No one told Maurie Sutton her street would be no parking when she bought a lot there in 2007.
PHOTO BY COURTENEY STUART

The neighborhood already reeling from getting declared a no plow zone in December just got another unhappy surprise when residents learned that they can no longer park at the end of their cul-de-sac. Now, some residents of this south-of-downtown neighborhood say they don’t know where they’ll park.

“I have a roommate, a 23-year-old nurse who works nights,” says resident Maurie Sutton. “She’s going to have to walk through a neighborhood that isn’t safe.”

And safety isn’t the only concern at Roy’s Place, (more)

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Alexandra Fitzsimmons may not be able to return to Concepcion, where she teaches English.
PHOTO COURTESY ALEXANDRA FITZSIMMONS

Like most people in Chile, Alexandra Fitzsimmons was asleep when one of the largest temblors ever recorded rumbled to life at 3:34am. As her bed slid across the room as if inside a ship rocked during a storm, she pretty quickly realized that it wasn’t a dream.

“We’re very lucky,” says Fitzsimmons, 25, in a telephone interview from a friend’s apartment on a seventh floor in Santiago. There are cracks in the ceiling and chunks of drywall that have fallen out, but from the outside, she says,”You’d have no idea anything happened.”

Fitzsimmons considers herself particularly fortunate because (more)

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“With approximately 2.3 million people in prison or jail, the United States incarcerates more people than any other country in the world—by far. Our per capita rate is six times greater than Canada’s, eight times greater than France’s, and twelve times greater than Japan’s. Here, at least, we are an undisputed world leader; we have a 40 percent lead on our closest competitors—Russia and Belarus.” So writes Georgetown University Law School Professor David Cole in the New York Review of Books last year. On Friday, March 5 at 11am the he’ll be discussing our “shameful” prison systems at the Miller Center.

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The RSWA had “no success” fixing billing problems at the BFI/Republic transfer station—- but Van der Linde got sued.
FILE PHOTO BY JEN FARIELLO

For over two years, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority publicly branded Peter Van der Linde a cheat and attacked the recycler with an anti-mafia statute as part of a $20 million lawsuit, based largely on the unsubstantiated testimony of a disgruntled former Van der Linde employee, now serving jail time for attempted extortion.

But a curious thing happened when the Authority dropped its lawsuit on January 20. As Van der Linde agreed to pay $600,000 to settle it, the Authority’s corporate partner in trash, BFI/Republic, also agreed to pay a six-figure sum.

“The big question,” says vocal lawsuit critic Betty Mooney, “was why BFI agreed to pay when RSWA had never named them in their lawsuit. Is this now an admission that BFI owed funds to the community?”

The Hook asked BFI, RSWA board members, and City Councilors why BFI agreed (more)

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An ambulance made it onto unplowed Roy’s Place during a recent light snow, but residents are fearful.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

What if you lived in Charlottesville, paid your taxes, but still found yourself living where public snowplows won’t go? Residents of one city neighborhood say that’s the situation they’re facing because of a dispute between the developer and the city.

After two feet of snow fell in December, residents of the 16-house subdivision known as Roy’s Place eagerly awaited snowplows. They heard one scraping on nearby Hartman’s Mill Road and Rougemont Avenue. And then it moved on.

And that’s when they learned of their legal limbo. According to residents, Roy’s Place has never (more)

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Heavy snow, saturated soil and high winds wreaked havoc on area trees.
PHOTO BY CHARLES WERNER

Between Friday and Saturday night during last weekend’s not-quite-a blizzard, 40,000 Dominion Power customers’ lights went out in the Charlottesville area. The other major power provider for Albemarle County, Central Virginia Electric Cooperative, had between 11,000 and 13,000 households— one third of its members— sitting in the dark.

When such widespread, misery-inducing outages occur (like Hurricane Isabel in 2003), the perennial question pops up: Why aren’t the power lines buried?

“It costs six times more to put power lines underground,” says (more)

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“In my opinion, there is compelling evidence to support a lawsuit against Mr. Van der Linde,” said City Councilor David Brown, who serves on the RSWA Board.
FILE PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

It appeared to be a trash match made in heaven…

In December 2008, as the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority, formed in 1990 to manage the disposal of Charlottesville and Albemarle trash, began seriously struggling financially to fulfill its duties and promote recycling in our area, dumpster king Peter Van der Linde opened an $11 million state-of-the-art Materials Recovery Facility [MRF] now capable of recycling both construction/demolition debris and household trash.

Problem solved, right? With the RSWA’s expertise, and Van der Linde’s new facility, surely we could create one of the greenest waste disposal and recycling models in the State.

If only that were so.

