It’s not really a mystery at all. As it turns out, they have Eugene Delgaudio to thank. Mr. Delgaudio insisted on an amendment to the policy the board adopted last winter that would require them to reconsider and vote on the matter again. He is the one who made sure the Tuesday night hearing would happen, and that is why he was laughing.

The anger and division he has brought out in those people he called to the hearing means that the holiday season in Loudoun will now be characterized by this sort of good will toward all people: “If you want to stay, then shut up and live our way.”

We will also have an ongoing demonstration of who is willing to cheapen the symbols of their faith by including them in a belligerent political display, and who is not. Instead of the genuine expression of interfaith understanding that is possible, this is the way Mr. Delgaudio wanted it. To quote Evangelical leader Richard Cizik, such behavior “dishonors the name of Jesus Christ.”

Some victory. Some holiday spirit. How sad for our community.

David Weintraub
Lovettsville

Nikki Giovanni is the University Distinguished Professor of English at Virginia Tech, the recipient of the Langston Hughes Medal for Outstanding Poetry, the author of 27 books, a Grammy nominee, and five-time NAACP Image Award winner and the first recipient of the Rosa Parks Woman of Courage Award.

“We are thrilled to host Ms. Giovanni whose visit will be the highlight of our year-long celebration of poetry,“ said John Huddy, Acting Director of Loudoun County Public Library. “We are especially thankful for the generous gift of Mr. Irwin Uran which enables us to bring this compelling program to our community every year.”

One Book-One Community originated in Seattle, Washington in 1996 as a program to generate a discussion on various public issues. Designed to promote civic discourse and literacy, One Book-One Community creates a community of readers with a shared desire to read, write and exchange ideas. Loudoun County Public Library’s One Book-One Community program is funded through the Irwin Uran Gift Fund which supports the purchase of materials and programs that “create better understanding between all people.”

One Book-One Community Schedule of Events:

Program Kick-Off:
Saturday, September 11, all day at all branches
Bicycles: Love Poems by Nikki Giovanni available at all branches of Loudoun County Public Library

Book Discussions:

• Thursday, September 30, 7:00 p.m., Sterling Library
• Monday, October 4, 7:00 p.m., Cascades Library, Middleburg Library, Rust Library
• Tuesday, October 12, 7:00 p.m., Lovettsville Library
• Monday, October 18, 7:00 p.m., Ashburn Library
• Tuesday, October 19, 7:00 p.m., Purcellville Library

Training Wheels: Poetry for Families featuring the poetry of Nikki Giovanni

• Saturday, October 2, 11:00 a.m., Middleburg Library
• Monday, October 4, 4:00 p.m., Cascades Library
• Wednesday, October 6, 3:30 p.m., Purcellville Library
• Wednesday, October 13, 7:00 p.m., Ashburn Library
• Monday, October 18, 7:00 p.m., Rust Library

Poet’s Presentation and Book Signing
Wednesday, October 20, 8:00 p.m., Waddell Theater, Northern Virginia Community College

Loudoun County Public Library, the community’s information center, provides free and equal access to a full variety of library resources and innovative technologies to enhance the quality of life and meet the informational, educational and cultural interests of the entire community.

Pages, the Loudoun County Public Library quarterly publication provides a full listing of library programs, events and services and is available at all branches and the library website library.loudoun.gov

Versions of this Ordinance are currently in use in 84 other jurisdictions across Virginia. In 1988, the Virginia Assembly passed a law requiring all tide-water jurisdictions to implement a locally-tailored version of this Ordinance. Loudoun doesn’t have any tidal water bodies, so it wasn’t required to implement the Ordinance. The 1988 law does enable non-tidal jurisdictions to voluntarily implement the Ordinance, and Loudoun is one of the first jurisdictions to consider voluntary adoption.

The CBPO Is About Using Riparian Buffers To Protect Water Quality

The primary function of the ordinance is to preserve riparian buffers in order to arrest the continuing degradation of our county’s streams. “Riparian buffers” are strips of grass, bushes and trees that line either side of a stream. These strips of vegetation slow down the rate of surface-water transit during periods of high rainfall, and they filter out pollutants. As contaminated water moves across the buffer, plants and soil-based bacteria act on the pollutants in the water to remove three fundamental types of pollution: sediment, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Nitrogen and phosphorus are two of the three most prevalent ingredients of fertilizer.

