NEWS- Competing visions: Citizens unveil alternate 50-year plan

Former mayor Francis Fife: "We're asking Rivanna to put a hold on construction of the dam."
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Ever since a band of citizens began alerting the community that a pristine natural area would be clear-cut to create a new pipeline-dependent mega-reservoir, water has become– as perhaps it always should have been– a household word.

Coming late to the party, the Hook began covering the story in March and, through a series of investigative reports, discovered that the local waterworks– an unelected body called the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority– had relied on a single firm for many of its key assumptions– most notably, the cost of dredging the Rivanna Reservoir.

That firm, Pennsylvania-based Gannett Fleming, declared that dredging the Reservoir– currently the largest source of our drinking water– is an option too difficult for the community to handle either aesthetically or financially. But as the Hook reported, the company's top dredging estimate is now nearly $225 million, an amount larger than a recent contract to dredge over 50 million cubic yards of sediment from the Panama Canal.

Such comparisons have angered some of the reservoir plan's backers, such as Piedmont Environmental Council's Jeff Werner, who recently branded the Canal comparison "theater." Others have suggested that anyone questioning the new reservoir must be a growth opponent. But opponents could have other concerns.

Albemarle County citizens, for instance, are facing a rate increase that jumps their water/sewer bill 55 percent over two years. And yet it's Charlottesville City Council, not the Albemarle Supervisors, who have now hosted two public hearings to the issue, the first last November and the most recent on Monday, May 19.

"We cannot meet the projected need by dredging only," Ridge Schuyler (one of three Nature Conservancy officials speaking at the meeting) told the crowd packed in Council chambers. Later, Mayor Dave Norris said he agreed, and former mayor David Brown agreed as well.

So might the Citizens group. 

Thirty minutes before the meeting, Citizens for a Sustainable Water Plan held a press conference at which they issued a call for various measures to combine with dredging to meet the community's 50-year demand.

"It does pain me to be here tonight arguing with my fellow environmentalists," said Kevin Lynch, a former City Councilor and Citizens member, who handed out a four-page counter-proposal [PDF].

"There's a lot of other ways–" Lynch, one of the night's 36 speakers, told Council. "We can conserve a little better."

Indeed, Lynch disputes the Rivanna Authority's contention that the community will demand 18.7 million gallons per day, or MGD, in 2055. Such a draw is nearly double today's level and, Lynch contends, overstates reality by 2.5 MGD.

The Citizens claim that in 2055 actual urban water demand will be just 16.2 MGD, because the Rivanna Authority has (a) relied on population projections from Gannett Fleming that are seven percent higher than Virginia Employment Commission projections; and (b) understated the effects of conservation during droughts at five percent instead of the Citizens-preferred ten percent. (During the 2002 drought, demand plummeted 40 percent from 12.23 to 7.28 MGD.)

Further pointing to the Authority's own statistics, Lynch noted that local consumers, despite recent population growth (which has been around 1.4 percent annually), actually trimmed their long-term water consumption from 11.6 MGD in 1999 to just 9.98 mgd in 2007.

One of the key reasons that some environmental groups support the new reservoir– despite what one Council speaker called its imminent "monumental slaughter of wildlife" in the 180-acre clear-cutting at Ragged Mountain– is that it claims to return the Moormans River to its traditional flows 99 percent of the time. Currently, when the dam isn't full, the Moormans River may receive only .4 MGD.

Lynch said the Citizens want minimum 2 MGD stream flows in the Moormans and suggests in his position paper that during a drought's voluntary conservation stage, half of all community water reduction beyond five percent should be returned to the Moormans.

Lynch says the official plan– estimated by the Authority to cost $143 million– will require another doubling of water bills "in the next 13 years to build a system we don't really need for 50 years."

Lynch says the Citizens believe that the demand could be met for $80.7 million, but he also offered two back-up proposals at $93 million and $112 million. Before Lynch released his plans, official water plan supporter Werner lamented the lack of such proposal in a letter to City Council.

"Not having an alternative plan to review or respond to– possibly even endorse– we have no analysis," wrote Werner, "of whether it might achieve the ecological objectives, the budget constraints, and the water storage capacity of the adopted plan."

City Council will hold a public hearing on water rates June 2 and is expected to vote on both the rates and the water plan June 16.