Bea LaPisto Kirtley is running for the Rivanna District seat on the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors. Photo by Norm Carter
Standing on a stepstool behind a podium marked by her campaign sign, a former Bradbury, California, city councilor of 20 years was the second person to announce her run for the Rivanna District seat on the Board of Supervisors.
Bea LaPisto Kirtley said addressing the “critical lack of broadband coverage” in Albemarle will be a priority if she’s elected. That echoes the top concern of Jerrod Smith, her only known opponent, who announced last week.
At her announcement that drew a crowd of about 30 people, the Keswick resident of 12 years also emphasized protecting natural resources, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and supporting and preserving the county’s many family farms.
Two growth areas, Pantops and U.S. 29 north, are in the Rivanna District. LaPisto Kirtley said they should be “developed thoughtfully” with attention paid to regional transportation issues, because growth can overburden critical infrastructure like roads and highways. She also advocated for better public transportation, which would reduce traffic and carbon emissions.
“How do you make things happen?” she said. “By listening to what the community needs and serving the residents as a strong voice for action, being innovative, and working with others. If you can’t work together, nothing gets accomplished.”
In her career, LaPisto Kirtley served as a teacher, principal, and then a director for the Los Angeles Unified School District, where she was responsible for 24 elementary schools. Locally, she has volunteered with CASA, which provides advocates for children in foster care, for four years and fundraised for nonprofits such as Hospice of the Piedmont.
“I will be both accessible and attentive,” she said, adding that her strengths are listening, being a hard-worker, being “adept at identifying workable solutions, and getting things done.”
Supervisor Liz Palmer attended LaPisto Kirtley’s campaign announcement, but said she hasn’t endorsed any candidates yet.
Said supporter Mary Miller, “I know her to be a powerhouse, and better than that, she listens to people. I have never seen her fail to get the job done.”
I’ve heard that it’s all a sham and it all just goes into a landfill, that the processes are super inefficient compared to regular recycling programs. I know many folks who don’t bother recycling at all because they don’t believe the city separates the recyclables from the garbage.—Kathleen Herring
By Jonathan Haynes
Charlottesville’s recycling system has confused many of our readers. Here’s what you need to know.
In short, residents who “don’t believe the city separates the recyclables from the garbage” are correct, and if your office claims to be recycling but doesn’t provide a separate recycling bin, it is probably just throwing everything in the trash.
Single-stream recycling means you don’t have to sort your recyclables (i.e., you don’t have to separate glass, paper, cardboard, and plastics), but you do have to keep recyclables separate from general trash. The term has been a source of confusion since Peter van der Linde used it to describe his processing plant, which accepted waste and recyclables in the same bag and tried to separate them later, resulting in high contamination levels for the recyclables. Van der Linde closed his household waste processing facility earlier this year.
Charlottesville offers free curbside single-stream recycling collection except at buildings that have dumpsters. That means recyclables must be in a separate bin from your regular garbage (the city provides carts for this, which it collects every two weeks). Albemarle County, by contrast, does not provide collection services at all. Residents must contract a private service, and many of those offer single-stream recycling.
Another option for recycling is the McIntire Recycling Center, which is operated by the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, a joint city-county program.
McIntire uses a source-separation model, which requires patrons to deposit glass, paper, plastics, and general waste into different bins. According to the RSWA website, it processes 98 percent of recyclable materials.
RSWA sells reusable material to private buyers and ships the remaining waste to a landfill in Amelia County.
“What we’re really doing with recycling is creating feedstock for certain industries,” says Phillip McKalips, director of solid waste at the RSWA. “Companies that produce aluminum cans would want recycled cans, because they’re at the right alloy levels.”
According to McKalips, single-stream is popular among trash haulers because it expedites the drop-off process. “Certain trash haulers only do single-stream recycling because they don’t have time to source separate at McIntire,” he says.
