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.

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This show originally aired on January 17, 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 bright afternoon during a warm spell earlier in the month, I was part of a group of Ivy Creek Foundation visitors gathered on a hillside above the wooded valley below the Ragged Mountain Dam. We were there to take a look at the drilling operation, part of the geotechnical studies being undertaken by the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority in preparation for expansion of this drinking water reservoir.

Almost at the top of the service road that leads to the caretaker’s house, we park behind a series of trucks and get out with our guide, Chuck Kent, who works for the Service Authority and is overseeing the project. On the downhill side of the road, there’s a steep track that weaves through the woods, barely visible but for rumpled leaves and clumps of fresh earth here and there, and several men in cold weather work clothes are climbing up to greet us.

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This show originally aired on July 26, 2007 but is as timely now as it was when drought restrictions were first placed on the community this summer.

November 29, 2007

I just returned from Kinsale, Virginia, where I keep a small sailboat at a marina. The purpose of my trip was to re-plumb my fresh water system. The tank had gotten so funky that the last time I used the small hand pump faucet at the sink, green slime came out. This called for immediate action – so I set to work, removing the 15-gallon polyethylene tank from its home under the V-berth in the bow of the boat. This prompted a closer look at the length of hose for potable water from the aforementioned tank forward to the aforementioned faucet. It only stood to reason that I should replace the hose while I was at it – and so, on an unseasonably mild Tuesday in July, I subjected my body to the necessary contortions required to gain access so that I could route the new hose. This took a couple of hours, but I left for home satisfied that on the next sailing trip, I’d have sweet fresh water, suitable for drinking.

While I was out of town for a couple of days, the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority invoked a Drought Watch in accordance with its drought management plan that emerged after the 2002 drought. This all got me to thinking more about boats I have known – and the role of fresh water aboard boards, especially those which ply the saltier waters of our commonwealth. Like backpackers and other outdoor adventurers, sailors for the most part live in constant awareness of the amount of remaining fresh water in their very finite tanks and have devised a myriad of ways to conserve water.

Take my friend Mac, who has owned a 45-foot sail boat that he’s been chartering out of the Virgin Islands for the last 15 winters. I first met Mac in the mid-90’s while he was on his annual swing through Charlottesville, reconnecting with old friends, recruiting guests for future trips aboard Stranger, the given name of his boat. A love of the sea, compatible politics, and the desire the answer life’s important questions were a few things that we shared, long before I was able to sail with him on his boat.

When Mac comes to visit, he brings a bottle of wine, cheese and crackers, and a whole boatload of compelling Life Questions. And when Mac doers the dishes, which is his thank offering for the meal you’ve just cooked, he is as parsimonious with water as he would be on his own boat. I remember the first time I came across Mac washing dishes at my kitchen sink – the dishes and pots still frothy with suds where they were carefully stacked to dry. I thought perhaps that Mac was about to rinse them, but Mac fussed at me, shoeing me out of the kitchen, telling me that the soapy dishes were done, having rinsed the operative surfaces – the working sides of the plates and the inside, cooking part of the pots. As I turned to leave the kitchen, he said, “I got all the soap off of what counts! I’m saving water!”

Well, of course, Mac – a creature of habit like the rest of us – had made water conservation a way of life … certainly living on a boat will do that to you. Bringing it ashore is another whole thing … and got me to thinking about how my habits shift and change with the conveniences of life ashore. While my boat carries only 15 gallons of potable water, and I am frugal with its use when living afloat, it is so easy to slide back into practices that tap water makes possible.

The Water Resources Federation says that clothes washing and toilets flushing each claim about 25% of a typical American household … with another 20% being used in showers and baths. Add to that, now, the running water from kitchen and bathroom faucets for another 15%. Leaks account for almost 15% of domestic water use, with washing dishes and cleaning consuming a mere 3%. So what was my friend saving, after all, with his one-sided rinse?