Instead of working together, the two trash titans have been locked in a legal battle that has cost hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees and brought the community no closer to solving its waste disposal and recycling woes. As the two sides careen toward a jury trial this summer,  the Hook felt it was time to distill some of what we’ve learned about the complicated lawsuit over the last year. Consider this latest offering a busy citizen’s guide to better understanding the lawsuit. It might also give (more)

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“He certainly was aware that the service contribution existed,” Brown said Thursday.
PHOTO BY HAWES SPENCER

In its first meeting since its star witness was convicted and jailed for attempted extortion related to its case, the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority isn’t shying away from its controversial lawsuit against recycling entrepreneur Peter van Der Linde. Despite a new public plea from a pair of citizens at its December meeting, the board gave no indication that it was backing down.

“I agree that it’s a stupid lawsuit,” said board member and City Councilor David Brown, noting that the lawsuit would disappear if Van der Linde would pay the approximately one million dollars the Authority contends he owes for depositing trash without paying a $16 Authority fee.

“Figure out how much trash,” said Brown. “Have him pay it, and let’s be done.”

Earlier in the meeting, recent Charlottesville City Council candidate Bob Fenwick launched the debate by urging the Authority to quit the lawsuit, which has used RICO, the Racketeer Influenced Corruption act, to (more)

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Betty Mooney and Bob Fenwick called on the community to support recycler Peter Van der Linde in his legal fight with the Waste Authority
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

At the Downtown Mall’s Free Speech Monument today, former City Council candidate Bob Fenwick led a small rally in support of recycler Peter Van der Linde, calling the Rivanna Solid Waste Authority’s $20 million RICO lawsuit against him an “atrocity.”

About a dozen people holding signs that said “Free Peter” and “Stop the Waste” stood behind Fenwick as he addressed about a half-dozen members of the local media and few spectators curious about all the fuss over Van der Linde.

“They have branded this man a federal criminal in front of the entire community by using a legal device tailored to combat organized crime,” said Fenwick. “This is a mean-spirited attempt by two governments, who are spending our money to do this, to ruin a man and his business.”

“It seems pretty wrong to me,” said Charlottesville resident Richard Stanley of the RSWA lawsuit. “We should be jumping on the Van der Linde bandwagon.”

Van der Linde opened an $11 million Materials Recovery Facility in Zion Crossroads last year, which (more)

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Behind the Lewis & Clark statue, the Mooney Oldsmobile building, which is now an antique shop on the corner of Ridge-McIntire and West Main, survived; but the UR Next Hat Shop, The Midway Druggist, and the Quality Retail Store Grocery weren’t so lucky.
PHOTO COURTESY VINEGAR HILL PROJECT

Just as the City mulls a master plan to redevelop its public housing stock, which could cost an estimated $115.5 million over ten years and increase available units from 373 to 558, digital history students at UVA have created a dynamic visual archive of another redevelopment project— the demolition of the Vinegar Hill neighborhood, which eliminated 29 businesses, 154 dwellings, one church, and ran a four-lane road through the middle of the predominantly African-American neighborhood.

Once the center of African-American business and social life in Charlottesville, the neighborhood was razed under the federally funded Urban Renewal program of the 1950s and ’60s by a largely white, poll-tax-paying voting class that narrowly approved destroying the “blighted” neighborhood and relocating its residents, many to the public housing developments, such as Westhaven (which the city now wants to redevelop.)

Using deeds, maps, photos, oral histories, and other archives, students have painted (more)

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Gary Fern, the director of the Albemarle County Service Authority, the body that provides tap water to Albemarle citizens, says he’s leaving to take a position with an engineering firm. “I got to a point in my career where I said I want to get back into engineering,” says Fern. “I miss it.”

When he leaves the last day of February, Fern will have served nearly four years with the Authority, presiding over construction of a replacement for the Camelot sewage facility, the North Fork Regional Pump Station, as well as a novel four-tiered pricing system which rewards misers and punishes hogs. Fern won’t even have to move to take his new job with Whitman Requardt & Associates in Richmond, as he already lives partway there, in Louisa.

While the Authority that Fern has directed is not the one that’s created controversy by authorizing a Nature Conservancy-sparked plan to build a single urban water source, he has served on the board of the embattled Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority. So his departure— along with a new look by the Albemarle Board of Supervisors— might affect that controversial plan.

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“At first, I hated Cabell Hall,” said UVA architectual history professor Richard Guy Wilson, “But the purpose of the big building, I finally realized, was to keep students on the Lawn.”
PHOTO BY DAVE MCNAIR

When visiting dignitaries tour The Lawn at UVA, says Richard Guy Wilson, Chair of the University’s Architectural History Department, they are often struck by how “wrong” everything looks. Indeed, as Wilson points out, the Lawn’s Pavilions are a clash of architectural styles that are perhaps more noticeable to those unfamiliar with Thomas Jefferson’s brand of genius.

“Sorry, I have to say. This is the way it is,” says Wilson. “Jefferson knew the rules of architecture, but he broke the rules.”

And he broke them, Wilson explains, to create an architectural experience for students that would teach them as much as their professors did.

“The experience of the buildings around them was as important as what was being said in the classes,” Wilson says. “It is a matter of how the space it used. It is a public communal space.”

Recently, Wilson and University Architect David Neuman discussed the (more)

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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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