But critics say the single-stream method makes it harder for plants to categorize and process their recyclable inventory. “The quality of the materials is so poor, there are no real buyers,” says Albemarle Supervisor Liz Palmer. “The recovery rate is too low; China doesn’t buy it anymore.”
While McKalips doesn’t know the recovery rate for the city’s single-stream operation, he confirms that between 25 percent and 40 percent of recyclables in similar programs across the country are bound for the landfill.
Despite maintaining that it won’t decide when to build the full pipeline until the results of a new study come in next year, the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority plans to proceed in November with the $7 million, one-mile chunk of pipeline, which will stay empty.
At a meeting in late August, members of the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority’s board of directors voted to add $7 million to its budget to install part of a controversial water pipeline in Albemarle, even though just a month before, they said they had no plans to start building it.
Critics say the $7 million, one-mile pipeline is political and a “boondoggle.”
It’s part of an $82-million, nine-mile pipeline that will connect the South Fork Rivanna and Ragged Mountain reservoirs. The one-mile section that the RWSA now has the funds to build will run through the Birdwood Golf Course, which will be closed for reconstruction.
“I did say there was no plan [to build the pipeline], but that was really to the nine-mile section of pipe with exception to this one-mile section of pipe,” says RWSA Executive Director Bill Mawyer. “Maybe I should have put an asterisk in there [and said] except for the Birdwood section.”
Dede Smith, a former city councilor who has a long history of opposing the pipeline, says building at Birdwood now because it’s being renovated—and assuming it won’t be renovated again in the next 50 years—is “ludicrous.”
The pipeline was included in a community water supply plan created between 2002 and 2012, which deemed the project necessary to provide enough water for the community in the coming years. City Council has instructed that construction on the pipeline begin between 2027 and 2040 to meet those demands—but its necessity has been hotly debated.
“This isn’t about Birdwood, or the necessity of the pipeline, it’s political,” Smith said in an email to the board the day before it voted. “And the decision to spend $7 million turns to potentially illegal.”
She asked board members to consider what the city and Albemarle County Service Authority could do with $7 million to upgrade their infrastructure and further reduce water demand—the reason, she says, there’s no need for the pipeline.
In-depth research by Rich Gullick—a former RWSA director of operations, who resigned from his job in protest in February—concludes that actual water demand has been far less than what the authority projected, and the pipeline won’t be needed until at least 2048—or 2062, if the Ragged Mountain Reservoir water level is raised an additional 12 feet first, which Mawyer says can’t happen unless demand increases significantly.
According to Mawyer, the current water demand in the local service area is about 9 million gallons per day, compared to a supply of 16 million gallons per day.
Citing another study, he says the community will need more water by 2040—compared to Gullick’s calculation of two decades later—and the RWSA has commissioned a new study to reevaluate the projected demand.
Despite it maintaining that it won’t decide when to build the full pipeline until those results come in next year, the board plans to proceed in November with the $7 million, one-mile chunk of pipeline, which will stay empty.
“We’ll plug the ends and leave it in that condition,” says Mawyer.
Gullick calls it a “boondoggle,” and says it’s clear why the RWSA is rushing to build the first mile of the water line.
“All this is is a ploy to get the pipe started so that they can use it as an excuse to finish it,” he says. “They’re showing their hand, and they clearly don’t care what the new data says.”
The RWSA has claimed the pipeline won’t degrade while it sits unused and unfilled, possibly for decades, but Gullick says he doesn’t buy it.
“Water in the soil will be more corrosive than the water in the pipe,” he says. “What doesn’t degrade over time? It’s metal.”
Gullick was unable to attend the August 28 meeting where the vote to build at Birdwood was held. So was Smith.
“To selectively tax urban water rate payers $7 million for a project that has been both discredited by current data and politically motivated (worse yet by those who will not pay) is scandalous at best,” Smith said in her letter.
