The home we rent in Earlysville is on the reservoir, which is part of the Rivanna River. There are signs scattered throughout the area reminding people that this is the city’s drinking water and that we need to take care of it.
Protecting our watershed is incredibly important. Doing everything we can to protect the environment is important. It is even more important now, when all sorts of federal agencies and regulations are being decimated. As a county we must maintain a commitment to protecting the environment, protecting our natural resources and making sure the county retains its rural character. These are some of the things we all appreciate about living here.
Protecting the environment also means reducing emissions. It means getting cars off the road and preventing sprawl. Building housing – and increasing density – is a good way to do this. Creating homes at price points that employees can afford helps the environment.
Avoiding development in Albemarle County is not the same thing as protecting the environment.
Increasing the amount of homes does not mean out of control development and sprawl. Planned development is what helps sprawl not to happen. We can choose the zoning – we have the power to define what is allowed where. We have the ability to encourage walkable, even bikeable neighborhoods. We can build the bike lanes and sidewalks necessary so that even the people who live here don’t have to drive here.
Increasing housing also helps the environment by allowing public transit to work even more effectively. Good public transit requires both the economic base to support it and the population necessary to ride it – we need people to make the routes worth having.
Our current housing situation is not good for the environment. Most people who work in our county have homes – they just have them farther away. We are contributing to the climate crisis by forcing our neighboring counties to accept sprawl because we are unwilling to provide homes for the people who work here. Avoiding development in Albemarle County is not the same thing as protecting the environment. Avoiding housing in Albemarle County just moves the environmental damage to an area we can’t see. If we truly want to protect the climate, we will create a county where people do not have to spend hours a day in their cars.
We have made Albemarle County a place where people can find jobs. Now we need to make it a place where they can find homes.