The Science of Riparian Buffers

Sediment is removed by the physical filtration of the water as it moves through plant matter and soil on the way into the stream. Nitrogen is removed by plants and some types of bacteria that live in soil. Plant roots take up nitrogen from the soil during those times when the plant is actively growing. Soil-based bacteria convert dissolved nitrogen into nitrogen gas, and release it into the atmosphere. Phosphorous is captured chemically by the soil in the buffer until it’s taken up by plants, or until the soil’s capacity to capture the phosphorus is exceeded, whereupon any additional incoming phosphorus is passed through the buffer and into the stream.

The effect of these pollutants on the stream is worth knowing. A healthy stream-bed is characterized by areas that contain a lot of pebbles and rocks, between which many different organisms live. Other areas of the streams have beaches and sand-deposits, where many fish breed. It is important to have a balance of rock and sand areas. A river is always moving sediment from the top of the watershed to the ocean; this is a normal and healthy process. If too much sediment enters the stream, it collects in the rocky areas, filling them up, and eradicating the habitat for key sections of a stream’s food web. Sedimentation occurs in two primary ways: water flowing across the land brings suspended sediment, and if the velocity of the water in the stream exceeds certain bounds, due to an increase in impervious surfaces and the lack of riparian buffers, the powerful water currents rip open the banks of the stream, pulling in tons of sediment all at once.

There are certain sets of bugs, called “benthic macroinvertibrates” that live in those pebbles and rocks at the bottom of a stream. Those macroinvertibrates are key players in a stream’s food web, and if they’re wiped out, dependent species suffer accordingly. Some “benthics” are much more susceptible to stream degradation than others, and these benthics are often used as “indicator species” to gauge the relative health of a stream. If certain benthics are not present, it’s a clear indication that the stream has been subject to pollution stress.

Another important dimension of aquatic health is dissolved oxygen. Aquatic organisms get oxygen from the water, as we get oxygen from the air. If the levels of dissolved oxygen fall too far, the animals in the water asphyxiate.

Whenever the amount of nitrogen and phosphorus in the water exceeds certain levels, water-borne plants start to multiply very quickly. Water plants act like land plants when you fertilize them – they grow and multiply. In the short run, that’s great because those water-borne plants provide more oxygen and food for aquatic animals. When a strong rainfall happens, a lot of fertilizer is suddenly washed into the stream, and plants flourish. Several days after the rainfall, the nitrogen and phosphorous in the water fall back to normal levels, and the flush of new plants becomes a sudden die-off. This is where the trouble starts.

Dead plants are consumed by bacteria, and those bacteria use oxygen, just like all the rest of the animals in the water. The bacteria rapidly multiply, and they consume much of the oxygen in the water. The dissolved oxygen levels plummet, and many of the other animals that live in the water asphyxiate. This process is called “eutrophication”.

Riparian buffers slow down the rate of incoming rain-water, and filter out silt, nitrogen, and phosphorus. Now you know the function of riparian buffers, and their effect on streams. That’s the relatively logical aspect of the situation – it’s the easy part. Now let’s talk about the people part of this situation: economics and politics.

The Economic Impact of the CBPO

The CBPO calls for the maintenance of a 100-foot-wide buffer of vegetation on either side of Loudoun’s perennial streams – that is, the streams that flow year-round. Loudoun has about 1500 stream-miles of perennial streams, and those streams and their associated buffers lie beside or across about ten percent of Loudoun’s land parcels. Therefore, the CBPO affects a lot of people, and there’s a lot of variation about the degree of effect it has on one parcel versus another.

The economic effect of the CBPO on Loudoun’s citizens has three aspects: some activities will be more costly to do, some activities will be less possible and will therefore deny a property owner usage rights that they would have enjoyed absent the CBPO, and some properties will increase in value because of the CBPO. The public cost of administering the program, in terms of additional staff at the county level, would not exceed two hundred thousand dollars per year. That estimate is based on a survey of 9 of the 84 other jurisdictions that have already implemented their own version of the CBPO. That survey is available in the Resources section of the Clean Streams Coalition website. Because the economy is slow at the moment, the County staff estimates that no additional staff would be hired to administer the CBPO until development activity rebounds.