Smith and Gullick say Liz Palmer, a board member and Albemarle County supervisor, has been a main advocate for the pipeline, though her constituents in the Samuel Miller district don’t pay urban water bills. County rate payers will pay 80 percent, and city ratepayers will pay the remaining 20 percent.
Palmer counters that she has many constituents on public water, particularly south of I-64 and west of Fifth Street in developments such as Redfields and the many apartment complexes in the area. Once the pipeline is built, the RWSA will close the nearly 100-year-old Sugar Hollow line, and the Moormans River will “return to a more natural flow,” as required by a Department of Environment Quality permit, she says in an email.
Smith also says the most surprising vote came from Gary O’Connell, the executive director of the Albemarle County Service Authority and former city manager, “whose only role on that board is to protect the interests of county water rate payers. …And it is the county water rate payer who will be hurt the most when their rates go up to pay 80 percent of the cost of this pipeline to nowhere.”
O’Connell says the ACSA board has consistently supported the water supply plan, and within the agreement, its customers are also allocated 80 percent of the capacity of the new pipeline.
He says the ACSA is very mindful of its rates, and the average residential bill is about 22 percent less than that of a comparable city customer. Adds O’Connell, “Our area is growing, so we need to be focused on a growing water system.”
Independent's day at Jefferson School when victory is called for Nikuyah Walker, center. Photo Eze Amos
Election night 2017 in Charlottesville had quite a different feel from 2016. Democrats swept statewide offices, with Ralph Northam winning the governor’s race by an even wider margin—9 percent—than pundits had predicted. And no one saw it coming that Dems would dislodge the hefty 66-34 Republican majority in the House of Delegates, and, depending on recounts, Charlottesville’s own David Toscano could end up house majority leader.
The unprecedented evening continued in Charlottesville, where Nikuyah Walker bucked the Democratic groundswell and became the first independent to win a seat on City Council since 1948. Also unprecedented: It’s the first time two African Americans will serve on council when she joins Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy on the dais in January.
Walker’s supporters—a younger, more diverse crowd than the older, whiter Dems awaiting returns at Escafe—gathered at the Jefferson School African American Heritage Center, where she led from the first precinct report.
“She’s the first Charlottesville native in decades to serve on council,” former mayor Dave Norris, a Walker supporter, points out. “She’s someone who’s actually experienced some of the issues facing council. She lived in Garrett Square,” which is now known as Friendship Court.
Former mayor Dave Norris and Vice-Mayor Wes Bellamy were on hand for Nikuyah Walker’s historic win. Photo Eze Amos
Her victory “is a rebuke to the dirty tactics of the anonymous source,” adds Norris, referring to the November 4 Daily Progress story prompted by an unnamed city official who suggested Walker’s “aggressive” communication style would make it difficult for her to work with other councilors and city staff.
Before the election, conventional wisdom predicted Laufer, who’s served on the school board, would get one of the open council seats now held by Bob Fenwick and Kristin Szakos, and the second would be a toss-up between Hill and Walker. Instead, Hill edged Laufer by 55 votes in what were extremely close margins between the three frontrunners.
“Heather worked her tail off,” says Norris. “Whenever someone criticized Heather, she would sit down and talk to them. She personally hit up every street in Charlottesville.”
Democrat Heather Hill had expected to sit on council with Amy Laufer, but the election, with everything else this year, was “unprecedented,” she says. Photo Eze Amos
The election “played out in a different way than I expected,” says Hill. “This year has been unprecedented, and there was no doubt in my mind this election was going to be unprecedented. I’m really excited to be part of this change.”
One big change for Walker: As a city employee with parks and rec, she will be her own boss as a councilor—sort of. State code on conflicts of interest says an elected official may keep her job with a government agency provided employment began before election to the governing body.
Surrounded by her son, two daughters and mother on stage at Jefferson School, Walker admitted, “I drove my family crazy.”
She said, “It’s hard growing up black in Charlottesville. I only ran because of [the late vice-mayor] Holly Edwards. She told me if I️ ran, I’d win.”
