In what a group of water watchdogs fear could be a harbinger of harsher things to come, County water bills will spike 20 percent this year, if rates proposed by the Albemarle County Service Authority win approval. The increase would combine with last year’s 30 percent jump to mean customers would pay 55 percent more than just two years ago and nearly triple what they paid in 1999.

“It’s ridiculous,” says longtime Albemarle citizen Lucy Bennett. A catering company employee, the 24-year resident of Minor Ridge Road cites soaring fuel and other bills and says she’d like to sign a petition to roll back water rates. “Everything’s draining us right now,” she says.

The rates, recently advertised in the Daily Progress legal notices and posted on the Service Authority’s website, show water climbing 11 to 13 percent. But the bulk of the increase comes in sewer rates, which will jump 29 percent. For a family using 5,000 gallons per month, an amount in the mid-range of the three pricing tiers, the monthly bill would climb from $59.31 to $70.92— an annual hit to the pocketbook of $139.

“No one likes rates to go up,” says Service Authority director Gary Fern, who points to two causes: a rise in wholesale rates set in March by the area’s (more)

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So what happened last night at the big dredging confab called by Charlottesville Mayor Dave Norris? Well, the two-man team from visiting engineering firm Gahagan & Bryant repeated its pitch from the previous night for how dredging could be knocked out in a matter of months, not years– certainly not 50 years, as Aaron Keno (in photo), the Gannett Fleming engineer who has been blamed for portraying dredging as an expensive, ineffective 50-year nightmare, contends.

Although he avoided mention of his own prior cost estimates, which have prompted such diverse parties as the Sierra Club, netrepreneur William Crutchfield [RTF], and Albemarle supervisor Dennis Rooker to reopen the topic, Keno got paid to reiterate his view last night, but perhaps the biggest shocker was off-topic.

Water plan architect Ridge Schuyler revealed that his Nature Conservancy has received a 340-acre donation adjacent to the City’s Ragged Mountain Natural Area that could become a fabulous new park with access from Route 29.

“At the end of the day,” said Schuyler, “we hope to have a 1,200-acre park with full public access.”

For all its charms, the 980-acre Natural Area must now be reached via a long, winding, and graveled Reservoir Road, and it’s bisected by Interstate 64. Schuyler envisions an architecturally significant “gateway” pedestrian bridge that (more)

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Ho hum. Two guys in suits gave a “dredging 101″ slide show tonight. So why was the old downtown visitors center packed with over 60 people?

Until a few months ago, dredging had all the glamor of using diesel equipment to pump mud off a lake bottom. Which of course is what it is.

“Dredging is a fancy word for digging dirt underwater,” said one of the suits, Chris Gibson. By the end of the evening, the Wilmington, Delaware-based vice-president of Gahagan & Bryant Associates was tossing out ballpark figures of what dredging should cost this community. And, unfortunately for would-be entrepreneurs hoping to leverage a “MudCat,” a “Dragon,” or even the evening’s touted device– a 1,200+ horsepower “Wilko”– into hundreds of millions of dollars at the Rivanna Reservoir, such hopes are sinking into the turbid waters of reality.

Four years ago, after two unsolicited proposals landed at the then-leaderless Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, the Pennsylvania-based firm that was busily rewriting Charlottesville’s 2002 post-drought water plan declared dredging too expensive. The firm, Gannett Fleming, had yet (more)

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5pm update: Mayor Norris insists that the dredge engineers Gahagan & Bryant will get more time than the agenda suggests. “I’ve guaranteed them 45 minutes,” Norris says via telephone. “That agenda is just sort of a stab at how the meeting would work, but I get to run the meeting.”

CHARLOTTESVILLE— The first of two public meetings on dredging the Rivanna Reservoir takes place tonight at 7pm in the CitySpace, a portion of the City’s Market Street Parking Garage located next door to City Hall. Key presenters are personnel from the Tampa-based consulting engineering firm of Gahagan & Bryant Associates.

Tomorrow, however, when decision-making City Councilors will be hearing about dredging, the agenda shows that the folks from Gahagan & Bryant will get little more than 15 minutes in a three-hour meeting. They appear to be getting swamped by a litany of dredging foes including Gannett Fleming’s Aaron Keno, the Nature Conservancy’s Ridge Schuyler (who actually gets to speak twice), the League of Women Voters’ Liz Palmer, and City Manager Gary O’Connell.

