January Newsletter

Green Drinks Chesapeake - Wednesday, January 29, 2025

Our next Green Drinks meeting will be on Wednesday, January 29, 6 pm at YNot Italian in Greenbrier.  

We'll have a guest speaker this month to tell us about the issues with artificial lights, specifically new, high-intensity, LED street lights, and their impact on our environment. Liz Paiste is a member of Citizens for Responsible Lighting, a grassroots organization lobbying for healthy LED light options for Norfolk.  Liz is an advocate for greenspace and tree canopy within Norfolk and serves as one of 9 Tree Commissioners within the city.  She is also the Co-Chair of the Olmsted Initiative, which the Chesapeake Bay Foundation recently recognized as an example of resilience within Norfolk. 

What is Green Drinks?  Green Drinks is mostly for people working on environmental issues, but anyone can come -- people from environmental groups, businesses, government, academia, and as individuals. There is no 'us and them'. Green Drinks is a chance to mingle, share insights, inspire and delight each other. Come out and order some food or a drink (each participant pays for their own drinks and food; if drinking, please do so responsibly!) and join the conversation. Please do share the invite with others who may be interested.

Comp Plan in 2025

The Planning Department continues to work on revising City's Comprehensive Plan (Comp Plan).  The Comp Plan lays out the roadmap for future development in the City and this revision comes at a crucial time.  The region faces multiple, often conflicting, challenges not least of which are an acute shortage of affordable housing, a persistent loss of tree canopy to development, more frequent and severe rainfall and flooding events, unsafe roads and streets, and aging infrastructure and schools.  The advocacy we as citizens do now to influence the City staffers, the Planning Commissioners, and ultimately the City Council Members, will decide how we plan to move forward on these issues.  Join the conversation at our next Green Drinks meeting or online in our Facebook Group Greening Chesapeake.

The Comp Plan and the Greenbrier Area Plan should be moving toward completion in 2025, but the timing and next steps are not clearly spelled out on the City website.  The Planning Department held a round of open houses on the Comp Plan in October 2024 and the posted timeline call for "City Council Action" in the spring of 2025, but we've not seen any complete document yet.  The Greenbrier Area Plan held its last open house in May 2024; there was talk of doing another open house, but nothing has been scheduled yet and the website talks of "adoption, likely in early 2025."  So, things could move quickly in the new year - stay tuned for updates!

The Chesapeake Environmental Improvement Council did send a letter to the Planning Commission for the Greenbrier Area Plan, with recommendations - many of which we discussed at our Green Drinks - including

• Setting a 30% tree canopy goal focusing on preserving existing mature trees, planting street trees, and maximizing tree canopy in parking areas.  Also calls for preserving 75 acres of City-owned forested land adjacent to Oak Grove Lake Park. 
• Incorporating the recommendations of the Hampton Roads Transit Connecting Chesapeake Study
• Focusing on creating “Complete Streets” that enhance walkability, bike ability, and transit access across Greenbrier and into the surrounding communities.  A key priority identified was extending the existing sidewalk and multi-use path infrastructure along Volvo Parkway and onward to Medical Parkway via Oak Grove Lake Park
• Reconsidering Parking Minimums to avoid the impact of vast, underused parking lots.  New and renovated parking areas should incorporate bio-retention and other stormwater reduction principles and set a goal for 50% tree canopy.  Older parking lots should be incentivized to install solar panels over parking areas. 
• Use the Virginia Commerce Park Design Guidelines as a model to require that new construction and major renovation of buildings should take advantage of best available building design and operation practices, including maximizing energy efficiency and the Dark Sky protocols, Bird Safe window and lighting design principles, and incentivize rooftop solar power generation.

The City Council adopted the Trails and Connectivity Plan for the City in November 2024 but the prioritization of implementation efforts was left vague.  Figuring out how prioritization will happen will be a topic of discussion at the January 27th meeting of the Bicycle and Trails Advisory Meeting at 5 pm at the Parks, Recreation and Tourism office.  One goal is to figure out what short term progress we can make in 2025.   

