Board of Director's and Mr. Wal-Mart

There is a lot of paperwork involved in running a non-profit organization... a lot of of reports, letters, proposals, and more reports on progress of those previous reports, letters and proposals.  I got to attend the RCS monthly board meeting recently, which was a neat way to go behind the scenes of the group.  The oddest part of the meeting was that we met at the Wal-Mart distribution center!  They switch up the meeting location each month so that the same members are not having to travel the same distance every time.  This one was about a 40 min drive out of Charlottesville, closer to a few of the board members homes.

It was such a strange juxtaposition to be at the meeting of an environmental group working to preserve a local river, surrounded by these weird pictures of Sam Walton (Wal-Mart founder) all around the conference room...
Thank you, Sam.  I trust you and your advice on success.



One of the board members works at the distribution center, so he signed up to use the conference room for the evening.  It is a distribution center, so there were a lot of interfering sounds coming from the warehouse throughout the evening.
The meeting was pretty interesting to observe.  It was fairly formal, following the normal structure of such meetings:  old business, new business, budget report, executive director's report.  One of the big topics of discussion was an appeal letter for hopefully Major Donors.  This has apparently been a topic of discussion for many months, and the hope was to finally settle on the wording of the letter.  It was pretty funny to watch the Exec Dir handle the discussion so similarly to how we handle a lot of situations at Patagonia... the customer is always right!  Our reality is not always their reality, so we can end up talking in circles a lot!  One board member had a very strong feeling for including a dollar amount in the letter, just to make it a clear invitation to donate.   By the end of the discussion the same board member suggested not including a dollar amount, just to make it clear because as board members, they would be the ones signing a lot of these letters to acquaintances.  The Exec Dir. handled it all so well, especially watching the conversation go in a complete circle from the same board member!  It was funny.  I think we ended up coming to a decision, and will be getting those letters finalized and printed this week!
RCS is a lot like running the store.  You have to communicate with a lot of different people, like we do with corporate, regional managers, the Reno distribution center... and you have to keep your donors and board of directors happy, just like we do with our customers.
We got a little bit of rain this week, which will help the water levels for anyone out for a paddle on the river.  RCS has a big event on October 18, the Rivanna River Sojourn, so we're keeping fingers crossed for more rain so that it's more of a paddle than a wet hike!

10th graders are SMART!

I had a super fun day on the river with about 40 10th graders!  RCS does a lot of education events with local schools, so I tagged along on one with 2 sophomore science classes learning about their local watershed...

First of all, their science teacher was amazing!  I wish my science teachers had been that fun and great with students.  I might have liked science better.  We headed down to Sandy Beach on the Rivanna River, in Palmyra.  This was an all day event for the kids, so they all packed lunch and dressed for being outside.

There were 4 stations that the kids rotated through, led by volunteers - mostly retired science teachers! We led the station on Water Quality and talked to the students about the meaning of a watershed and the importance of water quality for sustaining life.  We had them test the 4 parameters of water quality: pH, dissolved Oxygen, Temperature and Turbidity. 

The amazing thing was how engaged the kids were through the whole lesson!  They answered most of our questions with the right answer, or made really great guesses.  I was always shy in school and was so nervous about giving the wrong answer in class, so it was neat to see how open they were.  

The other stations covered GPS and Geo-caching, river bug identification, and land management...

collecting river bugs!

sorting the bugs

some good findings!

It was a really fun day and I not only learned a lot, but felt like it was encouraging to see young people understanding and caring about their river.  They got to be there, touch it, and will remember this day their science class spend the day at the river.  We also got to see some of the RCS River Stewards and other volunteers on their way down river with 60 tires they had pulled out that day!  

These are the last of about 150 that were found in one area of the river this month.  Hopefully the publicity that RCS got for removing the tires will discourage citizens from disposing of their spare tires in the river!  It costs about $15-25 per tire at local recycling facilities, so you can see both sides of it.  Many of these tires had been under water for a loooong time.  It was a great time to pull them out, while the water level has been low.  There are 2 giant tractor tires still left to get out, but they will need a strong team in place to try and get those to budge.  My favorite day of internship so far!!

Still Meadow and the River Anna - sounds like the title of a novel!

One thing that has caused the most reflection for me is reading about the history of the Rivanna River.  Growing up in Virginia, we would take school trips to Jamestown every year.  There is a lot of history in here in general and especially connected to these rivers.  It’s certainly not all happy history, but it’s a part of who we are today and you can see so much of it in these natural areas.  It kind of makes me want to watch Disney’s Pocahontas, even though it’s pretty much a fictional cartoon story. Fun fact: The Rivanna River was named after Queen Anne, River Anna!

A nice historical summary of the river, from the RCS website:

Rivanna

“The Rivanna River, the largest tributary to the upper James River, was named for Queen Anne, as it was the custom in early Virginia history to name streams for royalty. Its headwaters originate in the Blue Ridge Mountains of central Virginia, in both Albemarle and Greene Counties. The river meanders through the City of Charlottesville and stretches south through Fluvanna County, joining with the James River at Columbia. The confluence of the North and South forks, just upstream from Darden Towe, forms the Rivanna’s mainstem, a total of 50 miles in length. The 766 square miles of watershed is home to a variety of terrestrial and aquatic species, including the rare and endangered James Spinymussel (Pleurobema collina). Remarkably, sixty-five percent of the Rivanna Watershed is forested, which helps retard pollution.