The CBPO makes some development activities more expensive, both in effort and money. If a development action, like a subdivision, or a home addition, or a new patio meets certain land-disturbance thresholds, the CBPO imposes additional tests or criteria the land-owner must perform as part of the zoning permit activity. This is how the CBPO is administered – there are a few additional decisions to be made, and some additional information the property-owner must provide to the county in order to make those decisions. The main thrust of the decision-making is to determine whether the development action will impair the performance of existing riparian buffers.

In most cases, these decisions are easy to make, and the information required is easy – almost trivial – for the property-owner to collect and present. In a few cases, the information to be collected is expensive to obtain, and the results of the decision may require the property owner to alter their development plans. It is possible for certain development actions to be prevented.

The economic impact of the CBPO can therefore range from no impact at all, to altered development plans, to precluded development. The CBPO is carefully written to minimize these impacts. There is a great deal of latitude about how these controls are applied, and there is considerable leeway for the County to negotiate with the property owner so that the development work can be done so that it both achieves the property-owner’s goals and preserves the integrity and viability of the buffer.

The positive economic impacts of the CBPO are generally due to the maintenance or increase of property values due to the presence of a common, intact, healthy stream ecosystem on their property. Hark back to your days of house-shopping, and recall the siren song of the real-estate agent: “lovely, cool, well-treed lot with plenty of privacy, and a stream for the kids to play in”. Residential parcels that contain intact, functional eco-systems are more desirable than parcels that don’t, and it’s obvious why that’s the case: people like trees and streams.

The other economic benefit of riparian buffers is the mitigating effect they have on the cost of our drinking water. Almost all of Loudoun’s public water is sourced from the Potomac. Water is withdrawn from the Potomac at a point downstream from where the majority of Loudoun’s streams empty into the river. Removal of sediment and pollutants from our drinking water is expensive. As sediment and other pollutants increase in our streams the cost to remove or treat these pollutants is increased and this cost is borne by everyone who uses the system. Several years ago, the Fairfax Water Authority, which currently supplies Loudoun with much of its drinking water, spent about $8 million to move its water intake from the Loudoun shore of the Potomac to the middle channel of the Potomac. This proved to be cost effective because the mid-channel water was found to be less contaminated with sediment from the Loudoun streams than the water running along the shoreline.

The Politics of the CBPO

The political landscape around the CBPO ought to be rather simple, but it’s been made complex. The simple aspect is one of equity: how do the costs of maintaining our riparian buffers get allocated to the people that benefit from the existence of those buffers?

Clean water and a healthy environment benefit all of Loudoun’s citizens generally, whether they live near a stream or not. The costs of implementing those buffers are not as generally allocated. The people that live beside the stream are the ones that must follow the rules of the CBPO.

This is the most important issue that remains to be negotiated through the political process, and it’s exactly what the political process is designed to do. Once all the facts of the case are on the table for all to see, it is the appropriate duty of the Board of Supervisors, under the direction and input of the citizens and stakeholders, to make this type of value judgment.

This negotiation will begin shortly, and will be animated and influenced by the behavior of each of the groups of stakeholders. Whether you favor or oppose the CBPO, your crucial moment of engagement commences shortly. On September 21st the Board of Supervisors will make a key decision. They will vote to conduct those negotiations and then implement the CBPO, or to postpone action on the subject for some indeterminate amount of time – possibly a very long time.

The politics have been made more complex because the Republican Party leadership has elected to make the CBPO a campaign issue. It is their opinion that the CBPO represents an example of Big Government taking property rights away from the individual. Since the Democratic members of the Board seem to be the ones supporting the CBPO, they feel that this issue provides a great opportunity to swing public opinion toward the Republican Party.

Countering the Objections to the CBPO

If I may, I’d like draw a point of demarcation in this piece. I’m going to switch from simply reporting facts, to using facts as advocacy. I advocate the CBPO, and I’m going to use a battery of facts to counter the main rationale put forth by the opponents of the CBPO.

The objections to the CBPO seem to be as follows:

• Big Government. Administration of the CBPO will take legions of county staff to accomplish, and we can’t afford that right now.
• Property Rights. People should be allowed to do whatever they want on their own property, regardless of their behavior’s impact on others.
• The Streams Are Fine As Is. The streams are healthy now, no action is required.
• Riparian Buffers Don’t Work. There is no proof that riparian buffers prevent pollution from entering our streams.
• There’s No Proof Riparian Buffers Will Heal Our Streams. Other jurisdictions have used riparian buffers for years, and there is no proof that their streams are getting any better.

