Purcell Road – Are We There Yet?

Purcell Road, originally published in the News & Messenger article titled Residents speak out against widening Purcell Road

The recent Planning Commission work session on Purcell Road brought out some important points that could prove to be instructive as we move forward in this process and in future planning in general.

The main driver for this project is not local community traffic. The total new housing possible from undeveloped land in the area under current county recommendations is approximately 300 homes.

This is certainly not enough to require a new four lane highway when the Parkway already serves most of the undeveloped parcels. The driver is projected long term regional traffic increases.

There is already cut-through traffic on Purcell Road between Route 234 and Hoadly Road. Common sense dictates that four-laning Purcell and connecting it directly to the Parkway will only increase this cut-through situation, since faster speeds and a more direct path between Route 234 and the Parkway will be the result. Basically, build this road and they will come.

What If There Is…?

Virginia’s Attorney General, Ken Cuccinelli, has petitioned the Federal Environmental Protection Agency to drop its efforts to regulate greenhouse gases.   

As the Attorney General sees it, we don’t need to do anything to deal with climate change.  It ain’t happening.  The big risk is that people might respond to the reports from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.  According to Cuccinelli, “We cannot allow unelected bureaucrats with political agendas to use falsified data to regulate American industry and drive our economy into the ground.” 

If climate change were really a threat, then how we fuel our cars and generate electricity would have to change.   The blindly rigid approach is that change is bad, so change nothing. 

A conservative approach, in contrast, would seek to reduce risks, rather than to bury one’s head in the sand and just hope the science turns out differently.  In this approach, high-risk threats would not be ignored until an unacceptable event actually occured.  That’s why we spent massive amounts of money preparing for war with the Soviet Union, why we put smoke alarms in our house, why we buy insurance for our cars - just in case. 

Pretending war and accidents can’t happen, so we don’t need to do anything, is not conservative.  Pretending climate change can’t happen, so we don’t need to do anything, is foolish. 

Whether “proven” or not, there is clearly a risk of global warming.  Virginia in particular would be affected, if sea level does rise.  Norfolk could be covered by storm surges in routine Category 3 hurricanes, threatening our ability to maintain the Navy’s facilities for warships there.

The “do nothing, it ain’t real, magnify minor flaws in the science” head-in-the-sand approach is not a conservative strategy; it is the high risk approach. 

Conservatives should be asking “What should we be doing to reduce risks, in case climate change will happen…”  That conservative approach to threats was represented clearly in the 1984 Reagan TV commercial, What If There Is a Bear.

New location for Lake Manassas work session

The Manassas City Council work session on opportunities to provide public access to Lake Manassas has been moved from City Hall to the the Public Works building, 8500 Public Works Drive, Manassas 20110, directions. Click here and here for more information about the current proposal.

PW County’s “Principles of Sound Financial Management” and Comprehensive Plan revision

The Board of County Supervisors is planning to update the county’s Principles of Sound Financial Management.  The revised principles will still include three key statements regarding the financial health of the county.

Those three statements should guide the revision of the Transportation, Land Use, and Environment chapters of the Comprehensive Plan, if we want to emphasize local jobs, low property taxes, and economic stability of the county.

Right now, all three proposed drafts of the Land Use Chapter, and the draft of the Transportation Chapter approved by the Planning Commission, are fiscally irresponsible.   Only the draft of the Environment Chapter is designed to reduce county costs and face long-term economic realities.

If the Board of County Supervisors considered the financial impacts by 2030 of the proposed long-term Comprehensive Plan updates… the need for dramatic revisions in Land Use and Transportation drafts would become clear.

“The buzz about nanobees…”

The Prince William Regional Beekeepers Association will speak at the First Thursday Nature Tales on Thursday night, October 1.  They’ll be discussing the life cycle of bees, how we get honey, what is “sustainable” beekeeping in our region, etc.  It will be a fascinating and fun conversation.

But meanwhile, over in the not-so-weird-scientist labs, the wizards keep expanding the frontiers of knowledge.  According to the Wall Street Journal, doctors – with the assistance of nanoparticles – may be able to direct bee venom to attack cancer cells one day soon.

Sweet, eh?

The Monarch butterfly has a GPS capability… and a clock

Our monarch butterflies migrate from Prince William to Mexico every Fall. This week is normally the peak migration season for our area, according to Journey North.

To get to the single forest in Mexico where the insects over-winter, they need a compass and a clock.  The butterflies use the sun to determine direction – but because the sun moves throughout the day, the monarchs also need a clock.

After all, setting your path by the sun at 9:00am will send you in one direction, but if you fly at the same angle to the sun at 3:00pm you’ll end up going in a very different direction.  (Ask anyone who lives west of their job.  They commute east into the sun in the morning – and back home, into the sun again, in the evening.)

Scientists have just discovered that the biological clock that enables monarchs to use the sun as a compass is located in their antennae, not in their brain. Guess there really is something new under the sun, occasionally… (For more, see article in Wired.)

You’re Invited!

PWCA Green Breakfast — From Your Backyard to the Bay

WHEN: Saturday, February 28 at 9:00 a.m.

WHERE: Wetland Studies & Solutions, 5300 Wellington Branch Drive, Gainesville

REGISTER: Click here to download the flyer and registration form.

SPEAKERS: Tom Davis, Charles Smith and Mike May

Green is in and the benefits of acting locally have never been more apparent. From the Obama administration to the state’s Renew Virginia initiative, there’s lots of noise and even a few details on how we can really make a difference.