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Architect William Atwood, simultaneously developing luxury residences downtown at the old Thomas Tire site as well as on West Main and 10 and 1/2 Street at the old Under the Roof site, has revealed the look of the latter, in a Daily Progress story about green building technologies.
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Boston competes with C'ville
… for most surprising traffic ticket. In Charlottesville, the police chief continues to defend ticketing the wheelchair-riding citizen struck in a crosswalk, while Boston tickets a driver rushing his pregnant wife to the hospital to give birth. (0)
County red ink hits $7.2 million
Just five months into its fiscal year, which began July 1, Albemarle County faces a $7.2 million deficit and will raise property taxes to compensate, according to the Daily Progress. (9)
Harvard tops UVA, loses 22%
Harvard University, which, like UVA, uses the so-called “Yale model” of investing its endowment, is now reporting a 22 percent loss, which is more than UVA’s alleged 18 percent loss. (1)
Horrors of war: Jaquith interviews photo-journo Ashley Gilbertson
Local blogger and Virginia Quarterly Review web guy Waldo Jaquith interviews photojournalist Ashley Gilbertson, whose eye-opening recent article in the VQR “The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce” “tells the story of just one veteran, the 23-year-old Pierce, who took a handgun and shot himself in the head on the night of July 25, 2008, tortured by the memories of what he’d seen and what he’d done in his two tours of duty in Iraq.” Indeed, the peice is a wake-up call for anyone who has been lulled to sleep by this drawn out war. Writes Jaquith on the VQR’s blog, “I sat down with Ashley a few weeks ago to discuss how he became interested in this topic, why it’s so important, and what it’s been like for him to write about and photograph something so difficult.” Listen to the interview (0)
15 jobs chopped at Staunton newspaper
As part of an urgent company-wide move which may be the biggest mass lay-off in American newspaper history, Gannett has axed 15 jobs— including laying off 10 full-time employees— at its Staunton News-Leader. With Gannett stock falling 76 percent and the Daily Progress‘ parent falling 93 percent, this has not been a good year for daily newspapers. (2)
Rachana Dixit writes “Something that is just beginning to be evaluated, though, is a greater effort to conserve water.”
Local architect and developer Bill Atwood is building an 85,000-square-foot, mixed-use development on West Main Street. While infill development is something increasingly common within city limits, the 270,000-gallon rainwater catching device on top of Atwood’s building is something that Charlottesville has not seen a whole lot of.
“Now we need to save the water and hide the water,” Atwood said.
Most of the water saved in Atwood’s project will be used to flush toilets, while some will also be used for landscaping and cooling purposes.(Daily Progress)
I believe that the use of graywater for non-potable use on a wider scale is the next major conservation savings. As we saw with low flush toilets, these trends can catch on very quickly once established.
This is another reason to re-visit the assumptions that were made by the RWSA consultants for our projected 50 year water supply. The 2004 Gannett Fleming demand report only uses data through 2001, starting in 2002 demand started declining, following implementation of a number of conservation measures. The 2004 report treats the decline in water usage from years 2002-2004 as an anomaly, even though six years after the drought the trend toward less water usage has continued. Greg Harper, the County Water Resource Manager has addressed this in his paper “Are we overestimating our future water needs-an updated inquiry into data and assumptions-”which can be found in this article:
http://readthehook.com/blog/index.php/2008/11/24/pumped-up-county-water-guru-says-numbers-inflated/
His ideas and others need to be carefully evaluated before launching into a more than $200 million dollar new water infrastructure system, instead of first looking at conservation and efficiency measures that could be adopted. Then we can plan for a sustainable way to increase our water supply that can take into account the trend toward less water consumption now and in the future and be phased in gradually so as not to be a financial burden for the rate-payers who will foot the bill.