At their June meeting, the Albemarle Board of Supervisors voted 4-2 to reverse the County's long-held opposition to the Western Bypass–a $250-350 million project that VDOT studies have shown would not reduce traffic congestion on Rt. 29 North
Our Region
PEC focuses on nine counties and one city in the northern Piedmont of Virginia: Albemarle, Charlottesville, Clarke, Culpeper, Fauquier, Greene, Loudoun, Madison, Orange, and Rappahannock.
We also team with local organizations to promote thriving communities and healthy natural resources in a much larger region, including the Shenandoah Valley, the central Piedmont, and the Journey Through Hallowed Ground Corridor. In addition, we are proud to serve as fiscal sponsor of the Coalition for Smarter Growth, an organization that focuses on land use and policy in the greater Washington D.C. area.
Goose Creek Watershed Study
In early 2002, the Center for Watershed Protection, Goose Creek Association and the Piedmont Environmental Council embarked on a three-phase project to study the Goose Creek Watershed.
Limestone Geology and Sinkholes
Limestone geology, also known as Karst, is quite prevalent in the eastern United States. Limestone often dissolves in water, creating voids where groundwater flows like an underground river –gnawing away rock over the eons.
The natural wearing away of limestone over the millenia creates fantastic caves, unique ecosystems and touristic wonders (think Luray Caverns). However, in developed areas, human activities and new development can accelerate the natural pace of erosion–causing sinkholes, threatening buildings and roads, and contaminating groundwater.
1,000 Acres of Jefferson County Preserved
Members of the Carter family acted together in 2009 to protect nearly 1,000 acres of land in Albemarle County that has been in their family since 1730. The Carters’ ancestors were neighbors to the Jeffersons, with a plantation about seven miles from Monticello, and the 1792 home, Redlands, suggests a Jeffersonian influence. The house was built by Martin Thacker, who also built Monticello, and its plan resembles Thomas Jefferson’s unbuilt design for the Virginia governor’s mansion.
Wolftown Farm with Historic Round Barn Protected
Joyce Gentry lives on the land where she lived as a child-a farm in Wolftown in Madison County, toward the foothills of the mountains, that has been in her family for generations. Mrs. Gentry, a retired math teacher, says, “I’ve lived on farms my whole life.” Her son and daughter-in-law Brad and Amy Gentry now raise beef cattle on the family farm-a 145 acre spread with a horizon full of mountain views.
Mrs. Gentry’s strong ties to the land motivated her to protect it with a conservation easement last year. “I’m trying to keep the countryside like it is,” she says.
New Park at Gilberts Corner
The land at Gilberts Corner in Loudoun County that PEC saved from development in 2009 is now part of a public park at a gateway to one of America’s most historic landscapes.
Loudoun’s Billion Dollar Debt
What can we learn from Loudoun’s financial trouble?
Loudoun County, once the fastest growing county in the nation, is now $1 billion in debt—a direct consequence of growing too fast, too much, too scattered.
Highway Through Keswick?
Can the local community come up with a better plan for Routes 22 and 231 than VDOT’s plan to make it a highway?
The main road through Keswick in Albemarle County—Rtes. 22 and 231—runs through a landscape that Thomas Jefferson described as “the Eden of the United States”. Today, a traveler on this road can experience a landscape much like the one Jefferson and others of his generation saw—open farmland rising up to woodlands on the gentle slopes of the Southwest Mountains. What will it be like to travel on this road in 20 years or 50 years or 100 years? It’s an open question.
Unison Historic District Offers a Window to the Civil War
The village of Unison in western Loudoun, as if charmed in some way to keep from changing, is a quiet hamlet of well-kept old buildings, with many farmhouses, barns and churches that measure their age in centuries. They are settled into a landscape of farm fields and stone walls, where the curving hills and stands of trees give way, in their own rhythm, to views of the calm blue line of mountains on the western horizon.
It’s the roads in Unison that historians get most excited about, says Mitch Diamond of the Unison Preservation Society, which is leading efforts to list this area as a historic district on the state and national registers of historic places.
Places29 — Ready for a Vote
The Albemarle County Board of Supervisors appears poised to adopt the Places29 plan, after making some final changes at its Nov. 10 meeting. PEC has been a longstanding advocate for Places29 — a blueprint for strategic transportation investments and smart land use planning that will reduce traffic congestion and create better options for walking, biking and public transit. The current draft, which will go to a vote in January, is a positive outcome from a meeting at which there was real danger that the Board would fundamentally weaken the plan.