Mike and Natalia Bost say they can’t afford to pay a $100 water/sewer bill at Autumn Hill apartments.
PHOTO BY LISA PROVENCE

When Natalia and Michael Bost moved into Autumn Hill apartments with their new baby in July, they thought the $827 a month rent for a two-bedroom apartment was a pretty good deal— until the day they received a $200 water and sewer bill. Now, they’re among several tenants at the Commonwealth Drive-area complex who think water is being used as a profit center.

“We were told that water, sewer, and trash payments would be made directly to the leasing office and that they would run $30-40 a month,” says Natalia Bost. “In our last apartment, we paid (more)

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“It’s a serene, beautiful place,” says Hatton Ferry pole man Ashley Pillar.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

For nearly 140 years the Hatton Ferry has been taking passengers across the James River near Scottsville, but unless local government or private funds can be raised by the end of the year, it’s curtains for America’s last remaining pole-driven ferry.

Although the historic ferry was rebuilt twice, once after it was destroyed by Hurricane Agnes in 1972, and again after a record flood in 1985, it’s finally being done in by the Virginia Department of Transportation’s multi-billion dollar budget shortfall, which has already claimed over 600 jobs and 19 highway rest stops.

“Despite the national attention in September, VDOT doesn’t want to save it,” says Steven Meeks, president of the Charlottesville Albemarle Historical Society, who had (more)

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The owners of the Amtrak parking lot have graded and filled potholes, but have never paved the lot.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Although there have been many big plans for the revitalization of West Main Street, including a streetcar, a multi-story mixed use building, and several ambitious UVA expansion projects, a new business group deplores the current state of West Main— particularly the dust that rises daily from the pot-holed parking lot surrounding the Amtrak station.

Calling the lot a “blight on the Midtown landscape” as well as a “health hazard,” and “an environmental travesty,” the newly formed Midtown Association calls on the private owners of the Amtrak parking lot to pave it.

“The history of this situation between the City and the property owners borders on municipal negligence and professional irresponsibility,” reads an Association statement. “Something has to be done.”

In the 1990s, the City pushed Norfolk Southern Corporation to sell the parcel to Gabe Silverman and Allan Cadgene in hopes of fostering a public-private partnership whose (more)

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Independent Bob Fenwick wants to defy the odds and get on City Council.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Independent City Council candidate Bob Fenwick is getting a lot of buzz– and support from a broad coterie of Republicans, Democrats, and independents. But is that enough to get him elected to Council in a city long dominated by Dems?

It’s hard enough for a Republican to get a seat on Council— ask Rob Schilling, who was elected in 2002, the first Republican in 16 years. For an independent running without even minority party support, what are the odds?

“It is virtually impossible,” says Schilling. “The last independent (more)

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“This case is about right and wrong,” says RSWA director Tom Frederick in a recent memo, accusing recycler Peter Van der Linde of “defrauding” the RSWA out of more than “a million dollars in tipping fees.”
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After nearly two years of silence, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority has finally responded in detail to public comments and media coverage of its $20 million RICO lawsuit against trash recycler Peter Van der Linde. Authority director Tom Frederick released a memo ahead of the RSWA Board’s October 27 meeting that includes some of the “substantial evidence” that Van der Linde “defrauded the RSWA in excess of a million dollars in tipping fees.”

According to Frederick, after the RSWA’s  “service contribution fee” was implemented in 2005, Authority officials began noticing sharp drops in the amount of area trash that Van der Linde was hauling, as reported to them by BFI, a development that Frederick characterizes as a smoking gun.

“During one twelve-month period from September 2006 through August 2007, Mr. Van der Linde’s companies declared zero tons from Albemarle/Charlottesville,” says Frederick, “a period within which there are multiple photographic records” of Van der Linde’s orange dumpsters in the area.

At the time, Frederick had his recycling manager, Bruce Edmonds, tracking and photographing Van der Linde’s containers. In the county, development director Mark Graham had instructed his building inspectors to keep track of the distinctive orange containers.

“They might think I’m a criminal, but do they think I’m stupid?” responds Van der Linde, who plans to issue his own memo to refute Frederick’s comments, point by point, at the Authority’s Tuesday meeting. “Do they really think (more)

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RWSA director Tom Frederick has enjoyed the support of his board, including Charlottesville Public Works director Judy Mueller.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Despite a request from a prominent critic of the controversial plan to replace three existing reservoirs with one that would adjoin Interstate 64, the study of the pipeline needed to make the scheme possible appears to be slipping past the local elections, according to a document submitted last month by the head of the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority.

“The review of the conceptual plan for a future South Fork to Ragged Mountain pipeline was estimated to be completed by the end of 2009,” Authority director Tom Frederick writes in a late September response to a reporter’s question. “RWSA entered into a contract in late August with the firm Wiley/Wilson to perform the review.”