Big Government

The Clean Streams Coalition, of which I am a member, recently conducted a survey of 9 of the 84 Virginia jurisdictions that have already implemented the CBPO. Because the administration of the Ordinance is accomplished via a few additional steps in existing zoning processes, the Ordinance is easy and simple to implement. Counties comparable to Loudoun report that it takes about two extra people to administer the CBPO for a county with the population of Loudoun. The Loudoun County staff has indicated they expect to perform the incremental CBPO duties using existing staff – no additional staff would be hired to support the CBPO. That doesn’t seem to rise to the standard of “Big Government”.

Property Rights

Hark back to the great pollution fights of the seventies. Does an industrial enterprise have the right to pollute your air and your water with dangerous chemicals? Clearly they do not. Do Loudoun’s citizens have a right to clean water and a healthy environment? Are the rights of all citizens trumped by the rights of the individual to engage in behaviors that pollute our streams?

That’s easy to decide, but there’s more to it. If meeting the public’s general needs imposes a burden on the individual, then this situation must be addressed fairly. The burdens should be shared by all beneficiaries – urban areas, rural areas, agriculture and development alike. How this fairness is accomplished – here in Loudoun – must be sorted out prior to passage of the CBPO.

The Streams Are Fine As-Is

There is voluminous evidence to the contrary. Our streams have been professionally monitored by contractors hired by the County, using grants provided by the EPA. You’ll recall that the macro-invertibrate bugs (the “benthics”) serve as indicator-species for the health of a stream. Here is a quote from a 2009 report, produced by Loudoun County, about the state of our streams:

Countywide, the benthic health as measured in stream miles was statistically summarized as: four percent excellent, 18 percent good, 42.5 percent stressed and 35.7 percent severely stressed; the last two categories, representing 78 percent of stream miles that would be assessed by DEQ [VA Dept. of Environmental Quality] as being impaired. Degraded biological conditions were particularly noteworthy in the eastern and southeastern parts of the county.

The results are absolutely conclusive, and are freely available to any interested citizen. This objection is not valid.

Riparian Buffers Don’t Work

Riparian buffers have been successfully used across the nation for decades. There are dozens of studies, in all topologies, rainfall patterns, soil types and vegetations types that unequivocally state that riparian buffers are very effective, and represent the least expensive, easiest to implement method to purify the water that enters a stream. These studies are scientifically conducted, peer reviewed, published in scientific journals, and promulgated by State and National agricultural, environmental, and water treatment organizations. This objection is not valid.

There’s No Proof Riparian Buffers Actually Fix a Stream

The claim runs like this: “Show me a study that demonstrates that putting in riparian buffers fixed a stream”. This is a valid objection, because there are no such studies. Let’s think about why that is.

The scientific method for testing the effect of one variable on a complex system of varying factors (e.g. an eco-system) would require the scientist to hold the system static, while varying just one factor, and test the effect of that one factor on the entire system. It is not possible to hold an entire stream-system static. Imagine the command from the county required to hold a watershed static while we conducted the experiment:

“For the Catoctin watershed, you must not apply fertilizer, must not allow your septic system to fail, must keep your cattle out of the stream, must not disturb the vegetation in the buffer, must not clear ground for construction, and Mother Nature, you must also keep rain-fall patterns to the following regimen: rain on the first day of the week, at one inch per session, and no other”.

Clearly, that is not possible to do. Therefore, we must use logic instead of direct measurement, in the same manner as the Greeks deduced the laws of geometry. We know that all water entering a stream comes in from either surface “sheet” flow, or from ground water that drains into a stream through permeable rock or through storm-drains. We know that most of the pollution entering our streams comes right after rainfall, and that the water surge from rainfall moves mainly as a sheet across the land. We know that in stream-side test plots, riparian buffers are demonstrated and agreed to be highly effective as agents to remove pollution from sheet-flow water movement.

Therefore, is it reasonable to conclude that – in an entire stream system – sheet-flow across riparian buffers will introduce less pollution into our steams than sheet-flow without buffers? This is the logic question that you, the citizen, must answer for yourself. There is no study to help you make this decision.

