Drought Emergency, a $28 Million Berglund Problem, and a Park Saved in a Day

Full Transcript

Intro

Alex: Welcome to The Roanoke Weekly. I’m Alex.

Morgan: And I’m Morgan. This is your locally curated, AI-narrated rundown of what happened around the Roanoke Valley this past week, and what’s coming up in the week ahead. Everything we cover comes from local reporting: the Roanoke Times, Cardinal News, WSLS, and WDBJ7.

Alex: It was a hot, hazy, very dry week. And honestly, a lot of what happened this week followed from that.

Morgan: But the valley did not sit still for it. There’s a full week of baseball ahead, downtown’s about to get loud, and we end on something that genuinely made my day.

Alex: Let’s get into it.

The Lead: Drought Emergency

Alex: We talked about the drought last week, and I want to be upfront that we’re starting there again. But this isn’t a repeat. Last week the region was under a drought warning. This week we crossed into emergency status.

Morgan: That’s the next rung up.

Alex: That’s the next rung up. Governor Spanberger’s office made it official on Wednesday. The Roanoke region has received just over half the rain it should have by this point in the year. Fifty-seven percent of normal. And statewide, we’re running about seven and a half inches below where we ought to be, which makes this the second-driest water year Virginia has on record.

Morgan: Second-driest ever recorded. That’s a big sentence.

Alex: It is. And “the Roanoke region” here is a wide net. Under the state’s drought program that covers Bedford, Campbell, Franklin, Henry, Patrick, Pittsylvania, and Roanoke counties, among others, plus the cities of Roanoke, Salem, Danville, and Martinsville. So this is a whole swath of Southwest and Southside Virginia at once.

Morgan: And what’s the number people around here actually watch?

Alex: Carvins Cove. As of Wednesday it was sitting fifteen feet below full pond. Smith Mountain Lake is about five and a half feet below normal, and Appalachian Power has started reducing the water it releases from the lake to slow that down. But the thing that concerns state officials most isn’t the reservoirs, it’s what’s underneath us. Groundwater and stream flows across the region are below the fifth percentile, and a lot of wells are setting record daily lows.

Morgan: Which means a good thunderstorm doesn’t fix it.

Alex: A good thunderstorm doesn’t fix it. The state’s language is that recovery needs a prolonged period of rain. Weeks of it, not an afternoon. The governor and state leaders made the point in person at Smith Mountain Lake this week, and here’s the line from Spanberger: “Increased water conservation measures are critical to protect access to adequate water supplies for Virginia’s families, farms, and communities as the drought persists.”

Morgan: So let’s be practical about it, because I think people want to know what’s being asked. The Western Virginia Water Authority is in Stage One Voluntary Conservation, and Salem’s asking the same of its customers. Outdoor watering only before ten in the morning or after seven at night. Broom instead of a hose on the driveway. Shorter showers. Full loads only in the dishwasher and the washer. And go find your leaks, because that’s the one that quietly costs the most.

Alex: And the word to hold onto there is still “voluntary.” The reason they’re asking now is to avoid the next step, which would be a formal emergency declaration with mandatory restrictions. That would mean real limits on irrigating lawns, golf courses, athletic fields.

Morgan: Has the valley been here before?

Alex: We have, and it’s worth knowing, because it’s the reason our water system looks the way it does. In 2002, Carvins Cove dropped to a record thirty-four feet below full pond. We’re at fifteen now, so nowhere near that. But coming out of 2002, Roanoke city and Roanoke County decided not to go it alone anymore, and that’s how the Western Virginia Water Authority got created in the first place. The system we’re leaning on right now exists because of the last time this happened.

Morgan: That’s a good reminder that the boring infrastructure decisions are the ones that pay off twenty years later.

Alex: Every time.

The Rundown

Alex: Alright, rundown. And staying with the weather for one more, because on Friday the valley went under an Air Quality Alert. Smoke from Canadian wildfires drifted far enough south to combine with ninety-degree heat, and DEQ sensors in Vinton and Salem picked up unhealthy levels of particulate matter. The city asked people with heart or respiratory conditions, along with older adults and kids, to ease off on outdoor activity.

Morgan: WDBJ talked to runners out on the greenway about it, and the word all of them kept using was “heavy.” One said she normally takes one or two breaks on a run and was stopping constantly just to catch her breath. So it wasn’t subtle.

Alex: Not subtle at all.

Morgan: Which makes what I’ve got next a little bit crazy, because there were more than two thousand people out riding bikes in it. The USA Cycling National Championships wrapped up here Sunday, and Visit Virginia’s Blue Ridge says the week brought in over twenty-two hundred riders. Last year it was around thirteen hundred, so that’s a serious jump.

Alex: They raced through the smoke?