Questions about how the $25,000 review is going could not be immediately answered, as Wiley/Wilson’s project manager, Tim Slaydon, is hiking the Appalachian Trail and not expected back (more)

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“This is a monumental waste of time and money,” says Bob Fenwick of the Waste Authority’s lawsuit against Peter Van der Linde, seen here on the trolley Van der Linde uses to give school tours of his recycling facility.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

Independent City Council candidate Bob Fenwick held a press conference today at Peter Van der Linde’s $11 million Zion Crossroads recycling facility, at which he dropped off some trash of his own (concrete scraps, yard waste, and a broken weed trimmer) and called on Charlottesville City Council to rescind the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority’s $20 million RICO lawsuit against the recycler.

“We have two governments going after Peter Van der Linde using my tax money and my water fees,” said Fenwick. “Their staff attorney has been reported to be charging $515 an hour. This is a monumental waste of time and money.”

As an area businessman for 30 years, Fenwick said that Van der Linde’s struggle with the RSWA “struck a chord,” and like the YMCA plans for McIntire Park, seemed like another case of “government not following the will of the people.” Fenwick said he’s tried to find out the RSWA’s side of the story, but to no avail.

“Why doesn’t someone from the County Board of Supervisors or City Council stand before us and tell us why this lawsuit is a good idea?” Fenwick asked. “They have publicly accused this man of being a criminal, and now they hide from public comment.”

Fenwick also criticized the RSWA’s (more)

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“It is absolutely false that I supported flow control,” says BoS member Ken Boyd, calling it “more than a stretch” to suggest he ever did.

FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Two weeks after the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority Board discussed its interest in getting a flow control ordinance to bolster a revamped Ivy transfer station, Authority director Tom Frederick now appears to be backing away from such a move, which would have given the Authority monopoly control over trash collection and might have driven the Authority’s nemesis out of business.

On October 7, after news of the flow control discussion broke and Coy Barefoot and Rob Schilling took up the issue on their radio programs, Frederick appeared before the County Board of Supervisors to say that his staff was not presently pursing flow control.

“I have not been directed by the Board to work on a flow control ordinance,” said Frederick, summarizing what he told the Supes, “and am not working on one.”

Earlier in the week, Supervisor Ken Boyd, who also sits on the RSWA Board, called in to Schilling’s show to distance himself from flow control, a term he said he “was not familiar with” when (more)

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Independent City Council candidate Bob Fenwick called on Mayor Dave Norris to “publicly repudiate” the RSWA’s $20 million lawsuit against Peter Van der Linde.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

While our elected officials continue to support the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority’s $20 million RICO lawsuit against recycling entrepreneur Peter Van der Linde, two candidates seeking office are now speaking out against it.

Wednesday night, at the Free Enterprise Forum’s candidate forum at Burley Middle School, Independent City Council candidate Bob Fenwick, who says he is “appalled” by the lawsuit, called out Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris on the issue. While the Hook was not present at the forum, Fenwick summarized his statements after the meeting.

“As a citizen of the City of Charlottesville and not as a candidate I’m calling on Mayor Dave Norris tonight to strongly and publicly repudiate this lawsuit,” Fenwick said. “ And I don’t want to hear any baloney about the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority (more)

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RSWA lawyer Kurt Krueger defined “flow-control” for Board members at their September 22 meeting.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Rivanna Solid Waste Authority director Tom Frederick has long contended that the Authority’s now $20 million RICO lawsuit against Peter Van der Linde has nothing to do with the competing trash facility the private businessperson opened last December, an $11 million Materials Recovery Facility that quickly captured the local market for construction debris and commingled recyclables. But on the eve of Van der Linde’s opening of an expansion that would also take household trash for recycling— a move that could potentially siphon off the Authority’s remaining revenue stream— the Authority is now discussing an option that could put the recycling entrepreneur out of business.

“If they hand over Ivy to Waste Management, Allied, or some other big company with a flow-control guarantee,” says Van der Linde, “I’m doomed.”

Unaware of flow-control? Don’t worry, several Board members, including (more)

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The apartment building was half gone at 1:59pm.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

The first new fraternity house to be built at UVA in over 50 years got a big pre-groundbreaking ceremony of sorts Tuesday, September 22— as heavy machinery minced a 1950’s era apartment building near UVA’s famed Mad Bowl grassy field.

“It’s coming down good,” says Ralph Law, the site superintendent for Parham Construction, as the crew took a short afternoon break after a hydraulic hose burst while razing the 12-unit apartment building at 135 Madison Lane.

Delta Upsilon, now located next to Beta Bridge on Rugby Road, will build a new building on the site of demolished apartments: a red-brick, neoclassical structure of 6,825 square feet— complete with a two-story classical portico featuring large white doric columns.

Inside, over three floors including an English basement, the architectural firm of Daggett & Grigg has designed 15 single bedrooms (including two handicap-accessible) and several large common areas for the men of DU. The building will feature central air-conditioning as well as wiring for cable and Internet, and it will also be safety equipped with sprinklers.