CBPO Protects What We Have

There is one more important realization we citizens must make. Riparian buffers don’t get inside a stream and “fix” it. Buffers filter out some of the pollutants that would otherwise enter a stream. The CBPO preserves the buffers we already have, but it doesn’t mandate the creation of new ones. The CBPO is a defensive measure, designed to prevent further degradation of our streams. To actively clean up our streams, we must take additional actions over the course of the next several years.

Whatever the set of actions we ultimately take to repair our streams, riparian buffers will be the first, most fundamental, cost-effective and reliable means we employ. Since the function of the CBPO is to preserve the buffers we already have, it is obviously a good idea.

What’s Next

The remaining work for our community to do with respect to CBPO implementation is to express our insistence that our streams be protected, and to instruct our Supervisors to take such actions necessary to insure that the CBPO be written so that it fairly allocates the costs among all the beneficiaries. Once that’s done, it should be implemented.

It took a great deal of work, and not a little luck, to bring this CBPO to the point where it can be voted upon by our Board of Supervisors. For those of you that understand politics, you surely realize how difficult it is to advance legislation that voluntarily imposes restrictions on property uses. The hope is that the public understands what’s at stake, understands the alternatives, and makes an informed choice.

For those of you that are interested, the Loudoun Clean Streams Coalition has assembled a great deal of source material – the legislation, the stream-test results, the cost-to-implement survey, and many other useful items in one place for you to educate yourself on this topic. The web site is at www.loudounstreams.org.

The chorus is a popular vocal ensemble whose close harmonies, a cappella delivery and expressive style have delighted audiences in Loudoun County for years. Best known for doo-wop and barbershop music, the group redirects that energy to deliver heartwarming carols and festive songs each Christmas season, too.

The chorus seeks men of all ages who have some vocal music experience – or are willing to learn. Listening tracks of the music are also provided.

For more informaion, call 703-348-0071 or email info@odchorus.org.

The world supply of recoverable uranium presents a more intractable problem. If nuclear power is a long term solution to human energy requirements then it should be able to supply nearly all of human exosomatic energy for an extended period of time’

According to a 2006 study on uranium resources by the German-based Energy Watch Group [1], there are 3,297 kilotonnes of reasonably assured recoverable resources of uranium. We use 67 kilotonnes per year in 440 reactors world wide. According to the British Petroleum 2010 World Statistical Review of Energy [2], we currently produce 5.5 percent of our total energy from nuclear power. If we were to derive all of our energy from nuclear power, we would need to consume 1224 kilotonnes per year giving us about 2.5 years before these resources were exhausted. Somewhat worrisome is that we are currently producing only 42 kilotonnes of uranium per year so even at the current low rate of nuclear energy production we are relying on old stockpiles for 25 kilotonnes every year and these stockpiles will be depleted in about six years.

We may have another 1446 kilotonnes of inferred resources, 2519 kilotonnes of prognosticated resources and 7536 kilotonnes of speculative resources. If we assume that all of the prognosticated and speculative uranium ores actually exist and are recoverable, which is almost certainly not true, we have a total of 14,798 kilotonnes as an absolute maximum amount of uranium available. Using 1224 kilotonnes per year these resources would last 12 years.

If we continued to meet only 5.5 percent of today’s energy requirements with nuclear power, then of course the fuel would last much longer. But then we could quite easily save 5.5 percent of our current energy consumption just by targeting the low hanging fruit and therefore replace this energy at practically no cost.

If we wanted to meet all of our energy needs using nuclear power as a goal by say 2034 for example (reactors have an average life of 24 years), assuming future reactors are as large as existing reactors: 440/0.055 = 8000 total reactors would be required. Since most current reactors are already old and will have to be replaced soon anyway, it is safe to assume we need to build out 8000 more reactors. If we want to achieve total nuclear power by 2034 therefore we would need to complete a new reactor nearly everyday or about 330 per year.

