Critics: County aims to block water options

By Brandon Shulleeta

Published: December 3, 2008

The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors today likely will wipe out language in the county’s Comprehensive Plan that doesn’t jive with its longterm water plan.

While some officials say the move is simple housekeeping meant to update the language to reflect the current water plan, some critics call it a bid to restrict alternatives for providing water to the urban area through 2055.

“It may turn out to be the best plan, but I think these other options should be considered,” said Bill Crutchfield, founder and CEO of Albemarle-based consumer electronics retailer Crutchfield Corp. “I don’t think they’ve explored every option as I would explore as a businessman.”

The amendment would cross out reference to a 1977 report that said expanding the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir, using water from Buck Mountain Creek and developing the James River as a water source were the only viable alternatives.

Some critics of the current water plan have questioned whether the possibility of getting water from Buck Mountain Creek was vetted closely enough. Some have said that the spotting of the James River spinymussel, an endangered species, played a major role in Buck Mountain Creek being dismissed as a possible water source.

“I don’t understand their logic. Why they would be doing that now, when there’s a movement afoot to look at different alternatives and everyone knows that Buck Mountain is probably the best alternative,” Crutchfield said.

He said that if it weren’t for the spotting of James spinymussels, “I think we would see it under construction right now. ... I don’t think there’s any doubt about it.”

Crutchfield said he was unaware of any professional studies that proved the existence of the James spinymussels in Buck Mountain Creek. And even if they existed there years ago, there’s no proof they still exist, and there have been no mitigation studies to determine if there is a way to build a reservoir at Buck Mountain anyway.

“I just find it very strange that a few James

spinymussels that have not been officially proven to exist have shut down that entire concept, which … consultants many years ago found was the best plan,” Crutchfield said.

Brian Watson, of the Virginia Department of Game & Inland Fisheries, said there is well-documented evidence that James spinymussels were found at Buck Mountain Creek. He said he has documentation of two separate findings from a former malacologist (an expert in identifying mussels) in 1996 and 1999.

According to a 2004 report, Virginia Tech found one spinymussel in Buck Mountain Creek during a professional survey.

“If there are questions as to the validity of the James spinymussel inhabiting Buck Mountain Creek, they are grossly unfounded and the people making these claims are misinformed or ignoring the available information,” Watson wrote in an e-mail Tuesday.

John Martin, a member of the Albemarle County Service Authority Board, said that he was on a trip with people who found a James spinymussel in 1999 and that there were numerous witnesses. He said that even if James spinymussels had never been found at Buck Mountain, it still wouldn’t have been chosen as a water-supply source.

As for the Comprehensive Plan amendment, “It doesn’t change anything,” Martin said. “It doesn’t lock them into the current water-supply plan.”

Albemarle Supervisor David L. Slutzky said that the water-supply plan already has been approved and the Comprehensive Plan only reflects the most up-to-date information.

“The stamp’s been put on it, and it’s been mailed,” Slutzky said.

Former Charlottesville City Councilor Kevin Lynch, who voted for the water-supply plan in 2006 but is now one of its most vocal critics, said that he doesn’t think the finding of the spinymussels has much to do with why the water plan doesn’t draw from Buck Mountain. He said that Buck Mountain Creek was dismissed as a source for water partly because of infrastructure problems.

However, Lynch said that it isn’t wise to take any options off the table.

Watson said that there are federal regulations that protect endangered species but added, “I’m not going to say that they would prevent a project like that from going forward, because there have been other reservoirs and other projects that have gone forward that have [affected] an endangered species.”

When federal regulators allow such a project to proceed, he said, typically there are mitigation efforts to make up for the loss of endangered species.

Albemarle Supervisor Dennis S. Rooker said that the Buck Mountain option wouldn’t have been chosen regardless of the James spinymussels.

“By the way they tested the plan that’s on the table, Ragged Mountain with a pipeline has much less environmental impact than trying to build a new impoundment at Buck Mountain,” Rooker said. “You would never be able to show, given the options that we have, that building a new impoundment is the least environmentally damaging option.”

The water supply plan now undergoing intense scrutiny would construct a higher dam at Ragged Mountain Reservoir and pipe water from there to the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir.

Critics say the original price estimate of $142.8 million is far outdated and have put increasing pressure on county officials to research whether dredging the South Fork Rivanna Reservoir should be the centerpiece of an alternative plan.