The Indian River Design Commercial Guidelines document, a follow-up to the Indian River Small Area Plan adopted in 2021, is expected to go to the Planning Commission in February.  The draft document, while needing polishing, does outline a path for transforming to a more pedestrian friendly shopping street with landscaping, trees for shade, and sidewalks in the community.

Work on a Deep Creek Area Plan is still in its early stages and more open houses and feedback sessions are expected in 2025.

You can get links to all these Planning Department efforts at Planning Department | Chesapeake, VA

The Chesapeake Parks, Recreation and Tourism Master Plan update Advisory Committee had its 3rd meeting in late November to review the results from the Statistically Validated Opinion Survey and the Open House.  This gave some important insight into the public's priorities for park investments.  See the full briefing from the "Third Meeting" at PRT Master Plan 2024 | Chesapeake, VA 

Planning Commission Updates 

In December, the Planning Commission recommended approval of the following.  These should go before City Council in January:

• Tow Yard on a 1.1 acre lot in Camelot

In January, the Planning Commission Meeting Agenda will include the following projects of interest:

• Homestead Pet Crematorium that would have a net loss of about 0.6 acres of tree canopy in the Sunray area.
• Raceway Fueling Station on the corner of Battlefield and Robert Hall Blvds. on a currently undeveloped wooded lot that would have a net loss of about 2.5 acres of tree canopy
• The South Norfolk Historic District Design Guidelines focusing on guidelines to help ensure that renovations and construction within the district were appropriate to the historic character and qualities of the neighborhood.  

City Council Updates

In December, the City Council  

• Approved Springton at Grassfield Planned Unit Development affecting 172.5 acres along Dominion Boulevard. This project was heard at the Planning Commission last June. The project would create up to 1175 attached (villas, townhomes, multi-family units) homes, up to 117 single family homes, and up to 300,000 sq. ft. in a commercial campus.  A key stipulation was that the developer shall not request a building permit for any residential dwelling until after a building permit has been requested by the City for the new elementary school in Culpepper Landing.  Key concerns raised by those against the development included the number of units, loss of rural lifestyle and quality of life, loss of agricultural land, stormwater drainage, potential negative impacts of the trail to the high school, road conditions and traffic, wildlife displacement, school overcrowding, potential air and noise pollution, and the potential burden on fire and police services. On the positive side, the project does include 9.8 acres of trails including a public multi-use trail along Dominion Blvd that should be connected with trails at Scenic Parkway, a 2.8 public park, and should add at least 25 acres of new tree canopy.  City Council Package for Springton at Grassfield 
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  Yadkin Road Battery Energy Storage Facility off George Washington Highway.  This will construct a 400 megawatt-hour (MWh) battery energy storage system facility to support intermittent energy sources such as wind and solar generation.  The project impacts of 6 acres of forested area, while preserving about 11 acres.

New City Council members took office on January 1st.  Leaving the Council were Don Carey and Bob Ike.  New Council Members are Pat King and Les Smith, Jr. 

Mirage of Plastic Recycling

Recycling has been a hot topic in Chesapeake since the City replaced curbside recycling bins with drop-off sites.  And it is also in the news at the state level - Virginia recycling programs, rates make little progress.

One question is how effective is recycling?  While there are good markets for recycling aluminum, metals, cardboard, and even paper (if it's not contaminated), plastic recycling is, at best, pitiful, at worst, greenwashing.  Only about 9% of plastic produced is recycled; 50% ends up in landfills, 19% is incinerated, and most of the rest ends up as unmanaged pollution and litter.  Plastic pollution is growing relentlessly as waste management and recycling fall short, says OECD | OECD.  The simple reality is that it is no market for recycling plastic.  It is much more profitable to make plastic from virgin resources, i.e. oil and gas, than it is to try to collect, sort, clean, and reprocess used plastic.  The corporations that make, sell, and buy plastics have no financial incentive to use recycled material, regardless of how much they market the idea.

