COMMENTARY: $ewer $ystems — ‘The Rest of the Story’
By WAYNE CREED
July 27, 2013
As a kid, growing up with a dad that tended to tinker in the garage with the radio on, I remember lazy days, tinkering alongside him on a bike or Briggs & Stratton lawnmower engine, all the while listening to the Paul Harvey show. I especially liked the section of the show “The Rest of the Story.”
As of July 22, Northampton County finalized the Southern Node commercial service area which will pump sewage to the Cape Charles treatment plan. The County’s PSA (Public Service Authority) has recommended a special taxing district for commercial property along Route 13. There is, however, “the rest of the story.”
Back in 2008 and into 2009, the Town of Cape Charles was faced with a dilemma: the wastewater plant was failing (although reports of its impending demise may have been slightly exaggerated), and without addressing the issue, harsh dealings from the Department of Environmental Quality were on the horizon. The Mayor, the assistant town manager, and the town manager should be commended for stepping up and getting in front of a serious problem.
The facts: Cape Charles, like all municipalities in the Chesapeake Bay watershed, had to meet a specified nutrient waste load allocation by January 2011. If we did not meet this date, our current waste load allocation, which was based on a projected discharge of 500,000 GPD, would be reduced by half (along with possible fines).
But there is still more to the story. There were actually two competing plans on the table at the time: the current system, owned and operated by the Town, and a public private venture to be funded and managed by Webtide Partners, led by the concerns of Furlong Baldwin and Sons, and Joe Corrado.
Floating about was also the notion of a regional system to service Northampton County. In 2009, the Town and County held a wastewater summit. Then-supervisors Dave Burden and Spencer Murray posited lukewarm approvals in favor of a regional system, but one that was made up of several smaller plants; Burden also added that effluent should not be pumped back into the Bay, and that a water reuse plant should be at the forefront. [Read more…]
SHER: ‘Kids Say the Darndest Things’
Ryan Joseph Abraham, 8, waters plants at New Roots Youth Garden. (Photo by Sher Horosko)
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
July 24, 2013
OK, this is the truth. In my whole life only two TV shows made me laugh so hard I doubled over: “Candid Camera” and Bill Cosby’s, “Kids Say the Darndest Things.” Those of you who have dipped into this column probably get that I take the world rather seriously. I have been a muser since the age of four (maybe earlier).
As a child, I thought I knew more than adults in key areas. As an adult, I am sure I was right about this. Kids know things we have forgotten or buried or had drummed out of us. They don’t get stuck on the thorns that constantly separate us from each other.
The world misses the essential goodness of kids. We believe morality is learned. I see this differently: I think we come into the world (most of us anyway) with great and good hearts.
So like eight year old Ryan in the photo, our job is to water the love just like he is watering the plants.
But jumping back to Bill Cosby —
[Read more…]
SHER: This Place Gets in Your Blood
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
July 17, 2013
There are places that get in your blood. This is surely one of them.
Just last week I met the man who farms the field outside my window. “What’s your name?” I ask. “Bud” he says — “You know like Bud Light. Lived here all my life. Never gonna leave.”
I could ask him what it is about the place, but I don’t. I track the gleam in his eye instead. His love spills into the sandy soil, sails the windswept fields and dips into the sea close by.
The land-and-blood-thing is strong in him.
Along the back roads toward Kiptopeke, the fields of corn stretch into the arms of Virginia pines. In Cape Charles Harbor, small orange claws and tiny fins poke through the slats of wooden baskets.
“Will I ever get used to this?” I ask myself while topping my oatmeal with handfuls of blackberries picked from a neighbor’s yard.
This is a land of abundance. The horn of plenty is all filled up.
But not for all.
It is the riddle of Abundance living next door to Hunger that brings me to a hot and dusty field after a midnight run to the ER. Tired, disheveled, and barely thrown together, I pull up to a land lit with color.
The gleaners are here, 46 of them from three Virginia churches. White-laced bags of potatoes, about 8,000 pounds’ worth, are stacked and nestled in the powdery earth and spent green vines.
Gleaning means to “gather what is left.”
Local farmer David Long invites the Society of St. Andrew to come to his field each year to share in the abundance he co-creates on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Every bit of what’s gathered goes to the hungry people who live here.
Looking over the gleaners, it is clear to me that rescuing potatoes requires strong calves or dirt-coated knees. Surrendering to T-shirts wrung with sweat is part of the whole thing, too, and so is a pretty sore back at day’s end.
Volunteer gleaners: Like the hands in the background, hearts are at work. (Photos by Sher Horosko)
SHORE THING: April Fools on July 4th
By GEORGE SOUTHERN
Cape Charles Wave
July 4, 2013
A little background music, please: Click here to enjoy the Tams while you read this (You can then select the SHORE THING window while the music plays.)
In case you’re sitting in the library, or your computer won’t play music, the song is “What Kind of Fool (Do You Think I Am).”
You will want to play it while reading the Town’s July 4th edition of the official Cape Charles Gazette (click to read).
The three-page special edition of the Gazette is all about “allegations” related to water and wastewater and “preferential treatment of Bayshore Concrete Products and Bay Creek Resort & Club.”
After giving it a careful read, my conclusion is that April Fools Day came late this year.
My test for any claim is, if I find part of it that is patently false and ridiculous, then the rest is also suspect.
The Gazette, obviously written by Assistant Town Manager and wastewater consultant Bob Panek, is three pages of “facts and figures” attempting to justify the Town’s water and sewer policies which are resulting in minimum monthly utility bills of $108.
The Wave had pointed out that the Town’s biggest water user, Bayshore Concrete Products, isn’t hooked up to Town utilities.
