The Rivanna Rambler

May 15, 2008

This show originally aired on May 15, 2008 on “The Rivanna Rambler,” a weekly public affairs show airing every Thursday at 11:55 a.m. on WTJU 91.1 FM or wtju.net.

 

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The community water supply plan that is under question has been permitted, as it must be, by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality on February 11, 2008. That plan was approved unanimously by the City Council and Albemarle County Board of Supervisors in 2006.

Because our area is not blessed by natural reservoirs, nor rivers whose flows are adequate at every time of the year to yield water for human use even at our present population, we rely on reservoirs to store water for times of scant rainfall and low flows.

When our urban population was smaller in the late 1890’s and early 1900’s, the City of Charlottesville set aside land to create the first, and then subsequently expanded, Ragged Mountain Reservoir. This reservoir is unlike the South Fork in that it is not filled by a running river but rather by aging pipeline from the headwaters of the Rivanna, the North and South Forks of the Moormans River, now impounded by the Sugar Hollow dam. The Ragged Mountain reservoir has a watershed that is relatively small and does not appreciably contribute to the supply impounded in the reservoir. In addition, its slopes are completely forested except for I-64, which bisects the western portion of its watershed.

The South Fork Reservoir was built in 1965 with no planning for periodic removal of sediment captured from upstream sources by some form of dredging. It is indeed a very good thing that the community is now waking up to a fact that residents adjacent to the South Fork, boaters and fishermen on its impounded waters, and watershed planners have long known: we have lost about a 1/3 of the storage capacity of this reservoir –and annually this number is increasing and the storage capacity is decreasing.

Mudflats impede UVA and community rowers in upstream bends in the river, every rain event brings another wedge of sediment laden water from up-watershed, attempts to travel up Ivy Creek by canoe from the Woodlands Road bridge can only take you so far before you are walking through soft mud.

So people are asking – why not just dredge the reservoir and restore its function to store the drinking water that we need? The answer depends upon whether or not you think that cost estimates from eager dredging companies are accurate enough on which to base a water supply. On whether or not you think that it is OK to chop down or inundate trees on land already set aside for the very purpose of storing water – and that was timbered for profit by the City of Charlottesville as recently as the 1950s. Or whether or not we have any obligation to restore natural flows to the Moorman’s River, a pristine, headwater stream known for its diversity of aquatic habitat.

Or whether you question the numbers – developed by engineers and planners and endorsed by the State of Virginia — used to project human water usage for the next 50 years. Or whether you believe that dredging should be considered a maintenance task like the nutrient removal upgrades required for Moore Creek Treatment Plant, or other upgrades needed for O-Hill and South Fork water plants.

Or whether you think – or hope – that our still growing population will find, collectively, the political and moral will to use water more smartly, and less, in the years to come, regardless of unpredictable changes in rainfall patterns wrought from climate change. Or whether perhaps this time – some 50 years after the South Fork was built, we are entering a time of investment, much as our forebears found it necessary and unavoidable to do, and must plan for our and our children’s future – and knowing that it will be costly, we are still willing to bear that cost because it is the right thing to do.