How much would this cost? Ontario Power Authority received only one compliant response [3] from the company AECL to a recent request for quotation proffered to the industry to build two 1,200 MW reactors. In order to be compliant, the bids had to be on a “fixed firm price” basis. The one compliant bid was for $26 billion or $10,800 per Kilowatt of power capacity. So they are not cheap. The total cost of building out these nuclear power plants would be something like $200 trillion dollars. There are two caveats to consider. First is that there are currently seven billion people on the planet today and demographers typical project that the human population will be more like nine billion by 2050, requiring about 30 percent more power at today’s per capita level of consumption. Even today, though about one billion people don’t get enough to eat and several billion are below any reasonable poverty line. If we were ever inclined to share the Earth’s bounty, our power requirements would be even greater. If everybody on Earth lived like an American, total uranium would last not 12 but less than three years. The second caveat is that as these reactors age and wear out they have to continually be replaced costing roughly $8 trillion per year every year basically forever ignoring the fuel supply problem. This is just for the costs of the power plants and excludes the cost of fuel, safe disposal of wastes and decommissioning the old reactors.

How much does it cost to safely dispose of nuclear waste? As a matter of fact we do not know because with the closure of the Yucca Mountain repository last year, we do not know how to safely dispose of waste. The Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Repository cost $9 billion to construct [4] and if we were to use it, the facility would be completely full by 2014 from US waste alone. As a ballpark estimate we would have to build about two sites equivalent to this facility every year, world wide. We have no solution and therefore no cost estimate is possible.

Other nuclear solutions include fusion reactors, breeder reactors and thorium reactors. We can discuss these possibilities in future articles.

Tony Noerpel.

[1] http://www.energywatchgroup.org/fileadmin/global/pdf/EWG_Report_Uranium_3-12-2006ms.pdf

[2] http://www.bp.com/liveassets/bp_internet/globalbp/globalbp_uk_english/reports_and_publications/statistical_energy_review_2008/STAGING/local_assets/2010_downloads/statistical_review_of_world_energy_full_report_2010.pdf

[3] http://climateprogress.org/2009/07/15/nuclear-power-plant-cost-bombshell-ontario/

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yucca_Mountain_nuclear_waste_repository

Services will be held on Friday, September 10, at 11:00 a.m. at Hamilton Baptist Church with Pastor Chris Walker officiating. Burial will follow in the Hillsboro Cemetery.

Memorial contributions can be sent to the ECHO Medically Fragile Program, P.O. Box 2277, Leesburg, VA 20175

Condolences can be expressed online at www.hallfh.com.

Well, our local judges certainly don’t want to play any reindeer games this year. It seems the judiciary leaders in Loudoun County already weighed in on the impending decision on displays within the historic courthouse grounds, and it wasn’t in favor of little baby Jesus- or any other holiday deity, personality or symbol.

The court judges simply asked the Supervisors to ban all displays from the site; the County Board has a meeting set for this week to decide on the issue.

The courthouse grounds are County property, and there’s no law that says the government (us, by the way) needs to allow displays- holiday or otherwise.

And, of the five submissions already in for erecting showpieces on the lawn, I’ve got to admit that an open policy would see the full gamut of tastes in Loudoun County; now that this thing has gained so much attention, you can bet that, come December, we’d be paying homage to stuff out of Hollywood, Las Vegas and some of our other, perhaps lower-echelon cultural motifs.

I guess the judges wanted to steer clear of the trouble and strife that this item was surely headed for; they said they didn’t want anything to stand in the way of a good trial; funny that they’d be concerned now (couldn’t resist that).

The judges suggested the County Board find another, more suitable location for the displays.

The Leesburg Town Green has been discussed as an option, among others.

Oh, and I’m sure we’ll see (and hear) some grandstanding by some of our more vociferous Supervisors at this week’s meeting.

You ever notice how a barking dog seems to act more vicious when he’s at the end of a chain?

Oh, well, at least I can still remember the annual Christmas Tree display from the Leesburg Rotary- back before the Courthouse Grounds and Facilities Committee banned such practices, and the County Board came up with last year’s belated band-aid solution, bringing us to today’s situation.

They always did put up a nice tree.

Water Works- or does it?

And, speaking of things judicial, the Town of Leesburg gets its day in court next week on the long-running utility rate saga; its appeal on an earlier strike-down on the infamously-steep out-of-town surcharge comes up a week from tomorrow- in Supreme Court. Judge Thomas Horne- at the Circuit level- ruled that the Town’s doubled rates for outsiders fell outside the legal boundaries in a decision about a year and a half ago; after some legal tennis, the Town finally arranged for next week’s appeal.

