And with today, 2023 is 53.2 percent complete. That’s the sort of that this particular town crier loves to proclaim and someone out there proclaimed July 10 as International Town Criers Day. That’s the name I came up with three years ago when I launched a business to report as much as I can about what’s happening in the community I call home even if I don’t technically live in a town. Either way, I’m Sean Tubbs, hear ye, oyez, and all of that.
On today’s program:
Detection of low levels of PFAS lead to a shutdown of a water treatment plant in Albemarle County
There’s a hearing in Albemarle County on Wednesday to throw out the indictment made against a man lynched 125 years ago
A drought advisory has been lifted that affected Greene County and Louisa County
The Albemarle Planning Commission reviews a memo intended to suggest how cell tower restrictions could be lifted to boost signal coverage
First shout-out: Charlottesville Jazz Society
In today’s first subscriber-supported public service announcement: The Charlottesville Jazz Society at cvillejazz.org is dedicated to the promotion, preservation, and perpetuation of all that jazz. Want to set up your week and make sure it’s going to have some music? Check out the schedule at cvillejazz.org. Here’s some of what’s coming up this week, straight from the calendar:
Thursday July 13: Robert Jospe Quartet, Staunton Jazz in the Park, 7-9 pm, 540-280-4321
Friday July 14: Vocalist Paulien with Michael Elswick/sax, Bill Edmonds/guitar, Joseph Nichols/bass, The Grill at Meadowcreek, 5-7:30 pm,434-296-6069
Saturday July 15: The Michael Elswick Gathering with Michael Elswick/sax, Bill Edmonds/guitar, Tom Harbeck/bass, Liz Barnes/keys, David Drubin/drums, Glass House Winery, 5-8 pm, 434-975-0094
Water production halted at RWSA plant due to detection of “forever chemicals”
The government organization that turns raw liquid from the ecosystem into safe drinking water for Albemarle and Charlottesville has halted production at one of its plants after detecting the presence of what’s become known as “forever chemicals.”
The Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority has temporarily stopped using the North Rivanna Water Treatment Plant after tests indicated low levels of PFAS. That’s a name given to a whole class of “per- and polyfluorinated alkyl substances” used in thousands of commercial products that do not break down.
“Because of their widespread use and their persistence in the environment, many PFAS are found in the blood of people and animals all over the world and are present at low levels in a variety of food products and in the environment,” reads a website on PFAS operated by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The EPA does not currently have standards on PFAS but there is a requirement in the Safe Drinking Water Act that municipal water producers monitor unregulated contaminants that present health risks. As such, RWSA took water samples in May for all six of their water treatment plants. .
“Two PFAS compounds, perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) and perfluorooctanesulfonic acid (PFOS), were detected in water produced by the NRWTP,” reads a press release sent out last Thursday. “PFOA was detected at 25 parts per trillion (ppt), and PFOS was detected at 6.5 ppt.”
No PFAS was detected at the other five plants.
“We are making this infrastructure adjustment as a precaution to ensure we are providing the highest quality drinking water for our community,” said Bill Mawyer, the executive director of the RWSA. “We continue to utilize our multi-barrier treatment processes, including a granular activated carbon filtering system, to remove any undesirable substances from the drinking water we produce.”
In the meantime, water from other plants will be pumped to the service area usually covered by the North Fork Rivanna Water Treatment Plant.
For more information on the potential health risks of PFAS and further research, visit the Virginia Department of Health’s website on the topic.
125-year old indictment against John Henry James to be dismissed
On July 12, 1898, a crowd of armed men intercepted John Henry James as he was on his way from Staunton to face charges of sexual assault. James was removed from the train at Wood’s Crossing, hung from a tree, and shot dozens of times.
As James was being murdered, a grand jury was meeting in Albemarle Circuit Court and learned he had been lynched. They posthumously indicted him.
On Wednesday, Albemarle County Commonwealth’s Attorney Jim Hingely will present a motion to Judge Cheryl Higgins that seeks to dismiss that indictment. (read the motion)
“The indictment presented in these circumstances should be without legal effect,” reads paragraph 7 of the motion. “Nevertheless the indictment has remained in the court record, where it stands as an official, but wholly unjust, accusation of John Henry James.”
The motion goes on to state that both the Commonwealth’s Attorney at the time as well as Sheriff Lucien Watts failed to provide a fair trial for James, and that Watts had been present at the lynching.
“The perpetrators of this racial terror lynching acted with impunity because they knew that Albemarle County authorities would not hold them accountable,” reads paragraph 10.
The hearing is scheduled for 4 p.m. and is part of the Community Remembrance Project being conducted by the Equal Justice Initiative.
DEQ drops drought watch advisory for the Northern Piedmont
The state agency that monitors groundwater conditions to determine if they are running out has lifted an advisory that covered both Greene County and Louisa County.