Morgan: They raced through the smoke, but with a plan. USA Cycling was watching the air quality index all day and was ready to shorten races or cut a lap if it climbed high enough. It didn’t get there, so racing went ahead. And the courses were spread all over: Carvins Cove, Hollins, Elmwood Park, Explore Park. Roanoke’s already booked to host again next summer, which will be the third year running.

Alex: And there’s a piece of that I like a lot, which is that every rider pays a ten-dollar trail fee when they register, and that money goes back into building and maintaining local trails. Last year’s races put about twenty-two thousand dollars into that, split evenly between the city and the county. So the trails that made us worth racing on get paid for by the racing.

Morgan: That’s a nice loop.

Alex: Alright, over to something the city’s going to be chewing on for a while. The Roanoke Times had a big piece Sunday on the Berglund Center, and the headline number is twenty-eight million dollars. That’s what the venue’s general manager says it needs over the next five to ten years just to keep operating. And the city doesn’t have it. Roanoke already subsidizes the place more than a million dollars a year.

Morgan: It opened in 1971, right?

Alex: 1971, and it’s showing. The boilers are around sixty years old. The fire alarm system is twenty-six years old and proprietary to a company that’s out of business, so parts have to be fabricated. Last year the alarm went off in the middle of the state bar exam and could not be shut off. Students had to stop testing. Later that fall a Broadway performance had to evacuate mid-first-act.

Morgan: Okay, so that’s not a wish list. That’s things actively going wrong.

Alex: That’s the argument for urgency, yes. And the option the city has been exploring since October is putting a casino on the site. The pitch is that a developer would have to invest around three hundred million of its own money, no taxpayer dollars, and City Councilman Phazhon Nash says it would bring roughly seven hundred jobs. He’d vote for it. But the region’s three state legislators, Delegate Sam Rasoul, Delegate Joe McNamara, and Senator David Suetterlein, have all come out against it. Rasoul’s objection is that he doesn’t think the valley’s economy should lean on what he called a vice tax.

Morgan: So where does that leave it?

Alex: Nowhere quickly. A casino would need approval from the General Assembly and then a local referendum, so ultimately Roanoke voters would decide. Nash says that’s the part he likes. Nobody’s voting on anything this year.

Morgan: And speaking of things the region is arguing about.

Alex: Right. Two things happened this week on the Google data center planned for Botetourt County. On Saturday, dozens of people lined Route 220 with signs, part of a national day of protest against AI data center development organized by a group called Humans First. There were more than a dozen of these around the country, including in Lynchburg and Farmville. And earlier in the week, the Botetourt planning commission voted to ask the board of supervisors for permission to hold a special meeting on the county’s water supply.

Morgan: Water again.

Alex: Water again, and that’s the thread. That planning commission meeting was tense. The room was packed, people were standing along the walls, and there was a real dispute between one commissioner and county staff over how much water the project would actually need, with competing figures being passed around. I’m not going to try to settle that here. What I can tell you is that the supervisors take up the request on July 28th, and if they approve it, the special meeting would likely happen in September.

Morgan: Alright, I want to bring the temperature down, because this next one is my favorite kind of story. Virginia’s first high school for adults just graduated its first student.

Alex: At Melrose Plaza?

Morgan: At Melrose Plaza, the Excel Center. Her name is Brittany Mills, she’s thirty-seven, she lives in Rocky Mount. Nineteen years ago a car wreck cost her a ride to school and she dropped out of William Fleming with three months left. Three months. And she’s carried that ever since. She looked into a GED, life got in the way, the usual. Then this school opens up the road from her and she said she didn’t second-guess it for a second.

Alex: And she finished.

Morgan: She finished, and she picked up a dental assistant certification on the way out the door. She’s headed to community college for dental hygiene. She told Cardinal News she’d been waiting tables her whole life because she didn’t have a diploma, and now she can go after jobs with benefits.

Alex: What made the difference, do we know?

Morgan: She was very specific about it. Childcare. The center has it free and on site, so her four-year-old came to school with her every day. Plus transportation help and classes built around people who work. That’s the whole model, and it’s clearly needed, because they opened last August with fifty students and got more than five hundred and fifty applications. They want to get to three hundred students. And for scale: there are about fourteen thousand adults in the Roanoke Valley without a high school diploma.

Alex: Fourteen thousand. So one graduate is a start.

Morgan: One graduate is a start, and she’s the proof it works. Okay, last one from me, and it’s a save. Out in Montgomery County, forty-seven acres of Harvey Lee Price Park were headed to the auction block on Thursday, and the community bought it out from under the auction with about a day to spare.

Alex: How much did that take?

Morgan: A hundred and fifty-five thousand dollars for two parcels, and close to eighty percent of that came from community donations. Friends of the Rivers of Virginia, the nonprofit that’s been stewarding the park, put in thirty-five thousand and neighbors and local businesses covered the rest. And it wasn’t a comfortable finish. They thought they had it settled, then found out two weeks before the auction that the Virginia Tech Foundation wasn’t going to buy its half of the second parcel, so they had to scramble a whole new deal.