Walker said, “People told lies about me. They should have told the truth.”
And she acknowledged the broad grassroots support she had, with contributions ranging from $5 to $10,000. She urged her supporters to hold onto the “we” and stay engaged. “It’s not a temporary thing.”
Walker’s win “breaks up the total Democratic control on council,” says UVA Center for Politics’ Geoffrey Skelley. “It’s meaningful in the aftermath of all the terrible things that happened in Charlottesville” with the monument debate and neo-Nazi invasion, which some put at the feet of City Council.
“Walker was offering something different,” he says. “It’s a reaction locally when Democrats were crushing it everywhere else. It’s a reaction to local issues that have become national issues.”
In Albemarle County, the Samuel Miller District was the only contested Board of Supervisors race, and incumbent Liz Palmer handily beat Republican challenger John Lowry with 68 percent of the vote.
In county school board races, Katrina Callsen, who had opponent Mary McIntyre’s supporters grousing about outside money from a Teach for America affiliate, won 63 percent of the Rio District vote. In the Samuel Miller District, incumbent Graham Paige held on to his seat with 65 percent of the vote, fending off 18-year-old challenger Julian Waters.
Statewide, Skelley had anticipated a narrower race between Northam and Ed Gillespie. Northam’s win was the largest margin for a Democratic candidate since 1985, when Gerald Baliles won, says Skelley.
Voter turnout was up 15 percent over the last governor’s race in 2013, and in some places like Charlottesville, it was up 31 percent. In Fairfax, 23 percent more voters went to the polls than in 2013, and that increase “has got to be looked at as a response to President Trump,” says Skelley.
Democrat Justin Fairfax won the lieutenant governor’s race and became the second African American to hold that position, which Doug Wilder won in 1985. Incumbent Attorney General Mark Herring held on to his seat and gave Democrats a sweep in statewide offices.
Before the election, Skelley predicted Democrats might pick up seats in the high single digits in the House of Delegates. “I was very cautious,” he says. Several close races will face recounts, and if the Dems win, it’s possible they could have their first majority in the house since 2000.
Almost all the Democratic gains came from the 15 districts that Hillary Clinton carried in 2016, says Skelley. “It’s not like they’re winning a bunch of red seats.”
A couple of Latina delegates, an African-American veteran, Dawn Adams, the first openly lesbian delegate, and Danica Roem, the first transgender legislator in the country, will change the makeup of the mostly white male House, says Skelley.
Roem’s win over 13-term social conservative Bob Marshall, who carried the state constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage and who last year carried an unsuccessful bathroom bill, is particularly significant and an outcome Skelley wasn’t willing to bet on. “Prince William County has changed,” he says. “[Marshall] didn’t change with it.”
No one was predicting an unseating of Albemarle’s three GOP incumbents—Steve Landes, Matt Fariss and Rob Bell—who held on to their seats, although Bell and Fariss did face challengers, unlike in 2015 when they were unopposed. While Dem Angela Lynn lost for a second time to Landes, this year she narrowed the margin from 32 points to 16.
For House Minority Leader Toscano, who was unopposed, the evening was particularly enjoyable. “I must admit I never really thought we could do it all this cycle,” he says. “I thought we’d pick up some seats.”
Currently the Dems have 49 seats, he says, and both sides are calling for recounts in a handful of races. He’s not speculating on what will happen if his party takes the majority—and he could potentially be elected speaker. “First we have to count all the votes,” he says.
However, even if the Democrats don’t hold a majority, with a 49-51 split, “immediately we’ll get a lot more representation on committees. Immediately we’ll make strategic alliances with Republicans to pass legislation,” says Toscano.
“The election makes clear Virginia is a bellwether election following Trump,” he says. It shows that voters like candidates engaged with their communities, they like what Democrats like Governor Terry McAuliffe have been doing with economic development, and says Toscano, “They don’t like the divisiveness and hate of Trump.”