On June 9, the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issued a drought watch advisory for the Northern Piedmont region.
“Conditions have improved throughout much of the Commonwealth, although an advisory remains in effect for the Eastern Shore and Shenandoah drought evaluation regions,” reads a press release sent out this morning.
The Shenandoah region includes Augusta and Rockingham counties. There’s an advisory in place still for the Eastern Shore.
The advisory for the Northern Piedmont was issued according to the DEQ’s Drought Assessment and Response Plan. It has been lifted due to several factors. For one, rainfall has been above normal for the past two weeks. Streamflow conditions are also above a certain threshold and water supply reservoirs are full.
Second shout-out: Friends of JMRL seek your donations!
In today’s second subscriber-supported public service announcement:
While we may be in the hot and hazy days of summer, the Friends of the Jefferson-Madison Regional Library are already looking ahead to their fall book sale! Twice a year the group holds the event to help raise funds to keep the library system going!
The book sale urgently needs your donations. Now is the time to clean out that bookcase, garage, basement, garret, storage locker or closet and bring everything you find down to the basement of the Gordon Avenue branch.
Friends of the JMRL want to make the fall book sale the best ever and they’re counting on you for inventory to help them do even better than the $149,000 raised this past spring. Visit the JMRL Friends website to learn more.
Planning Commission reviews consultant memo directing Albemarle build more cell towers
For decades, Albemarle’s Comprehensive Plan has put a premium on visual aesthetics when considering what to do with the land. There’s a current conversation underway about the impact of utility scale solar operations will have on the landscape.
For many years, there’s been a call from some members of the Board of Supervisors to revisit rules that govern how cell towers can be built in order to increase wireless communications for voice and data across the county. Since 2000, Albemarle’s rules have been clear that tall towers are discouraged and those that are built must be concealed to the fullest extent possible. (view the policy on cvillepedia)
To Neil Williamson of the Free Enterprise Forum, that’s the primary reason why many community members complain of dead zones where they cannot get cell service.
“These poorly named dead zones are the indirect result of Albemarle County’s outdated wireless technology ordinance,” Williamson said. “Interestingly the existing wireless policy itself dates back to about 1998. That was the same year Google was founded and long before it was a verb.”
Williamson spoke at a June 13 work session of the Albemarle County Planning Commission held to learn more about a recent memo written by consultants to review the 2000 policy.
Susan Rabold is a project manager with CityScape Consultants, one of the authors of a memo on suggestions that would eliminate the primary role aesthetics play in governing their construction. She told the Planning Commission there are 164 existing towers and 25 base stations. She said her company has taken an inventory of the county including where there is no service.
“And when we ask you: Do you want to fill that area?” Rabold asked. “And if the answer is yes, we have some suggestions for your consideration.”
Other community members want the county to proceed cautiously and retain existing policies.
Laura Good of the White Hall District said she and many of her neighbors are concerned about the effects the proposed policies will have on their health and quality of life if more towers are built. She said the memo puts the industry’s needs before those of county residents.
“We do recognize the desire for personal wireless service but this need is not universal,” Good said. “Our area has recently gotten high speed fiber optic in ground which means that we do not need to rely on cell service solely for many Internet communications.”
Let’s get back to the report.
Rabold said the work included a visit to all of the existing 189 antenna locations to record data and produced a map of where they are located. Many of these were originally built for older technology. (view the inventory)
“The first, second, and third generation of platforms have been retired and so those networks that were built in that range are no longer provided,” Rabold said. “However the industry does use that base platform for 4G so they didn’t have to go in and rebuild structures. They just changed out antennas and hardware and software to transition to 4G.”
Rabold said the new generations also require more infrastructure because smart devices require an increasing amount of bandwidth. That’s limited by the county’s current rules.
“This code really does keep the visibility of the tower down significantly,” Rabold said. “The challenge from the tree top from an engineering perspective is that that propagation pattern cannot travel as far because the antenna is lower and those trees are going to continue to grow.”
Rabold said other barriers are in the code as well. Visibility restrictions limit the amount of hardware that can be on top of a tower meaning that some equipment is placed on the ground instead. For instance, something called a “remote radio head” won’t fit on top under Albemarle’s rules.
“They can’t put them behind the antenna which is really ideal because of the distance that you have,” Rabold said. “They can’t exceed 18 inches from the back of the antenna to the pole. There’s not enough room for them to mount the antenna and the remote radio head and have the coax and all of the other cables that go to that antenna. It can’t fit there, so they have to mount them below.”
Rabold said that then limits the effectiveness of the signal by 30 percent. There are also limits to the size of antennas allowed, which also reduces choices that the five wireless providers in Albemarle can make.