Historically, the banks of the Rivanna River were home to the Monacan Indian Tribe. And, with the establishment of the European settlements, the Rivanna became an essential resource for early agricultural activity. Thomas Jefferson enhanced the river’s usefulness by improving navigation, in large measure to accommodate the transport of wheat and tobacco from Monticello and other regional farms.”

I’ll try to get a picture of the James Spinymussel to share!!

My own history of the Rivanna was growing up so close to it. 

My brother and his friends would go out to play around the train tracks and in the river, as boys do.  And I would tag along, as the annoying little sister, exploring and endlessly entertained by the wonders of nature.  As a child, I never thought about the preservation of these spaces but simply enjoyed them, and as I’ve grown, the Rivanna has remained a special childhood memory.  Coming back here and learning about river conservation in relation to my river has been very surreal.  I’m thinking of it so differently this time.  It’s funny that I’m very aware of other environmental issues in Boston and other places, but not so much in my hometown, where I grew up and spent so much time.  I guess it was just never on my mind as a child, so even as an adult, the childlike mentality remained. 

Fields behind Still Meadow

  Our neighborhood has developed a lot in the past 15 years.  There used to be a farm behind our house where the Still Meadow development now stands. They have made a nature trail that’s a little easier to follow around the edge of the river, rather than our old tiny trails through the woods.  Another memory that comes to me is of cutting back through the farm and fields of hay bales to the train tracks and river.  There are less hay bales now, but still some fields and corn crops!  The area has been maintained very well by the farmer who still lives in the same house, though his backyard is Still Meadow now.  He keeps the grass mowed on a trail that follows the river, and even has a playing field mowed out in the middle of the open space.  It’s a really nice resource for the people in this area, and for my dad, who loves to run.  I know I’d rather run through an open field than on pavement.  So, with the bad there has been some good! 

My dad and I went on a walk the other evening to take some pictures.  The water level is low right now, so we’re hoping for rain soon.  Again, not something I ever would have thought about 

until this trip.  I sort of miss the childlike wonder of just enjoying it for what it is and not thinking about the water levels or following a cut path down to the river, but just finding my way in! 

can you spot the deer?  he spotted me while I was taking this!

The walking path in Still Meadow

There's one of those hay bales I mentioned. A creek connecting to the Rivanna

locally grown corn!  you actually don't want to eat this.

home sweet home

It’s interesting being home for work.  It’s totally different than a normal trip to visit, where somehow I feel a little more like a tourist or an outsider.  I grew up here, went to school here, had a couple of retail jobs at the mall and nearby, but it’s been about 10-12 years since then.  The town has changed a lot, new businesses and developments have gone in, and the town somehow feels foreign to me this time. 

The Rivanna Conservation Society has an office on the downtown mall, a very fun location, it’s an old timey pedestrian mall.  They share a one room office space with Wild Virginia, another non-profit that has received a few grants from Patagonia in the past.  They have an office set up, but it’s mostly a room to store documents!  The staff is mostly about town at meetings and events every day, doing most of their computer work from home. 

My first week was already really enlightening.  We met at the office on my first day and I met most of the staff, which includes an Executive Director, Robbi Savage, and three part timers that joined RCS through a class on non-profits at UVA that Robbi teaches every spring.  There is a Board of Directors and a plethora of volunteers throughout the expanse of the Rivanna river, which spans about 50 miles in length.  They have two volunteer programs, the River Guardians and River Stewards, which offer heftier time out on the river.  Both teams go out on a regular basis (quarterly and weekly) to check things out and take samples of the water to test bacteria levels.

Something neat that I witnessed this week was the result of these bacteria testings.  Over the summer, RCS had been watching the levels increase in a particular area along the river, getting extremely high in August and reach over 6 times the approved level in September.  RCS reported this high bacteria count to the city, and the city took action!  They located the cause within 24 hours and are already working with the landowner to resolve the issue (a broken pipe)!  Robbi said that this was a perfect example of how we want these issues to unfold.  RCS spots the problem, reports it, and the city takes action!

On the whole, the river is very healthy and RCS’s mission is “to safeguard the ecological, recreational, historical, cultural and scenic resources of the Rivanna River and its tributaries.”

I have a couple of assignments that I’ll be working on over the month: reviewing the current website for suggestions and ideas for the new website launch later this fall, beginning the implementation of their Education program for local schools, and organizing their Major Donor Appeal letters. Between these projects, I’m going to be attending an assortment of meetings and joining volunteer teams out on the river! My first week has been mostly full of reading, meetings, and absorbing as much information and knowledge about the river and organization as I can!!  Since this week was meeting heavy, I felt weird taking pictures... but I will try to be better for future posts!  Especially when I (hopefully) get out on the river next week....