Not really sure about a precedent in this case- and this story is longer and more complicated than the original Exodus; perhaps Leif Erickson deeded water to the Town with non-resident restrictions in the Kensington Runestone.

Or, maybe we’ll find out that he should have.

“Don’t tell me what I can’t pollute!”

Another item of monolithic significance on our horizon looms in the Chesapeake Bay Protection Act; it’s on the Supervisors’ Agenda for this week, along with the Courthouse Grounds display item and other various ‘n sundry. The proposed ordinance would- in theory- set up areas of resource protection and management in Loudoun County to ostensibly conserve water quality on a local and regional scale.

This has been an item of contention since rearing its head in the locality: opponents criticize the plan’s intrusiveness and futility; supporters see the Bay Protection Act as a vital means of preserving a good chunk of our natural environment.

My reading on this: I’m not sure what the natural environment has to do with Loudoun County.

Think about it.

Do I predict a prevalence of common sense that this week’s meetings?

No- but this may pass anyway.

For Stephan- and all his Comrades

Another event- coming up this week in Purcellville- seemingly small may just overshadow all the rest of the Kings horses and men- Supervisors or otherwise. Loudoun Golf and Country Club hosts the First Annual Specialist Stephan Lee Mace Golf Outing on Thursday.

The event pays homage to a local soldier who lost his life in service about a year ago, and benefits America’s wounded warriors.

Stephan Mace died on October 3, 2009 in Kamdesh, Afghanistan; he was assigned to the 3rd Squadron, 61st Cavalry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 4th Infantry Division- out of Fort Carson, Colorado.

The 21-year-old Specialist fell with seven of his comrades that day, in support of Operation Enduring Freedom.

Stephan Mace- a Cavalry Scout- attended Loudoun Valley High School in Purcellville.

Thursday’s benefit starts registering at 7:30 a.m., with a 9:00 a.m. shotgun start and 2:00 p.m. dinner/awards program.

You can find out much more at www.macegolf.com.

Re-Generation

As sad as the focus of the last story was, it reminds me of how thankful I always am to be able to turn my attention to something as positive as another upcoming school year. I know the kids go through a bittersweet transition at the end of every summer, but they’ll soon be immersed in enough activities to get over their abrupt change into ‘civvies’ and academics.

Loudoun Public Schools go back into session on Tuesday; doors open on 79 facilities scattered across the County, and they expect to accommodate over 63 thousand students this year!

That’s a lotta schools- and a lotta kids.

I can’t help but think in Mount Everest terms in dealing with the growth in the local educational system; we generally see about a 3,000 student increase on an annual basis, along with a handful of new facilities for each academic year.

This year, we notch up two additional high schools: Tuscarora in Leesburg, and the long-controversial Woodgrove in Purcellville (finally built after more than 10 years of squabbling between local officials).

Buffalo Trail Elementary opens up this year as well- in Aldie- with an unusual two-story design.

The School System brought over 350 new teachers on board in August; in just a couple of days, the County rolls out its fleet of 788 school buses to get everybody to class on time.

Remember to stop for those vehicles when they’re loading and unloading students.

Board’s Bag of Tricks

And, speaking of learning experiences, the County Board has still more on its plate for this week’s meetings. Our local Supervisors intend to discuss staggered terms, a request for some special school funding, and they plan to take action on a western Loudoun Sheriff substation.

They’ve been going back and forth for some time on this idea of electing half the Board every two years, for four-year terms.

I guess the theory behind this is to generate more corporate knowledge, since it’s quite a learning curve the first year; some way it’d reduce the level of politicking during the members’ last year on Board, since we’d be electing only half the slate for each Supervisor election.

I’m sure we’ll hear more about it this week than we care to.

The School Board asks the County for about $4.5 million dollars to stave off the need for those fall furloughs- which were implanted due to last spring’s budget restraints.

A million here, a million there, pretty soon they’ll be talking about some real money.

Funny how those funds can magically appear.

On the Public Safety front, we expect passage on the Sheriff Substation for Round Hill.

Plans show a new facility slated for a 14-acre site on West Loudoun Street on the west side of Town.

So, for the Supervisors as well as our local student population: summer really is over.