And the latest scheme of "advanced recycling", using high temperature, chemical processes to basically break down plastics into their core molecular structure isn't any better.  The waste plastic materials still need to be collected and transported to the "advanced recycling" facility.  Then, in the best-case scenario, only 10% to 15% of plastic that goes to an "advanced recycling" facility will ever become a new plastic product.  The rest ends up getting burned as fuel with the associated air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions.   To close the loop, the other 85% of material to reproduce a plastic product, e.g. a water bottle, would continue to be sourced from oil and gas.  The Delusion of Advanced Plastic Recycling Using Pyrolysis — ProPublica.  Incinerating or burning plastic is also a major source of greenhouse gas emissions -Hidden Fossil Fuels: Plastic Production Drives Climate Change

And to make matters worse, our appetite for plastic continues to grow with annual production of plastic growing from 270 million tons in 2010 to over 400 million tons in 2023 and a projected growth to nearly 600 million tons annually by 2050.  Global plastics production forecast 2025-2050 | Statista.  And before you imagine that bioplastics will solve the problem, imagine how much cropland would be needed to produce all the plastic we use.  The Unintended Side Effects of Bioplastics: Carbon, Land, and Water Footprints - ScienceDirect

Ultimately, the answer must be to move away from plastics, especially the large volume of single-use plastics we consume annually.  And doing this with marketing campaigns urging consumers to avoid plastic will never be sufficient, especially not in a world where there are seldom any choices left to consumers - most everything is pre-packaged in plastic.  As a typical consumer, you mostly can't avoid buying plastic nor can you effectively recycle it most of it.  Real change will require the producers and providers of packaging to make different choices.  But, without financial reasons to do so, getting producers to change will likely require governments to provide incentives or set requirements to make change happen, i.e. putting in place "producer responsibility measures".

In March, Virginia Coastal Zone Management Program and Clean Virginia Waterways will be hosting a Virginia Marine Debris Summit at the Norfolk Botanical Garden focusing on solutions to measurably reduce plastic pollution from entering Virginia’s freshwater and tidal rivers, estuaries, wetlands, beaches, and ocean.  Learn more at Virginia Marine Debris Summit

Action Alerts

• Chesapeake Bay Foundation is organizing a General Assembly Clean Water Lobby Day on Tuesday, January 14.  This is an opportunity to join other advocates to go to Richmond and meet with your Delegate and/or Senator to speak up for environmental issues important to you.  They will even make the appointment with your elected officials so that you will be grouped with others in your area.  There will be a charter bus from Ward's Corner ($15) and lunch will be provided. You just need to get up early and bring your passion for clean water!  Sign up at Virginia Clean Water Lobby Day - Chesapeake Bay Foundation
• Virginia Conservation Network (VCN)'s Annual Conservation Lobby Day is on Wednesday, January 22. Another opportunity to set up lobby meetings with your legislators and fellow advocates.  Meet in Richmond.  Sign up at Conservation Lobby Day | Virginia Conservation Network on Glue Up
• Chesapeake residents in the Elizabeth River watershed can receive a free native tree from the Elizabeth River Project.  Limit one tree per home; homeowners are responsible for planting and providing proof of planting within 30 days. Free Tree Program - Elizabeth River Project

Volunteer Opportunities

• Chesapeake Parks, Recreation and Tourism: 2025 Volunteering Opportunities - Park and Facility Planning Division (signupgenius.com)
• Friends of Indian River Volunteer Opportunities including Adopt-A-Park/Invasive Species Removal at Indian River Park

In the News

• Multi-state coalition including Virginia recommits to Chesapeake Bay cleanup — but with new path forward
• Importance of Tree Canopy Issue Driven Home - Falls Church News-Press Online
• “Unprecedented” energy demand from data centers poses big challenges for Virginia, commission says
• Solar co-op runs campaign in Richmond, Hampton Roads region – The Virginian-Pilot

Stay on top of the latest news and join the conversation in our Facebook group at Greening Chesapeake.