Back to geography. Nearly 50 percent of the county is set aside as an avoidance area including mountain protection areas, Agricultural and Forestal Districts, and historic districts. That doesn’t mean they’re totally prohibited, but there’s an extra layer of regulation. Same with any site within two hundred feet of a scenic by-way.
During the public comment period, one Albemarle resident said he was concerned the memorandum sided with the industry at the expense of community members who don’t want a landscape littered with towers.
“It’s as if Verizon and AT&T crafted these recommendations specifically for their interests,” said John Foster who lives in the Batesville Historic District. “I’m confident that Albemarle planning staff and elected officials heard the displeasure surrounding proposed cell towers in Batesville and Greenwood communities over the past few years. The community consensus in each case was decidedly opposed to new cell towers.
During her presentation, Rabold said the memo is intended to be a set of suggestions to have a conversation about how Albemarle might choose to alter its rules to boost capacity. She said the draft would be updated.
“I want to apologize,” Rabold said. “I realize through the speakers that in the written part we used the word recommendations in the analysis. I will change that to options.”
Those options include:
Allow for increased height at existing facilities up to 130 feet. Rabold said this would increase coverage areas and distances.
Allow for increased height at new towers to be constructed at 30 feet above the canopy.
Allow for increased antenna sizes and to allow for more colocation.
Encourage any future towers that will be built for public safety communications to plan for collocation with private providers.
Allow some towers in avoidance areas.
Planning Commissioners had thoughts on the avoidance areas. Commissioner Lonnie Murray said the county’s adoption of the Biodiversity Action Plan in 2019 showed a continued commitment to rural preservation. He urged continued prohibitions on towers on new mountain top locations.
“Mountain tops are very sensitive biological areas because they’re cooler and they tend to be refuges from warming temperatures,” Murray said. “As we consider climate action plan, we’d do a big disservice to biodiversity to cover our mountains tops with antenna.”
Murray said that for many years Albemarle’s Comprehensive Plan has included language that rural living comes with fewer services.
“Part of the deal of living in a rural area is that you have less service and i’m okay with that,” Murray said. “It’s just like when I go hiking in the wilderness, I don’t expect my cell phone to work.”
But Commissioner Nathan Moore said the county’s existing restrictions are too constraining and he would be in favor of loosening regulations.
“So when you go hiking in the wilderness and when you go hiking on a nice trail, and your kid gets a sting or you have an allergic reaction or you fall and break your angle, how are you going to get the word out?” Moore asked. “That the kind of reason why I’m very in favor of broader, better coverage of cell service.”
Moore was supportive of paying attention to setbacks to make sure they can’t be built too closely to a neighboring house.
Commissioner Karen Firehock said she would support allowing towers in ag-forestal districts.
“I don’t think a tower is a use that interferes with someone running their tractor or their cows or their sheep-grazing,” Firehock said.
Commissioner Julian Bivins said he was tired of historic properties being protected from having to see cell towers. He added that denying cell service to the rural area penalizes people with low incomes who live there.
“There’s a whole host of people there that are just plain old working people,” Bivins said. “There’s a whole bunch of tradespeople over there that use their cell phones to get work, to do work, and to tell whoever is in their lives that they’re going to be late.”
The conversation was robust and worth viewing in detail. There’s a link below.
A community open house will be held sometime this month followed by public hearings in the fall before the Planning Commission and the Board of Supervisors.
Reading material:
Charlottesville working on new zoning rules, Keagan Hughes, NBC29, July 5, 2023
Show off those pies, peppers, pigs and more at the Albemarle County Fair, Luke Fountain, Charlottesville Daily Progress, July 6, 2023
Region Ten receiving more than $1 million to help fight the opioid crisis in central Virginia, Jacob Phillips, NBC29, July 6, 2023
Crozet Mobile Home Community Expansion Plan Advances, Lisa Martin, Crozet Gazette, July 7, 2023
County Schools Audit Recommends Increased Rigor, Engagement, Lisa Martin, Crozet Gazette, July 7, 2023
Thoughts at the end of 554:
Does this edition of the program measure up to what you think a town crier would do? I am still planning for an expansion in the weeks and months to come while still on a slightly reduced capacity due to reasons that will one day in my memoir.
Until then, planning begins for the next episode which goes by the not-too-daunting number of 555. Planning is among the tasks whose time is covered by paying subscribers to this newsletter. The easiest way is to sign up through Substack but patronizing through Patreon is good, too. That’s the main way to help fund Town Crier Productions, the business I created to make all of this happen.
You may know by now that if you sign up for Ting at this link and enter the promo code COMMUNITY, you’ll get:
Free installation
A second month for free
A $75 gift card to the Downtown Mall
July 10, 2023: Cell tower policies under review in Albemarle; RWSA halts production at one plant due to PFAS