#101 Mud!
September 4, 2008
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Archive for Sediment
#99 Restoration on the North Fork
August 21, 2008
Landowners along the North Fork take advantage of VDGIF’s Landowner Incentive Program to restore a section of stream bank and habitat for the James Spineymussel.
This show originally aired in August 21, 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
On a still, hot morning, I head out of town to visit some friends who are transforming their own corner of heaven in northern Albemarle County. Vickie and Mark Gottlob live in a house they finished building four years along the North Fork of the Rivanna. It sits on a wooded slope of Buffalo Ridge, named for the mammals that once roamed these parts. The Gottlobs are working with Louise Finger of the Virginia Department of Inland Game and Fisheries to help restore habitat in the river for another species rarely seen here: the Jamesriver Spineymussel.
This is my third visit to the site. Before Louise and her team of heavy equipment operators arrived earlier this week, I had come up to visit the river “before” so I could better appreciate the changes “after”. I had donned appropriate river wading gear and dropped down into one of the deeper holes. With cooling water up to my waist, I could see the bank slumping steeply into the stream and showing the signs of instability even an untrained eye could see. The Gottlob’s small floodplain pasture was being eaten away by storm flows and gravity, and all this dirt was settling in the river and clogging the very life out of it. But there were solid gravel bars, mounded here and there with piles of small cobble left by chub and other nest-building species. It had the potential to be good habitat for the spineymussel if it could be stabilized.
The Jamesriver Spineymussel is a rarely seen mollusk in our parts – but its influence has been felt for years
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#88 Questions About the Water Supply Plan
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.
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.
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#86 Legacy Sediment
May 1, 2008
This show originally aired on March 7, 2007 and then again on May 1, 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.
It’s the time of the year when rivers run high and brown here in Albemarle County. Some well-placed rain events, brought water levels to seasonal highs. Sediment from surrounding floodplains and other sources colored the water various shades of brown, from slick and bubbling chocolate during the first flush, to a steely brown that mirrored the gray March skies. I find myself wondering, again, where does all that dirt come from?
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#78 The Reluctant Gardener Faces Non-Native Dilemma
The winter garden starts to beckon at this time of year. Now is a good time to think about what’s native, and what’s not, and how to make amends for ignorant landscaping choices of the past.
This show originally aired on February 28, 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.
February 28, 2007
I am a reluctant gardener. The seasons conspire against me here in Central Virginia. In the winter, when I should be planning the vegetable garden, pruning shrubs, and tidying the lawn, I crave the quiet of indoors where I hibernate, in between bursts of outdoor activities that take me into the woods or by the river or to the tops of the ridges. Much the same happens to me in the springtime rush, a time of not enough time – when I am called by the waters to paddle rivers bursting with green while the weather is still tolerable. For sure, when spring emerges, I do spend a few days tethered to lawn and plants – affirming my environmental responsibility to this City acre and my good fortune for having land at all. Summer, when vegetables want thinning and harvesting and weeds go to seed, I’m retreating to any place removed from heaviness of the humidity. By the time fall rolls around, I vainly try to make up for lost time, tidying and raking in anticipation of the winter.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I have not yet done anything about the invasive plants in my yard
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