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Ridge Schuyler's talk on water withdrawals before Charlottesville City Council on 3/17/08
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. I’m not just wearing green, I’m going to be talking green.
I’m back again to talk about The Nature Conservancy’s work protecting the Rivanna watershed.
Last time we spoke, I addressed one of the two overarching threats to the health of the Rivanna watershed: excessive sedimentation. Today I want to address the other: excessive water withdrawals.
Our rivers provide us with the good life — Jefferson used them for navigation, we have trails along side them, we fish in them, we canoe and kayak in them, we swing off ropes into them. But we now recognize that we are harming them.
When we leave too little water in our rivers after we take what we need to drink — we are affecting the health of our freshwater rivers, on which our lives depend.
We used to think that we could remove as much water as we needed from our rivers so long as we left some minimum flow in the channel to keep it from running dry. A large and growing body of scientific research has proven, however, that the natural rising and falling of rivers is critical to the habitat and life-cycle dynamics of river wildlife. When we “flatline” that natural variation — by allowing just a steady stream of water out of our reservoirs — or stop the flows altogether — we upset the balance of nature.
To determine the flow needs of our local rivers to sustain life, we commissioned a study led by scientists from the University of Virginia and Virginia Tech, much as the community has commissioned studies to determine our human needs for safe drinking water.
Armed with this knowledge, we need to find a way to balance the needs of people for adequate drinking water supplies and the needs of wildlife for variable flows in our rivers and streams to keep them healthy, to keep them beautiful, to keep them useful for recreation.
As an example of the challenge we face, last year, during the drought restrictions, river flows were so low my four-year-old son and I could literally walk across the Rivanna River at Riverview Park. And another example — I have shared with each of you a picture of the amount of water we release into the Moormans River when we are storing water there for our own use. You will see in the center of the picture what looks like spray from a firehose — and Chief, let me assure you that I have nothing against firehoses, but in this instance it may not be sufficient to supply water for a major river. The Moormans is a state scenic river, upstream of Charlottesville and is one of the two primary rivers that provides a majority of the water that forms the South Fork Rivanna. It also harbors wildlife on the brink of extinction.
As Charlottesville’s excellent comprehensive plan so eloquently states “there is a reason God put streams, wetlands, plants and animals on earth here with us. When the balance of these things is disturbed, our human way of life is disturbed for the same fate.”
I know we can do better. We can find a way to restore natural flows to our rivers and streams and have enough water for us to drink. We have to. These are our streams. There is no one else to protect them.
Our Committment to Sustainable Waters
Learn about the Conservancy's commitment to conserving freshwater ecosystems for people and for nature.
Review the Conservancy's work to address fresh water issues in key sectors:
Explore freshwater conservation sites around the Conservancy.
Nature picture credits (top to bottom, left to right): Photo © Byron Jorjorian (Rivanna riverbank); Photo © TNC (The Moormans, a state scenic river, upstream of Charlottesville); Photo © Mary Porter (Conservancy volunteers planting trees at Forks of the Rivanna).