It’s been like a real Battle

Construction crews in Leesburg await the go-ahead to start in on one of the last remaining segments of a long-term local road project; the schedule shows work set for the middle of this month on Battlefield Parkway between Fort Evans and Edwards Ferry Road. The 1600-plus-foot section should take about a year, and it’ll link up the northern section of Battlefield- from King Street down to Edwards Ferry- to its southern counterpart- from Fort Evans to the Dulles Greenway.

Let’s hope the north and south have their Appomattox before their Sesquicentennial.

Too Scared?

In the pass-the-baton department, I have to recommend an upcoming event and the group behind it; the Loudoun Museum sent out the call for its annual need for volunteers to support this year’s Hauntings. Now, the first thing I gotta stress on this, is it’s NOT a garish, black-lighted, freak-show, slasher-type Halloween offering.

If you’re into that sort of thing, I’m sure you can find plenty of other people to take your money and other writers to scribble away about them.

What the Loudoun Museum does is offer what I always felt was a very fun, tasteful, historic evening of shivers- all done in Downtown Leesburg and based real events and real people and real landmarks that you can still enjoy- right here.

I used to volunteer for this thing every year- usually acting out some ‘chilling’ incident, or narrating a macabre story- for about eight years running.

I no longer can- due to my professional commitment to the US Postal Service. (the first year I tried to do both, I worked until about 6:30 p.m and showed up late to my Hauntings gig [soaked to the skin after an October deluge], inconveniencing the Museum, my acting partner , the first public attendees, and myself)

Now, if storytelling or acting or narrating- or whatever you wanna call it (anything but ‘re-enacting,’ please) the Museum also needs tour guides for the evening, as well as volunteers in their visitor services department.

It’s two evenings of your time at a really cool part of the year, they feed you, and you’ll meet some very nice, interesting people.

Looking back, I think I played a local undertaker in 2002 (the year of the DC sniper killings), a losing duelist in 2003, a grieving Civil War-era family member in 2004-5, and a local bank employee in 2006, wrapping up in 2007 as another Civil War survivor and ending in 2008 as a simple teller of local ghost stories.

I remember each year’s event quite distinctly (“Oh, was that the year of the hurricane?”), and wish I could go on piling up the memories.

But such is not to be.

It’s now in your hands.

This year’s (19th Annual) Hauntings run on Friday and Saturday of October 22 and 23.

The paying public attendees to this event have a great time and end up supporting a good deal of the Museum’s year-round activities.

Boo.

Thank you, Jim

And, finally, we need to say ‘Adios’ to a long-time friend of this storyteller. The County’s one (and only, officially) Public Information Director, Jim Barnes, plans to step aside at the end of next month.

Jim was one of the first government officials I came into contact with when I moved here to work at Wage Radio in July 1997; he struck me as a very intelligent, tactful, adept, yet sensitive individual.

My opinion didn’t change much in the intervening years.

He started in (and pretty much created) the job back in 1989.

A lot of you may ask: “Just what does a Public Information Officer do?”

OK.

Many of you probably never came into direct contact with Jim Barnes or the associates in his office at the County Building.

Well, ever hit up the County’s internet web site?

That was Jim Barnes.

Ever see the County’s cable TV program- inside Loudoun County?

He created that.

You recall that series of articles back in 2007- commemorating the 25th Anniversary for the County?

Well, Jim wrote those- and I thought they were so good at the time, that I used many of those in my radio newscasts as feature stories.

Jim also performed a lot of services that I never even used- but others did.

I’d just like to say ‘Thanks’ for all he did in (and for) Loudoun County.

Yeah, he got paid for his work (don’t you?), but I knew his heart was always in the right place (isn’t yours?).

Let ‘em Learn

Remember, give yourself an early start on Tuesday morning, and expect to go easy on the gas pedal; there’ll be a lotta kids walking, biking and getting rides to school- many of them for the first time. Let’s make it a good year.

Tim Jon for the Blue Ridge Leader

Click here to view the presentation.

As a result of the fire, the barn was a total loss. However, the adjacent barn sustained minimal damage due to the aggressive suppression operations of firefighters. The Loudoun County Fire Marshal’s Office is currently investigating the fire and there is no damage estimate at this time.

Emergency crews from Lucketts, Leesburg, Lansdowne, Lovettsville, Hamilton and Loudoun Rescue responded to the fire and remained on scene for several hours.