“It stinks,” says Downing Smith, a City resident who has already spoken out at City Council about what he sees as the impropriety of Gannett Fleming blasting dredging as an up-to-$225 million operation and then winning a $3.1 million contract to design a controversial dam— the same dam that’s (more)

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Albemarle County Supervisor Dennis Rooker made several statements that seemed to question Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority Director Tom Frederick, who was appearing at a high-level meeting at UVA today.

“Once you have a plan approved, it doesn’t mean you have to do anything,” Rooker told UVA chief operating officer Leonard Sandridge and other fellow members the Planning and Coordination Council, a multi-jurisdictional body that had invited Frederick to speak.

“Getting the permit approved,” continued Rooker, referring to the $143 million reservoir/pipeline plan that has roiled the community in debate this year, “gives you the option to execute the plan, and that’s a valuable thing, but it doesn’t prevent your from getting a bid on maintenance dredging.”

Frederick and his board have come under fire in recent weeks for acting (more)

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A recent Freedom of Information Act request by the Hook finds that the Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority isn’t willing to let favored consulting firm Gannett Fleming rest on its existing multi-million-dollar contracts.

Despite having already received over $2.5 million to rewrite local water plans plus another $3.1 million to design a controversial dam– not to mention $123,800 for “public involvement”– the firm just won approval for two contract amendments totaling $17,000.

The Freedom of Information Act request also turned up a rough draft of a PowerPoint presentation that (more)

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Less than two weeks ago, its support was touted in publicly funded advertisements endorsing a controversial $143 million water plan. Now, it appears, the Sierra Club is bailing out.

“We believe that prudence now dictates reconsideration of dredging of the Rivanna Reservoir as a key element in a long-term water supply plan,” reads a letter from the Club’s Piedmont Group to the water authority and local lawmakers.

The letter, sent Wednesday by conservation chair Thomas Olivier, appears to deliver a blow to public officials who have, in recent weeks, maintained an impressive show of steadfastness toward the official plan despite grassroots pleas to reconsider dredging, an option shelved three years ago after nine-figure estimates from a single firm with an uncanny knack for making millions studying the local water supply.

“We are aware that in recent weeks, various knowledgeable individuals have asserted that dredging the reservoir could be conducted responsibly for far less than the estimate available at the time of our endorsement of the water plan,” says the letter, which also references (more)

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Ever strolled the Downtown Mall on a warm day looking for a place to throw your empty drink container, but awash in enviro-guilt as you discarded it in one of those black garbage cans? If only you look a little harder, walk a little further, you think, maybe you could recycle it.

Well, now you can tell that still, small voice in your head to pipe down. Just yesterday the City installed 12 new green recycling bins (like the one Parks & Rec employee Clifton Brown is installing at left) beside the black ones on and around the Mall.

Currently, plastic, glass, and aluminum are the only materials that can be deposited in the new receptacles. However, if you find yourself with a used paper cup or newspaper (more)

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Three separate locations of last night’s shootings on I-64 were confirmed this morning in a press briefing: the Ivy exit at mile marker 114, the route 690 overpass (Greenwood Station Road), and the Virgina Department of Transportation (VDOT) maintenance shop in Yancey Mills.

Virginia State Police Superintendent Colonel W. Steven Flaherty said that while police are still awaiting ballistics testing, it “appears that the same type of gun was used in all three locations.” Based on witness accounts, Flaherty said that more than one suspect was involved. Although multiple shooters are suspected, Flaherty said he is not sure if multiple guns were involved or if (more)

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Charlottesville-Albemarle Airport officials– including the lawyer for an environmental group once known for free-market solutions– appear eager to downplay any role the Airport might play in dredging that could save the silt-choked Rivanna Reservoir even as entrepreneurs point to successful dredge-built runways in other cities.

Airport Commission member Gregory Edwards paid a personal visit to Airport director Barbara Hutchinson in late February to talk about dredging after a citizen had suggested that dredging could save millions of dollars for water customers as well as the Airport, according to documents obtained by the Hook in a Freedom of Information request.

In a February 21 email to Airport board member and dredging opponent Gary O’Connell, Hutchinson noted that Edwards had paid her a personal visit to explain that “it was not appropriate to include the Airport (more)

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