Mr. Panek writes at length about why hooking up Bayshore Concrete would be a very bad idea, but he trips up when he claims “it would take almost 58 years” for the Town to recoup its cost to run a sewer line to Bayshore.
Is the music over? Play it again, Sam! [Read more…]
EDITORIAL: The Worst Tax
June 28, 2013
Last night as this was being written, Cape Charles Town Council was approving the new budget, including new water/sewer rates.
Even though reassessed property values dropped 35 percent on average, Town Council still felt it was OK to increase our tax bills.
At the County level, elected officials didn’t see it that way, and voted a slight tax decrease. But rather than following suit, our Town officials viewed the County tax decrease as justification for raising Town taxes. After all, they told us, your combined County/Town tax bills are likely to be less than last year’s.
Yes, and with property values down 35 percent, they certainly should be!
The new budget is further evidence that Town Council doesn’t control Town staff – quite the reverse. During the budget planning process, Council instructed staff to produce an “equalized” budget – one that would not require a tax increase.
But Town staff disobeyed orders – as if they had been asked to perform the impossible. And Town Council, like an indulgent parent, gave in. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Eastern Shore’s Cool/Fiery Pulse of Life
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
June 26, 2013
I have learned in my life that we will protect fiercely whatever it is we love.
And love takes time. It requires an intimacy that is woven between people and life of all sorts, whether fish or flowers, elusive doodlebugs or old forest trees. What is necessary is this: that we take time to stand still and pay attention to the life around us as if it truly matters.
Because it does.
Here, on Virginia’s Eastern shore, life is teeming. Wild turkeys thunder out of the dry thickets of wheat when I walk down the sandy road in the early morning light. A young eagle sits high on the top of a loblolly pine whose center trunk was snapped by a runaway wind. Fastening my gaze on his mustard-colored feet with the curled javelin tips, I think: it may take time for his head to go white but his feet are ready and set.
All day and every day, something big is happening on the Shore. In Red Bank, a frantic mockingbird jumps up and down on the back of a black snake arching and swerving across the road. I reach for my camera but am so mesmerized by the utter bravery of the bird, I miss the shot.
Days later, while wading through the grass at Savage Neck, I spot a blue-colored hornet diving into one of his own kind on a swaying Queen Anne’s lace. Is this a petaled battlefield between the boys or a drunken dive into the sweet elixir of spring passion?
Waiting and watching, I’m certain. Hornet perfume must be very strong.
There are people for whom the land and sea are alive. I am one. And though I have been on your Shore for just a month, it is evident to me there are many others who feel the alternatively cool and fiery pulse of life in this place. [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Field of Dreams, Hoops, and Hopes
By WAYNE CREED
June 21, 2013
I spend most of my days driving across the Bay, going to work in Norfolk. Once back on the Shore, in Cape Charles, I tend to do what I really do best: nothing. Sometimes, once I park the car on Friday evening, I don’t get back into it until the next Monday morning.
It sounds boring, but there are many things that fill those empty moments. One of them is taking my beloved Labrador Retriever, Chloe, on walks through the old baseball field, to the fire road that winds through the woods back there. Full of scents and action, on a good day she might even jump a rabbit or a deer.
One Saturday in May I took her back to her haunt, and was surprised to find that the old ball field had been tilled, in preparation for planting summer cotton.
Chloe was unperturbed, nose to the ground like a good gun dog. I, on the other hand, was affected by the turned-up field. Looking past the tilled ground, to the old dugouts, a feeling of emptiness and loss began to spread over me.
Back from the walk, I sat on my porch, watching my son Joey and his friends, Max and Finn, playing baseball in the grassy knoll in front of my house on Monroe Street.
It was becoming overcast, and the slow feeling of dread began to mount. I remembered how, before the high cotton was planted, we used to have the Cape Charles Little League and a ball field, but the Town got rid of it.
We had soccer goals: now gone.
Then the basketball court, part of the old Cape Charles High School: gone.
When I heard the pop of the strike as it hit Max’s catcher mitt, I was jarred again. Why had the majority of people in this town been deaf to the plight of the kids of Cape Charles, and taken sides against them in favor of out-of-town developers? [Read more…]
COMMENTARY: Secrets from Seaside
By SHER HOROSKO
Cape Charles Wave
June 19, 2013
After days of rain, the sun is bright and sure in a baby blue sky dotted with white sheep. I am itchy to jump in the car and explore.
My map is a scant line-drawing. I aim to travel up the thin gray line that runs parallel to the thick red one. That’s the extent of the plan. I head out, down the long dirt road, through the khaki-colored sea of wheat, turn into Cheriton and end back on the red line. This is the second time I’ve done this: it’s a bit like driving in a corn maze.
I try again, taking a random right off of Route 13. “This is it” I say out loud as I spot a road sign reading “Seaside.” The names we give to things usually make sense. Blackbirds are black. Bluebirds are blue. Pine Street has a row of pines (or at least it did once). Seaside is on the side of the sea.
I drive north with just the right amount of confidence.
It’s a different world back here. Navigating the twists in the road, I drive slowly, spotting boats at-the-ready on pull behinds and stacks of wire boxes six feet high. Even if I’d been taken here blindfolded and set free, I would know the sea was near. The evidence of love for the watery world is all around.
The road curves and opens up to a field of tomatoes, staked-up straight as soldiers, and teeming with green balls. Soon, the fruit will flash like cardinals and the land will be filled with the melodic sounds of Spanish. This language is music to me and it’s sung by a people who have always treated me kindly. Always.
On one side of the road, the draping fronds of corn are knee high. On another, the land is waiting for the farmer-man’s intent. Meanwhile, the copper-colored ibis plunge their beaks into the furrows of dark earth. I stop to watch. [Read more…]