Correction 10:22am November 9: The story originally said Walker would have to resign her job as a city employee, but apparently that’s not true if she held the job before being elected.
Albemarle County has an ordinance that prohibits bike riding at Ragged Mountain, but the natural area is located in Charlottesville where City Councilors have voted to allow it. Staff photo
Albemarle Board of Supervisors Chair Diantha McKeel said in February that an accelerated opening of Hedgerow Park could be an alternative to allowing biking at Ragged Mountain Natural Area, a controversial city-owned and county-located property on which both governing bodies are at odds about whether cycling should be permitted.
In an April 12 work session, the supervisors discussed the feasibility of opening the new park and all agreed to authorize an immediate conceptual engineering study for the space, which consists of 340 acres just south and west of the Interstate 64 and Route 29 interchange. It abuts Ragged Mountain Natural Area. If all goes well, the park’s construction would take place next year between May and November.
“To get to this park, you’re going to have to drive,” said Trevor Henry, the county director of facilities and environmental services. This has been a negative for cyclists looking for a location they can bike to.
Gauging the use at Preddy Creek Trail Park, which is the most similar county space to the proposed park, Henry estimates that 40 parking spaces will be necessary at Hedgerow. He also wants to allow space for about six horse trailers.
“The terrain here is incredibly steep in many places,” said Supervisor Ann Mallek, and it’s not ideal for horseback riding. “Not everything has to be available at every place.”
Each county park allows its own recreational activities, granting the estimated 800,000 people who visited them last year the opportunity to choose their destinations based on the activities they plan to do, Mallek said. And prohibiting horseback riding at Hedgerow would allow for a smaller parking lot.
But Supervisor Liz Palmer noted that when the late Jane Heyward gave the land to the county, she was adamant it be used for different kinds of recreation, including horseback riding. As for parking, on a recent Sunday afternoon at Crozet’s Sugar Hollow and Mint Springs Valley Park, she said she counted more than 50 cars in each lot.
“It’s interesting to me that it seemed a lot safer with people getting out [of their cars] with picnic bags and dogs and kids and everything to have a little bit bigger parking lot,” Palmer said.
Henry told supervisors the existing entrance into Hedgerow would first need widening, and potentially paving. He listed a number of possible issues that have design and cost implications, including the current parking lot’s location in a 100-year floodplain and proximity to a stream buffer, which could result in stream mitigation work.
The price? Henry estimates it at an initial $1.5 million; adding a pavilion and running electricity to it would cost an extra $450,000.
“I see lots of Eagle Scout projects,” said Mallek. Supervisor Rick Randolph said they’d be happy to accept any donations.
At Ragged Mountain, Charlottesville and Albemarle County officials are still at odds over who should have ultimate authority over the property.
Virginia code says localities may make rules for parks they operate in other jurisdictions, but “no ordinances in conflict with an ordinance of the jurisdiction wherein the property is located shall be enacted.”
When the Ivy Creek Foundation handed Ragged Mountain Natural Area over to the city in 2014, former foundation director and city councilor Dede Smith—not involved with either group at the time—says she doubts the city knew about the county’s ordinance that disallows biking.
“They certainly did not know about the history of the reservoir as the only clean raw water we have in the community,” Smith says. “I very much regret that the Ivy Creek Foundation gave up management, but I wasn’t there anymore at that point, so I am not privy to the decision. ICF protected the land back in the 1990s for a reason, but that was lost in the transfer.”
Adds Smith, “An important point to make in the disagreement about governmental rights of the use of the land is that the Ivy Creek Foundation had to get the approval of the county to establish the natural area. For the city to say [the county has] no rights now is simply wrong.”
A price to pay
The accelerated opening of Hedgerow Park won’t be cheap. Here’s how Trevor Henry, the county’s director of facilities and environmental services, breaks it down.
