UPCOMING: - Tuesday, April 12th - BOARD OF SUPERVISORS - 10am Budget Work Session/2:00 & 7:30pm Regular Monthly meeting - Courthouse - Thursday, April 14th - ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT AUTHORITY - 9:00am Courthouse ------------------------------------------------------------------------- RURAL NELSON WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6TH, 2005 NEXT MEETING: WEDNESDAY, MAY 4TH, 2005 Conny Roussos opened the meeting at 7:30 p.m., and we all introduced ourselves. Conny then introduced the speaker, Dr. Thomas Shahady, Assistant Professor in the Environmental Science Program at Lynchburg College. His subject is the current water quality status of our streams and lakes, the ongoing threats to the health of these ecosystems, and thoughts on how people can get involved in sound water quality management. Dr. Shahady has been studying College Lake in Lynchburg. The experience has changed some of his thinking. We do NOT have an overabundance of water, even thought it may seem so at times. This makes the manner in which we use water critically important. Everyone wants to be around water. The quality of water impacts so much all along the entire spectrum from human health to economic health. The number one threat to clean water is sediment from erosion. Water quality is steadily getting worse. Development is the reason for this. Development IS going to occur, and it needn't be bad development. It is possible to have development that does not pollute the system. The environment IS resilient, but not endlessly so. Flooding is one obvious example of over development. Water that would normally take three days to flow through a system such as College Lake now goes through in three hours when a flood plain is urbanized. This will get worse. Floodplains just keep expanding outwards. He used Lynchburg as an example. It has a population of 66,049. The city covers 56 square miles. The Blackwater Creek Watershed sends one major river through the city. The water boundaries do not know political boundaries. College Lake is the only surface impoundment in the city. It is polluted with coliform bacteria and PCB's. Sedimentation, trash and pollutants are all a result of how the land has been used. Environmentalists take a reactive approach late in the situation when a proactive approach might have kept the problem from happening. Piecemeal land use planning is the biggest culprit. Bad zoning often dooms streams. Zoning often does not take into account the Comprehensive Plan of the county or city. The Home Depot in Lynchburg has been built where there is a strong impact on College Lake. The mosaic of zoning classifications keeps a stream from being able to buffer itself. Conservation areas become reduced to just riparian corridors unsuitable for development in Comprehensive Plans. Often there is no regard for the limits of impervious surface a watershed can assimilate. Watersheds can assimilate approximately 40 % of impervious surface before substantial degradation takes place. Fifty feet of trees as a buffer between a stream and a development can be an enormous help in keeping erosion down. Piecemeal land use planning is the norm when there is very little public interest in the planning process. Localities often zone to the minimum standards of the state, which are meant to be guidelines only. Planners need the legal authority to require good zoning. Most Americans don't like to be told what to do, and developers feel they bought the land fair and square and should not be subject to restrictions on land they'll be taxed on. There is a big need for tax breaks for developers who use sound environmental principles. Public hearings often reduce all impacts to project sites and ignore the benefits of a holistic approach. Often minimal sediment reduction plans are all that is required and they are hardly enforced at all. Many unrealistic measures are used to combat erosion caused by development. Silt fences are one. Lynchburg's College Lake is filling in from sediment. Several homes along the lake have lost their shorefront from sediment fill-in. The Lake is actually protecting the watersheds downstream and ultimately the Chesapeake Bay by its fill-in. Necessary change requires extensive public awareness, engaged politicians, corporate responsibility and grass roots activism. What we have in place in regulations just is not good enough. All the soil that is eroding is also degrading the land from which it comes. Good planning has to examine overall effects. It cannot be done project by project. It requires good leadership. Where there is clear guidance it is best not to change the rules just to improve profits margins. What you can do is get involved in the zoning ordinance process for Nelson County and hold planners and supervisors to the principles of the Comprehensive Plan in their zoning. Speak to your leadership on issues. Try to be proactive rather than reactive. The Dept. of Environmental Quality (DEQ) is trying to maintain standards, but they are a state agency affected by politics. Respectfully submitted, Mary Buford Hitz - Secretary ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This report, sent to over 600 Nelson County citizens, was made possible by the generous donations of Rural Nelson members and supporters. We need your help to continue this service. Please consider donating. Kim T. Cash Field Officer Rural Nelson, Inc. P. O. Box 401 (622 Front Street) Lovingston, VA 22949 434.263.5000 Email: info@ruralnelson.org www.ruralnelson.org