The Rivanna Rambler

January 8, 2009

The City of Charlottesville, along with Albemarle County, UVA, and PVCC, are all submitted renewal applications for the Virginia Stormwater Management Program (VSMP) General Permit for Municipal Separate Storm Sewer Systems (MS4’s).  The permit describes how these entities will manage stormwater in their jurisdictions, but much of the management really rests on you and me and how we manage the stormwater that we create because of our modern lifestyle.

 

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Chilling, cold, welcome, seasonal.  These words could all describe the precipitation of the last couple of days.  Cold and chilling, as temperatures hovered below freezing, icing roads and dusting the Blue Ridge white.  Welcome, and seasonal, since we rely on wintertime precipitation to keeps our rivers and wells flowing, our groundwater replenished, our reservoirs full and to hold off the press of drought.

But this water – mostly clean as transits from clouds to earth – becomes something else once it hits our streets, yards, and houses.  It becomes storm water – and it is hardly benign. 

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February 28, 2008

In the midst of winter, there are bugs in the stream that are alive and well – and some, eve, are hatching out to become insects, having found their aquatic niche at a time when no others compete.  During StreamWatch sampling on the upper Doyle’s, we find several families of winter stoneflies.

 

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This show originally aired on February 28, 2008 and again on December 4, 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 upper Doyles River, like most headwater streams in the Rivanna watershed, is about as pristine as they come.  The waters that collect from springs and drainages of the land that is protected by Shenandoah National Park do not suffer the assaults of sediment and runoff that challenge the health of streams at lower elevations.  For this reason, the community based water monitoring program, StreamWatch, has chosen a spot high on the Doyles as one of several headwater streams that will be used during the next few years as “reference streams” – a standard of “as good as it gets in our watershed” — against which other tributaries of the Rivanna will be evaluated.

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November 27, 2008

Walking through the South Fork Rivanna Water Treatment Plant brings a new appreciation for what it takes to turn river water into potable, safe drinking water.

 

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This show originally aired on November 27, 2007 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.

In late 1620, the God-fearing and intrepid band of Pilgrims aboard the Mayflower, first stepped on the outer shores of Cape Cod – close, but not quite there, in their search for a home and religious freedom in the New World.  After an arduous 2-month voyage across the Atlantic, their stores of fresh water – and more importantly, the cider and beer on which most people relied for drink — were precariously low.

It took several forays down the sandy arm of the Cape to find rivers that spilled fresh water … and eventually, when they moved the Mayflower to what is now known as Plymouth Harbor, it was chosen as much for its protection from Cape Cod Bay as for the  fresh water flowing in to it from the Jones River and a “very sweet brook” that flowed beside the landing rock, a brook that William Bradford wrote had as “good water as can be drunk.”  He describe the water as “sweet,” perhaps an adjective hard for us to appreciate in our modern day, unless we remember that by the 1600s, many rivers – and city streets in the Old World – were already fouled by sewage and what we would today call gray-water from bathing and laundering — and were anything but sweet or safe to drink.

For our Thanksgiving gatherings today, perhaps the one thing on the table that costs little in money or time to prepare is the water that fills our drinking glasses. 

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November 6, 2008

 

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Last week, we learned about the aquatic weed, hydrilla, an herbaceous, perennial freshwater herb originally imported from southeast Asian for aquariums and water gardens – and a plant that has taken over millions of acres of shallow standing and moving water in the United States.  Unfortunately, it has taken root  in our watershed, particularly in the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, but it has also been found in tributaries like the North Fork as well as the river itself downstream from the reservoir.

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August 14, 2008

 

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This show originally aired in August 14, 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

You know something is not right when you walk up to the edge of MeadowCreek behind Kmart off Hydraulic Road. The bank drops down vertically to the stream bottom where a small flow trickles over the rocks. You are not sure how close you can get because looking upstream, you can see places where high water flow from storms has tunneled into the bank leaving just a flap of grass, hinged and drooping over the edge like the unruly bangs of a boy overdue for a haircut.

And you’ve seen this kinds of washed-out bank everywhere in the watershed, and especially as you walk along the Rivanna Trails encircling Charlottesville. For years, you may have said to yourself, this can’t be right, all this dirt eroding away, headed downstream in a brown muddy mess.

But how do you ever go about fixing something like this? And can it even BE fixed?

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