City Council weighs complications in moving pipeline for parkway

The City Council raised questions Tuesday about how relocating a section of Charlottesville sewer line to make way for the Meadowcreek Parkway would alter McIntire Park’s landscape by removing trees and other vegetation.

“This is a park,” Mayor Dave Norris said. “This is a place for enjoying nature.”
The Virginia Department of Transportation is trying to relocate part of the Schenk’s Branch Interceptor— 1,075 feet of the 7,000-foot line — to accommodate the Meadowcreek Parkway’s construction, and city officials are seeking to install a bigger pipe for that section to handle more sewer flows.
The Rivanna Water & Sewer Authority, which owns the Interceptor, requires a permanent easement from the city for the sewer line’s new location. Councilors discussed the easement Tuesday and will vote on the issue later this month.
“The line needs to be relocated in order for the road to be built,” City Attorney Craig Brown said. “If the line is going to be increased in size, there is obviously a conflict with the road.”

All of the sewer flows that go through the line originate in Charlottesville. Enlarging the relocated part of the line from a 21-inch to a 30-inch pipe would cost more than $815,000, according to estimates from city officials. Most of the costs, about $455,000, are a result of rock excavation that would be done to place the sewer line deeper into the ground.
“It needs to be upgraded to handle additional capacity,” Lauren Hildebrand, the city’s director of utilities, said in an interview.
The Interceptor begins on McIntire Road and goes through McIntire Park to connect to the Meadowcreek Interceptor in Albemarle County. Under the easement, the RWSA would be allowed to cut down trees, shrubs and other obstructions to have safe installation, operation and maintenance of the relocated sewer line. The authority would not be required to replant any vegetation in the easement that was removed from McIntire Park or reimburse the city for replanting, something that city resident Daniel Bluestone disapproved of Tuesday.
“This is a public park,” said Bluestone, a Meadowcreek Parkway opponent. “We are going to be looking at a landscape that is going to have trees lost, shrubberies cut” and those things will never grow back, he said.
Officials say that replanting could pose safety and access issues. Trees might create root problems that could compromise the pipe, for example.

Councilor David Brown, who supports the parkway, expressed an interest in softening the language of the easement to allow for some landscaping or for the city possibly to take ownership of the sewer line from the RWSA to have more control over future planting.
Costs for enlarging part of the Schenk’s Branch Interceptor will fall on city residents because they are the only ones who use it. Hildebrand said VDOT is responsible for the majority of the costs associated with moving the actual line, though the city would pay 2 percent of the costs because the project is related to right-of-way acquisition and construction of Charlottesville’s section of the Meadowcreek Parkway.
In addition to the portion being relocated by VDOT for the purpose of the parkway, the RWSA is replacing and upgrading another 640 feet of the Schenk’s Branch line.