The biggest chunk of the bond referendum—$15.2 million—will pay for a second-story addition and modernization of Woodbrook Elementary School. Staff photo
The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors voted 4-2 July 6 to hold a $35 million bond referendum for school improvements in November, and some locals think county officials will not be able to educate the public about the new ballot item without advocating for it.
Virginia Code allows local governments to clarify a referendum, but insists they must remain neutral in their explanation. Former school board member Gary Grant says county officials may have already slipped up.
“A couple supervisors, in my opinion, have been advocating,” Grant says. “When, in my opinion, they shouldn’t be.”
He notes that Diantha McKeel, the supe who doubles as vice-chair of the board, said at the June 1 BOS meeting that it’s going to fall onto “the school system and the school board to get out to the community and really fight for [the referendum] and explain these projects.” She added, “What I’m hearing is the details can still be explained very clearly at the polling sites.”
Details McKeel referred to would denote specifically what the $35 million bond referendum will go toward—if it passes.
The biggest chunk—$15.2 million—will pay for a two-story addition and modernization of Woodbrook Elementary School, with $10.9 million proposed for learning space modernization across all schools, $6 million slated for a Western Albemarle High School addition and $2.9 million for school security improvements.
At the June 1 meeting, BOS chair Liz Palmer wanted to hang “great big things that you can read from a distance”—posters—inside the polling places to break down the $35 million for voters.
According to Grant, a former reporter at WINA and The Observer who talked with local Virginia Electoral Board member Clara Belle Wheeler, the Electoral Board will publish the wording of the referendum exactly as it appears on the ballot on posters and explanatory materials distributed inside the voting precinct. In her e-mail to Grant, Wheeler says, “No further explanation of any referendum is permitted.” Wheeler did not respond to an interview request.
Jake Washburne, with the county’s registrar of voters, says the code does allow additional explanatory information, however.
“They can’t say, ‘Rah rah rah, vote for this,’” Washburne says, but the governing body may provide
a neutral explanation of each referendum question in 500 words or less.
In his blog, Whatever Albemarle, Grant questions if, to be fair, supervisors will instruct staff to also hang “equally large ‘educational’ charts showing what the tax increase will be if a $35 million referendum passes” inside polling places. Not that he’s against the capital improvement projects, he says, as long as Virginia law is adhered to.
County attorney Greg Kamptner, who will write the question that appears on the ballot, did not respond to an interview request. He has, however, provided to county officials written legal guidance, which says the BOS may pass a resolution in support of or opposition to the referendum. Advocacy prohibitions also do not apply to county officials acting in their individual capacities, he says, or when they’re “off the clock,” Lee Catlin, assistant county executive for community relations, told Charlottesville Tomorrow.
Says Grant, “It’s going to be hard to police that.”
Corrected July 14 at 10:23 to reflect that the proposed addition onto Woodbrook Elementary School will be two stories.
Former RWSA executive director Tom Frederick and Chair Mike Gaffney inspect the plaque that commemorates their efforts in getting the Ragged Mountain Dam built.
Staff photo
Perhaps nothing this century has shaken the Charlottesville area more than the drought of 2002, when carwashes closed, restaurants served on paper plates and the water supply was within 60 days of running out.
And perhaps nothing has divided the community more than the multi-year battle waged over the plan to build a 129-foot-tall mega-dam at Ragged Mountain that would be filled with a nine-mile pipeline from the silting-up South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, from which most of the area’s water still comes.
Today, the pipeline is unbuilt and the South Fork is still filling with sediment, but the new $38 million dam at Ragged Mountain is complete and the reservoir is full, holding 1.5 billion gallons of water.
Champions of the Ragged plan gathered at the new dam on a rainy May 5 to toast the bounty of fresh water and celebrate National Drinking Water Week. Mike Gaffney, chair of the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, noted the “herculean effort” to get the dam approved and built, construction of which started in 2012 and was completed in 2014.
