Greening Chesapeake

Come out for Chesapeake's first big Earth Day festival at Campostella Square Park (next to the Cuffee Center). Thank you to the Climate Action Network for organizing the event! There will be games, music, and educational activities. There will be free native trees and plants available for adoption, thanks to the Virginia Cooperative Extension - Chesapeake and the Chesapeake Environmental Improvement Council Tree Board. Come out and celebrate Earth Day! Location: Campostella Square Park, 2019 Windy Rd, Chesapeake, VA, 23224

  The next Green Drinks will be Tuesday, March 26, 2024 from 6 pm to 8 pm at YNot Italian in Greenbrier, 1036 Volvo Parkway, Suite 7 Chesapeake, VA, 23320. We're scheduled to have a guest speakers, Kevin Finn and Emma Jones, from the Planning Department, to discuss on-going activity to update the City Comprehensive Plan. The City of Chesapeake is working on revising its Comprehensive Plan as several sub-plans including a new Trails and Connectivity Plan. Keeping abreast of the progress of these plans and discussing ways to contribute to the development of these plans will be a theme for our meetings this year.

Update 2:  Urge Governor Youngkin to sign HB529 and HB1100 into law to ensure our community is able to conserve and plant more trees that will benefit the health of all Virginians! Contact him today -  https://p2a.co/dT5K6jN   Update: Both of these bills have been passed by the House and Senate and are now heading for the Governor's desk for signature.  Stay tuned for any Action Alerts asking folks to contact the Governor to urge him to sign these bills.  There are several bills in the General Assembly that would give the City of Chesapeake the option to do more to protect trees and restore tree canopy during development.  Current state law limits how much Chesapeake can require of developers during construction.   HB 1100 would enable all counties, cities, and towns in Virginia to adopt tree conservation ordinances to conserve healthy mature trees during construction projects.  HB 529 would increase how much canopy must be replac...

Action Alert: The Hampton Roads Transportation Planning Organization (HRTPO) is asking for feedback on its proposed Exploratory Scenario Planning approach for the 2050 Long-Range Transportation Plan. This is apparently a plan on how to do the plan by "asking what could happen?" rather than try to predict what will happen or picking a preferred scenario.  The stated objective is to "evaluate candidate [transportation] projects across ALL plausible future scenarios."  The big gap that I see is the lack of any criteria for how they would evaluate candidate transportation projects.  While the stated goal is "understanding how our system responds to different 'drivers of change' and increased growth, [and then] make better informed decisions about priorities and investments", my concern is that this will result in self-fulfilling prophecies. If we end up planning to build infrastructure to support the worst-case scenarios, i.e. suburban and exurban sp...

The Industrial Waterfront Study will receive a Public Hearing at the Planning Commission meeting this week on Wednesday, February 14, 2024.  The goal of this document is to  understand the current conditions along the Southern Branch of the Elizabeth River and  determine preferred future land uses based and  identify the range of adaptation strategies that can increase the resilience of coastal and riverine areas and increase opportunities for economic development.   In my review, I think the Planning Department did an excellent job of presenting a  balanced approach that prioritizes space for industrial businesses critical to the local economy and tax base   while identifying   a range of adaptation strategies that can increase the resilience of coastal and riverine areas  to address   sea level rise, increasing stormwater flooding, and recurrent tidal inundation.  (The text in bold is taken directly from the Draft Study which...

As Chesapeake continues to be an attractive place to live, more and more people will move into our City. The City population, currently at 255,000, is projected to grow to just shy of 300,000 by 2045. The number of households will grow from about 95,000 to over 113,000. How do we build homes for another 18,000 families while planting more trees? How do we connect 45,000 more people with the commercial, institutional, and recreational facilities they’ll use without creating traffic choked streets? How do we improve the quality of life for all residents while dealing with the effects of hotter summers, more intense storms, and worsening flood risks? These are answers we need to see incorporated into the City's updated Comprehensive Plan. Building more compactly rather than creating sprawl needs to be part of the answer. Take this survey to give your feedback on how the density of housing fits into the picture -   https://arcg.is/0Hm59b0

The Chesapeake Planning Department will be hosting a second community meeting to share their progress on the planning effort for the new Trails and Connectivity Plan and receive feedback on our proposed network. Come out and advocate for creating a backbone network of multiuse trails, bikeways, and sidewalks to connect different parts of Chesapeake. This event will be held on Wednesday, January 31st at Grassfield High School from 5:30 - 7:30 PM. Please see the attached flyer or visit our website for more information: CityofChesapeake.net/TCONN