Alex: What does that money actually protect?

Morgan: The main entrance, the parking lot, the historic Daniel Price homestead, and a popular loop trail. So basically the ways people actually get into the park. It’s not finished, though. They’re still fundraising, because there are remaining ownership interests to buy out before the title is clean, and the long-term plan is to hand the park off to the New River Land Trust and eventually to Montgomery County.

Alex: But for the moment, it’s still open to the public.

Morgan: Still open. Which was the whole point.

The Week Ahead

Morgan: Alright, the week ahead, and let’s start with baseball, because there’s a lot of it. The Salem RidgeYaks open a six-game home stand against the Augusta GreenJackets on Tuesday, first pitch six thirty-five at Carilion Clinic Field, and they’re home every single night through Sunday.

Alex: Six straight. So if you’ve been meaning to get out to Salem this summer, this is not a week where you can claim you couldn’t find a game.

Morgan: No excuses. Sunday’s the one to note, though, because that one’s a four-oh-five afternoon game to close it out.

Alex: Day game, more manageable if you’re bringing kids.

Morgan: Exactly. Wednesday, two things. The Roanoke Public Library Foundation is holding a reception for the David Ramey Collection, celebrating the digital launch of his work. He was a local Roanoke artist, and his art and writing capture a particular version of this city.

Alex: And that one’s going to live online afterward, which is nice. That’s a collection that stays accessible.

Morgan: Also Wednesday, the Mountain Valley Cluster Dog Show kicks off in Salem, and it runs five days through Sunday. This is not just dogs walking in a circle, either. There’s dock diving.

Alex: Dock diving is the one where they sprint off a dock into a pool?

Morgan: That’s the one, and it is a genuinely great spectator sport. Thursday, the big one downtown: Delta Dental’s Party in Elmwood, five thirty to eight thirty at Elmwood Park. Beach bands, and they’ve added new “Remix” nights this year to mix up the format. The series runs into August, so this is one of several chances.

Alex: Elmwood on a summer Thursday is about as good as downtown gets.

Morgan: Also Thursday, the Taubman opens a new exhibition, “Annette Nancarrow and the Mexican Avant-Garde.” She was an American-born artist whose work was wrapped up in twentieth-century Mexican art movements. That one’s up through October eleventh, so no rush.

Alex: I’ll take the museum in a week where the air’s been iffy and it’s ninety degrees out. Indoors has its appeal.

Morgan: Fair. Friday and into the weekend, theater. Mill Mountain Theatre is running “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” through August second, and out in Fincastle, Attic Productions closes its run of Sondheim’s “Into The Woods” on Sunday. So if you want that one, this is the last weekend.

Alex: Two very different nights out.

Morgan: Very. One’s for the whole family, one’s Sondheim being Sondheim. And a practical note given everything we talked about at the top: a lot of this is outdoors, so bring water, and it’s worth checking the heat and air quality advisories before you commit to a long afternoon outside.

Alex: Good call.

The Closer

Alex: Let’s end at a playground. On Wednesday, Roanoke VIA Day School cut the ribbon on a new one, after more than a year of planning and fundraising. The school serves students with neurodevelopmental disabilities, and its students go all the way up to age twenty-two.

Morgan: So the old playground didn’t really fit them.

Alex: It didn’t, in a couple of ways. It was two decades old and built for smaller kids, and it flooded easily, which meant rain took recess off the table entirely. The new one is padded instead of mulched, it’s sized for older and bigger students, and it’s got equipment designed around what these kids actually need. My favorite is a spinning cubby, where a student can climb inside, feel enclosed and safe, and then spin to get the sensory input they’re looking for.

Morgan: That’s such a specific piece of design. Somebody really thought about that.

Alex: The school’s director, Leslie Painter, helped design it herself. It got built with support from the Community Foundation Serving Western Virginia, the Robertson Family Foundation, and a lot of local families. And the detail I keep coming back to is from the soft opening a couple weeks back, when the students got their first look. Painter said they ran out of the school at a full sprint.

Morgan: Of course they did.

Alex: Here’s how she described what the staff sees out there now: “We see children climbing to the top for the very first time after months of building that confidence. We see friends playing together. We see students practicing communication skills back and forth, taking turns and celebrating each other’s successes. We see laughter.”

Morgan: Months of building that confidence, and then they get to the top. That’s the thing, isn’t it. It looks like a playground and it’s actually a year of work paying off all at once.

Alex: That’s exactly it.

Close

Morgan: That’s The Roanoke Weekly for July twentieth.

Alex: Thanks for spending some time with us. If you got something out of this, pass it along to somebody else in the valley. That’s genuinely how people find us.

Morgan: And go easy on the water this week.

Alex: We’ll see you next Monday.