Former RWSA executive director Tom Frederick, who led the dam construction effort after a plan to pull water from the James River was rejected and who just finished his tenure here to take a new job in Loudoun County, recalled the community’s fear of drought—and fear of clear cutting and destruction of habitat in the natural area around the reservoir.
“We’re putting to rest permanently the notion this would be an environmental wreck,” said Frederick. “We recognize and prove we as humans can live together with nature.”
Albemarle Board of Supervisors Chair Liz Palmer was on the Albemarle County Service Authority Board when the debate raged, and she noted that the new dam “was only part of the plan.” Palmer listed aging infrastructure—both the 1920s-built pipeline from Sugar Hollow reservoir used to fill Ragged Mountain and the Observatory Hill Water Treatment Plant, which processes water from the Ragged reservoir, are “antiquated,” she said.
Once the pipeline is built from South Fork Rivanna for water storage at Ragged Mountain, during times of drought, the pipe will be able to “gravity feed” back down to the South Fork, which has the largest water treatment plant, she said. That offers redundancy and “we don’t have to build a new treatment plant,” said Palmer.
The unbuilt pipeline is still the rub for those who fell into the camp that favored dredging the Rivanna rather than investing in the new dam. “It was a ridiculous idea to begin with,” says former city councilor Dede Smith, who founded a group called Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan. “It was $100 million of a $140 million project.”
“I haven’t seen any acquisitions of rights of way” to build the pipeline, says former vice-mayor Kevin Lynch, who also opposed the Ragged Mountain plan. “Most people are still getting water from the South Fork and nothing’s been done to that.”
The good news, Lynch adds, is the South Fork reservoir is silting up more slowly than it had in previous decades. “We’re good at building new stuff and not so good at maintenance,” he says.
“We’re going to get that pipeline built,” assures Gaffney.
“It’s in the capital improvement plan,” says Frederick.
The water level of the Sugar Hollow reservoir has been a concern for both supporters and opponents of the new dam. Between filling up Ragged Mountain and downstream releases of water into the Moormans River, which flows into Sugar Hollow, while other reservoirs have water overflowing their spillways, Sugar Hollow was nearly 14 feet below level April 30, according to a RWSA daily report.
“Sugar Hollow went down precipitously last summer, and it went down this spring,” says John Martin with Friends of the Moormans, a group that supported the Ragged Mountain Dam because that plan would allow larger releases from Sugar Hollow into the Moormans River.
The plan, modeled on the flow of the Mechums River, called for releases of 10 million gallons a day from Sugar Hollow into the Moormans. “The concern is that formula may be overstating the amount of water to be released,” says Martin. “Too much water is going out and not enough is coming in.”
RWSA has asked the Department of Environmental Quality to temporarily lower its releases to 5million gallons a day.
Those “minor corrections” are something one learns during the process, says Frederick. He expects Sugar Hollow levels to fluctuate for a period of time, but ultimately the reservoir will fill up again.
Despite low water levels in Sugar Hollow, Martin says water flow in the Moormans is “tremendously improved” from before, when it would dry up every summer.
That’s what it’s always done, counter Lynch and Smith, who call the Moormans a “flashy” river—one that gets really high flows when it rains and low flows when it doesn’t.
Using the Moormans River and Sugar Hollow with its 17.5 square miles of drainage area is “not sustainable in the long term for this community,” says Palmer. She says that’s why the nine-mile pipeline from the South Fork Rivanna’s 260-square-mile watershed is needed. While the South Fork is good for collecting water, it’s not good for storage, but Ragged Mountain, a natural bowl, is, she points out.
Once the pipeline is built, she adds, the Sugar Hollow pipeline will be abandoned. But for now, Sugar Hollow remains Ragged Mountain’s lifeline.
With the rain coming down and the reservoir full, those there last week clinked their plastic cups and toasted clean water—1.5 billion gallons of it.