What he was saving was the trouble of having to relearn the habit of conservation. Yes, he was also saving water – and that’s the whole point here, but equally important, I think, is what it takes to cultivate an ongoing consciousness of the finiteness of our water supplies, whether it be from the tap, from a well, or from a tank on a boat. If I could be like the “water efficient household” — described by the Federation as one that uses 52 gallons of water, per person, per day — I would be frugal in the best sense of the word: careful, sparing, and opposing the luxury of unlimited water. While the drought watch is a perfect time to cultivate these conservation habits, it’s worthy goal to retain them when water resources are replenished. I have my friend Mac to thank for reminding me that shipboard practices can and should be brought ashore.

The newspaper reports that we are not, by a long shot, out of the woods with respect to water supplies, in spite of the four inches of rain we got last week. And we are not alone. At Chesapeake Climate Action Network conference held at Clark Hall last weekend, it was reported that 100 water systems in North Carolina and Tennessee have less than 100 days of water available for their customers. More alarming is that the Naval Postgraduate School, which has been studying the rate of loss of sea ice at the North Pole for many decades, is predicting that by 2013, there will be no summer sea ice at all. And, that as the polar ice shrinks, the jet stream and the moisture it holds are pulled north, which is exactly what we’ve seen this summer and fall.So on this crisp, bright Halloween Day, I drive up to the Sugar Hollow Reservoir to see for myself. Noontime, weekday, it is quiet up as I pull into the parking area at the top of the dam. The water mirrors the soft changing colors of the turning trees in the headwaters above. The reservoir itself is with rimmed with dry, hard clay and rock. According to the Water & Sewer Authority’s online record, it is down 12.2 feet. Below the dam, a stout hose is spewing a wash of water into the shallow pool below, a small concession to the Moormans River and the ecology of downstream needs.I walk down through a grove of pines and hickory, the hardened brown leaves tapping out a rhythm on the bark as they wave in the slight breeze. Past the trees, I sit down in the sloping intertidal zone, between the line of “lots of water” and “not enough.” The reservoir is at 86% capacity, but the view from here does not look so encouraging.Others have been here before me. A large rounded boulder protruding from the slope next to me has a flattened top and must have been a tempting target, for it is strewn with broken glass from shattered beer bottles. Gold metal tabs from bait cans glint in the high midday sun. I feel like I am witness to the barrens that will be left behind when drought forces masses of us to live in other places or, possibly, to live in other ways. At the water’s edge, stubs of tree trunks emerge from the water, testament to the staying power of the anaerobic environment, preserved as they have been since 1947 when the dam was built and the reservoir filled the valley.The longer view is more reassuring. Across the reservoir, the soft tree line slopes towards the mountains, along the course of the South Fork of the Moormans River. The wind’s fetch over the reservoir makes it look like the water is flowing back upriver. A lone bird sits on the elbow of a tree limb bent up and out of the water. As it turns its head, I see a patch of light gray that reminds me of cormorant, but it’s too far to see. High in the noontime sky, the waning moon sits above the Blue Ridge. A raven calls from a ridge beyond.I have been struggling to find my own core of optimism since attending this weekend’s conference. All the feedback loops — atmospheric, hydrologic, ecological – forces that help maintain life in a delicate but dynamic equilibrium on this planet — are now presenting themselves in ways that have been mostly underestimated with consequences that are unavoidably stark. Even a modest sea level rise will inundate 3000 miles of shoreline in the Chesapeake Bay region, impacting all the major cities along the fall the line and hundreds of thousands of people.Across the reservoir, I see the former high water line, incised into the bank and scribed across a large boulder with a dark line of weeds that divides the upper and lower halves as though a mirror reflection. Like the glass half empty, it reminds me of the dry times ahead. But maybe the other half is what I cannot see, but can feel as sure as I am this human body warmed by the sun and touched by the light breeze. This half is the hope, vision, resolve, and commitment that we are all being called to bring forth and contribute. May this reservoir always be sufficiently full.