Tag Archives: riparian buffer

Flabbergasted at FEMA

Posted on October 10, 2017 at 5:43 am by John Flannery |

A healthy stream

Lovettsville’s Chris Van Vlack, an Urban/AG conservationist, with the Loudoun SWCD, made a presentation at the Potomac Watershed Roundtable about a recent FEMA policy, that Daniel Moore, from Virginia DEQ characterized as “flabbergasting.”

Greg Prelewicz, of Water and Wastewater Utilities, said he found it “baffling.”

It’s a FEMA policy that adversely affects Loudoun County’s efforts to preserve and protect our soil and water.

Chris Van Vlack at the presentation

The Potomac Watershed Roundtable Forum is “a regional government-citizen forum that promotes collaboration and cooperation among local governments and stakeholder interest groups,”

By way of background, Chris explained that there is a regular set of best management practices (BMPs) that keep our waters clean and flowing to the Potomac without eroding the rich soil so necessary to farm and garden.

It’s pretty straightforward.

Keep the animals (and their “nutrients”) out of the water, and plant cover crops and trees to slow the flow of water that might otherwise carry away the soil.

It’s so important a function that federal, state and local authorities, by conservation districts across Virginia and the nation, share the cost with farmers and land owners to make these remedial practices possible.

The cost of these practices are funded up to 80 percent of what it costs to fence in livestock from streams, to install water troughs, to implement livestock crossings, and to plant what restrains and controls surging rain waters.

Fencing by a stream

These best practices were instituted after the infamous tragedy of the dust bowl, so vividly described by John Steinbeck, in “Grapes of Wrath.”

It was the ignorance of right-minded soil and water practices that caused choking dust to block out the sun, sweeping the country in high winds from west to east, killing people, livestock, and crops.

Now FEMA says that Loudoun County may not use these salutary best practices in any flood plain. They convinced the County earlier this year to conform with what many of the speakers characterized as a wrong-headed policy. Continue reading →

The canary in the stream

Posted on August 30, 2016 at 5:44 am by John Flannery |

Horse fly larva

The expression and the actual practice is “the canary in the coal mine,” a means to detect deadly levels of carbon dioxide gas that overwhelms the canary, signaling to the miners that they might succumb next, and so they are fairly warned to escape.

There are comparable early warning signs, using other small creatures, to detect whether the river and stream waters that we drink, fish and swim in may be “impaired,” or significantly degraded.

Unfortunately, we do have “impaired waters” – so this is not an academic question.

All our County’s streams are affected by human activities, especially development, and some do not meet the standards of the Clean Water Act and Virginia Water Quality Standards for recreational use and aquatic life.

We have to be concerned about Catoctin Creek and Goose Creek and their tributaries, Little River, Limestone Branch, Piney Run, Broad Run and Sugarland Run. We all have an obligation as stewards to use but not alter or compromise this most essential natural resource, the waters by which we live.

We have pollution from storm water runoff, grazing, failing septic tank systems. The more impervious surfaces we have, the more our watersheds are compromised. Nor can we ignore the fecal bacteria mostly due to livestock. We have to remediate against these polluting practices.

The good news is that there are things we can do to protect and preserve our waterways and we have the means to detect when our streams are “impaired.” Continue reading →

Horse and buggy

Posted on April 15, 2015 at 6:21 am by John Flannery |

There’s much before our eyes in Western Loudoun that goes unseen, natural treasures, that are wasted because many don’t understand – and we’re the worse for this widespread ignorance.

Several days ago, a young lady asked the following question, “How wide is this path by the river?”

The answer, “Wide enough for a horse and buggy?”

The disbelieving response, “A horse and buggy?,” like a horse and buggy was the most preposterous thing to imagine in Western Loudoun.

Where I live in Lovettsville, we know several neighbors who drive a horse and buggy and one neighbor has the most excellent team of draft horses that pull a high seated stylish wagon.

Ignorance of our local ways puts at risk our livestock, our crops, and the rich and valued history, lurking around almost every turn in our unpaved country roads.

What’s most sad is to misapprehend how much richer is any life lived consciously in the country. Continue reading →