DU, now celebrating its 175th anniversary, is the nation’s sixth oldest fraternity; and the new house in Charlottesville serves as a fresh place for a chapter founded in 1922, the first chapter south of the Mason-Dixon line.

Since at least the 1970s, there’s been a tradition that anyone painting Beta Bridge would paint “THX DU,” for “thanks, Delta Upsilon” to ensure that the men of DU wouldn’t paint over the main message.

“I don’t know if there was ever any truth to that,” says unofficial UVA historian Coy Barefoot. “That’s just a paint-the-bridge tradition.”

Appropriately enough, as part of a complex house swap-and-purchase, the fraternity that gave its name to the Bridge is coming back home.

Beta Theta Pi— best known simply as “Beta”– is the fraternity that sold its historic location at 180 Rugby to DU in the early 1970s and later spent many years at what was originally called the Compton House on Maury Avenue (a building later razed to great community upset by the Jefferson Scholars Foundation) before decolonizing.

Now recolonizing, Beta will have a rebirth in its old digs which next to the famous paint-covered bridge. We’ll have to see if “THX BETA” becomes the new mantra.

“By tomorrow,” says Parham’s Law, “we should have the majority of it out of here.”

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Schnabel made the finals in 2007 but was originally passed-over by the now-fired Gannett Fleming.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

Despite the plea of Albemarle County’s own water resources expert to follow a so-called “softer” path, the unelected Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority board appears poised to approve a contract to a new firm to design the controversial reservoir that would supply the bulk of the future water supply, a project whose now over-$200 million bloat hasn’t dimmed the board’s enthusiasm for it.

Documents released in advance of the Tuesday, September 22 meeting show that Authority Director Tom Frederick hoped to gain his board’s approval to ink a contract with Schnabel Engineering for a fixed cost of $1.6 million plus up to $544,765 for geotechnical field testing and some public outreach.

Instead, he won approval for just $1.42 million to the Virginia-based firm.

“We’re hoping to assist Rivanna and the community to build a safe and cost-effective dam,” says Schnabel project administrator Chris Webster.

But what about concerns that the project— which some contend has been rendered unnecessary by a decade of lower water usage— might (more)

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“Somebody’s gonna make a good living out of doing a company and offering this service,” said Fenwick Friday.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

After years of talk, someone has finally taken action on dredging a water body in Albemarle County. Only it wasn’t a County citizen; it was Charlottesville resident and City Council candidate Bob Fenwick.

“This is not rocket science,” said Fenwick September 4, on the shore of Loch Leigh, a private lake in the West Leigh subdivision. “This is engineering, and this is a basic application of mechanical equipment,” he said.

A former member of the Army Corps of Engineers, the folks who oversee many of the world’s biggest dredging operations, Fenwick has turned his sights to what might be the world’s (more)

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Trashed since construction on the Landmark Hotel began, Second Street SE will now be getting a $800K make-over.
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

While our colleague Allan Smithee is certainly a talented writer, he sometime plays a little fast and loose with the facts. [See "The Rutabaga--editor.]

Second Street SE on the Downtown Mall may look like a trash site right now, but Neighborhood Development chief Jim Tolbert assures us that an $808,000 streetscaping project is scheduled to begin in September. The project was originally planned to be completed in coordination with the construction of the Landmark Hotel, but as that project appears to be stalled indefinitely, the city has decided not to wait.

According to city engineer Tony Edwards, the project should take about four months. And the eye-popping price tag? That appears to be the result of (more)

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The Rivanna Reservoir, built in 1966, has been silting in. Instead of dredging, the waterworks wants to build a new one.
PHOTO BY SKIP DEGAN

Waterworks director Tom Frederick told his board today, August 25, that he’d been struggling to nail down a contract with the Nebraska-based firm that his selection committee tapped earlier in the month to launch a dredging study of the Rivanna Reservoir. Due to the alleged complexity of the study, Frederick said, he had extended (more)

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Hardly a road or bridge was undamaged in Nelson County.
PHOTO COURTESY OAKLAND-NELSON COUNTY MUSEUM OF HISTORY

While others celebrate the 40th anniversary of seminal 1969 events like Woodstock, Nelson County pauses for a more somber remembrance: the hellish night of August 19-20, 1969, when Hurricane Camille dumped more than 27 inches of rain in five hours and slid mountains, flooded streams, and took the lives of 125 people

One of the first confirmed deaths was below Wintergreen, where a 40-mph debris flow slammed into the home of Mr. and Mrs. Edwin Hawes Ewing. At 10am Wednesday, August 19, some of the people involved in rescue and recovery, such as Dr. Bob Raynor, who worked on identifying the dead (eight were never identified), will gather at the historic marker at the bridge on 151. Author Earl Swift, who wrote The Tangierman’s Lament, will interview survivors. (more)

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