven to decrease a city’s temperature from two to nine degrees based on the type and location, she says.
Due to increasing development and natural causes, Virginia cities are losing approximately 3,000 acres of trees per year, and globally, 20 percent of total greenhouse gas emissions can be attributed to deforestation, says Williams.
“In Charlottesville, we’ve cut down whole swaths of forest and put in apartments and shopping centers,” she adds.
While development may be inevitable, Williams recommends the city plant broad-leaf deciduous trees in more densely populated areas with higher pollution levels, such as near schools, hospitals, and in disadvantaged communities, where shade is proven to decrease the cost of air conditioning and electricity.
The city’s 2007 comprehensive plan established a goal of 40 percent tree cover, and a 2009 study found that number at 47 percent. When the city reassessed it in 2015, tree cover had decreased by 2 percent.
Williams expects tree cover has continued to decrease over time, and seemingly without a one-for-one replacement.
A 2018 city “greenprint” noted that, “while 45 percent is a good canopy coverage, the citywide percentage does not tell the whole story,” because 72 percent of that canopy was on private land, and increasing cover would require participation from the private and public sector.
The city’s urban forester, Mike Ronayne, says the tree commission has recently said it would like to instate a 50 percent canopy goal.
Aside from encouraging the planting of more trees, community activists also hope the city’s forthcoming climate action plan will include a better plan for regional transportation, which accounts for 26.6 percent of all local gas emissions.
City residents have long complained about the ineffectiveness of the Charlottesville Area Transit. “People have a hard time getting from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time,” says C3’s Kruse. “The buses are not always reliable.”
She says the city should look at public transportation and its layout as an aspect of affordability and emissions reduction.
“It’s not just about whether Charlottesville is walkable or bikeable, it also has to have public transit for the people for whom those are not options,” she adds.
Signs of hope
But it’s not all bad news—there are some areas in which the city is successful. Charlottesville has been a leader in piloting and funding climate protection-related programs, including joining the U.S. Mayors Climate Protection Agreement in 2006, and drafting its vision for becoming a “green city” by 2025 three years later, CPG’s Elliott says.
In 2017, Charlottesville was the first Virginia city to earn a SolSmart designation, meaning city leaders incentivized going solar by hosting a community “solarize” campaign, reviewing zoning codes, and identifying and addressing restrictions that prohibited solar development.
Several city buildings—including the Smith Aquatic and Fitness Center, Fontaine Fire Station, and Lugo-McGinness Academy—have installed solar panel systems, and the city tracks their energy production. The solar arrays at Charlottesville High School, installed in 2012, supply about an eighth of the school’s annual electricity usage.
Some private companies have followed suit: Carter Myers Automotive in Albemarle, for example, recently built a solar array that covers more than 90 percent of the dealership’s energy use.
To meet a more ambitious carbon reduction goal, the city will also have to work with UVA, its largest employer. The university has its own climate goal—currently, it’s a 25 percent reduction of 2009 emission levels by 2025. Despite university growth, it has already reduced emissions by nearly 19 percent, says sustainability director Andrea Trimble, and is on a trajectory to meet its goal ahead of schedule. Like the city and county, UVA is in the process of developing a new sustainability plan and more aggressive climate goal, and Trimble says all three entities are working on coordinating their efforts.
Says Kruse, “We have leaders in our community who are stepping out and doing the right thing. What we need to do as a community is learn from those leaders and put forward new policies.”
Corrected April 17 at 1:43pm with the correct figure from the Environmental Protection Agency equivalency calculator.
In 1986, a young lawyer and UVA grad named Rick Middleton left his job at a national environmental nonprofit in D.C. and moved to Charlottesville. With two other lawyers, a three-year grant, and a small office on the Downtown Mall, he established the first environmental advocacy organization focused on the South, determined to use the power of federal law to protect the region he loved.
Three decades later, Middleton’s Southern Environmental Law Center is home to 80 attorneys, with offices in six states. Its long list of accomplishments ranges from the protection of favorite local hikes to a landmark Supreme Court victory that prompted the largest power plant cleanup in U.S. history.
But as the SELC has grown, so have the environmental challenges we face. In the late ’80s, the science of climate change was well-established, and the federal government (along with oil companies like Exxon and Shell) was well aware of the potentially catastrophic risks. But the effects were not yet evident, and for most Americans, the “greenhouse effect” was a vague and theoretical concern, less specific than the hole in the ozone layer, less visceral than an oil spill.
Today, when the last four years have been the hottest in recorded history and hardly a month goes by without another extreme weather disaster, the global threat is much closer to home.
But like many other groups and dedicated individuals, the SELC is rising to the challenge. Over the past 12 years, the organization has been working on a strategic plan to lower carbon dioxide emissions in the region, and through a variety of legal and policy actions it’s helped reduce the area’s emissions by almost 30 percent. As we face what beloved British naturalist David Attenborough has called humanity’s greatest threat, these are the fighters we need. —Laura Longhine
