RURAL NELSON MINUTES DECEMBER 3RD, 2002 RURAL NELSON OFFICE NEXT MEETING: FEBRUARY 4th, 2003 Featured Speaker: John Rice, Land Conservation Officer with the Piedmont Environmental Council Topic: Water Issues and Development. Conny Roussos welcomed those who had braved the cold, and we all introduced ourselves. Connie Brennan gave us an update on the Comprehensive Plan and the work on the new zoning ordinance. Frank Cox has been hired, and is spending time working with boilerplate zoning language to make it fit our updated Comprehensive Plan. The Supervisors and Planning Commissioners are having a series of meetings with Mr. Cox. It is going slowly. The second session was spent on the Community Development Overlay Plan. Mr. Cox is concerned that the county have in place a document that could be used when and if the county gets a proposal for a big planned community. Such a proposal would still have to be approved by the Supervisors. They have discussed a lighting ordinance. They still have a great deal of work to do. Public hearings on zoning will be held in the future. Connie was asked about a federal grant that Virgil Goode felt the county should be able to get, which would need to be used for water projects. Conny Roussos asked if the community would be presented with a finished product or would be given updates in public hearings as they went along. Connie Brennan said that had not been decided. Conny introduced John Rice, Land Conservation Officer with the Piedmont Environmental Council, here to talk about water issues and development. Years ago John said he was involved in a water study for Tiger Fuels in Nelson County. He referred to a groundwater study done five or six years ago, either for the county or the town of Lovingston, and asked if anyone knew about it or had heard about it. No one at the meeting knew anything about it. Groundwater here in the Piedmont is very different from Tidewater Virginia where the soil is characterized by transported deposits. We are dealing with solid bedrock under a layer of soil. We are dependent on fractures in the rock to get our groundwater. Soil in the Piedmont is usually thirty to sixty feet deep, weathered from the bedrock below - it is literally rotted rock. The water table refers to where we first find saturated moisture as we dig down through the soil and rock. The cracks in the rock are found to be better connected in valleys, but as you go down in depth the fractures tend to peter out. There is a slope to the water table, which generally follows the topography above. Groundwater flows from high to low, and discharges into surface streams along the entire length of a stream. That's what keeps the streams flowing even in times of low rainfall. All groundwater is from precipitation. On average we get forty inches of rain a year. For the most part it's evenly distributed throughout the year. 60 - 70% of rainfall evaporates or is used by vegetation, an amazing amount. During the non-growing season precipitation can and does reach the water table. During periods of drought, streams still take and use groundwater but it is not replenished by precipitation, which has been the pattern of the last few years. If we have a dry winter the pattern will repeat itself, showing how important wet winters are to good groundwater resources. 10 - 20% of precipitation the rest of the year recharges the groundwater. Much is lost in surface runoff, between 10 - 30%. Most of the storage of groundwater is in the part of the soil (the residium) that is below the water table. Much of Nelson County has only a thin layer of soil before rock is reached, lowering the number of places for possible storage of groundwater. When a driller drills a well, it is done through a piece of solid casing. When he hits rock he goes until he hits a fracture zone with water. How great the volume is depends on how inter-connected the fractures are. Often the driller will drill further to build up the storage capacity. An artesian well is one where the water comes up to the surface because of pressure from a connected fracture that is higher than usual. Old hand-dug wells go only as far as the soil below the water table, not into the rock below it where the fractures are, so they often go dry in a drought. An original excellent flow on a newly drilled well does not always hold up if pumped continuously. When a well is being drilled is the time to make accurate assessments of depth, flow, etc. It is hard and costly to do it later. Nelson County does not have a water crisis, but it does have places that it is hard to get access to it. There is enough water to build out the county. This is not Arizona or New Mexico. There are good reasons to fight growth in trying to keep an area rural but in Nelson County water resource is not one of them. The impact of development does have a strong effect on groundwater, especially as asphalt impacts the amount of rainwater runoff. The City of Charlottesville is entirely supplied by groundwater in reservoirs, and found itself in a precarious situation this year. Protected recharge areas are important when a town is dependant on wells, such as Lovingston. A basic study of the recharge area of a well can give you are good idea of your well's sustainability, but such studies are expensive. Much of the rock in Nelson is massive granite, relatively unfractured. It was pointed out that some of the county's soil is not appropriate for drainage fields in dealing with sewage. Because fractures are usually interconnected, monitoring wells around you will give you good feedback as to what is going on with your well. Monitoring flow in your surface water streams will tell you a lot about what is going on with the groundwater system. We need to get the water gauges that were taken off line with both federal and state budget cuts back operating again. Cisterns are a great way to collect rainfall and take pressure off of your well. There is more opportunity for bacteria to enter spring water as there is typically a shallow flow path to a spring. John pointed out that as pressure on water increases people are gathering to argue these issues, as to date there is very little in the way of regulation that is enforced in the governance of water resources. In some places wastewater is reprocessed for drinking water. California has for years taken more than its portion of Colorado River water, which is now under scrutiny by states to the east of California. Conny Roussos thanked John for a very interesting presentation. Joyce made the Treasurer's Report. From now on she will leave the Rockfish Watershed Group figures out of the report to make sure we understand where Rural Nelson stands. Where we stand is that WE NEED MONEY! From January 1st to December 3rd of 2002 $15,975.01 has come in and $20,439.73 has been disbursed. Our deficit is $4,464.72. Our book balance is $6,328.53. Friends of Rockfish Watershed has $2090 in the Rural Nelson account, as we are acting as their charitable umbrella. Mike Tapager reported on the Lovingston grass roots group. At their last meeting they had almost all the business owners in town at the meeting. He feels they have made a good start. Susan McSwain made a report on voluntary Ag/Forestal areas. Her husband Robert made a presentation on them to the Planning Commission. Andy Wright is going to make a report on them at the regular Board of Supervisors' December meeting. They have ten landowners interested in establishing an Ag/Forestal area. There will be a zoning ordinance work session Wednesday, December 11th at 7:00 p.m. at the Courthouse. January 12th at 4:00 p.m. at D'Ambola's Restaurant there will be a fundraiser for Rural Nelson. There will be wine tasting and dinner for a charge of $50. Reservations are due by January 5th. Summer Festival this year will be the 14th and 15th of June, not the last weekend in June, at Oak Ridge. There will be no meeting in January. Respectfully Submitted, Mary Buford Hitz Secretary Rural Nelson, Inc. P. O. Box 401 (622 Front Street) Lovingston, VA 22949 434.263.5000 Email: info@ruralnelson.org www.ruralnelson.org