Thursday, June 18: ASAP’s evening meeting, open to all, will examine “The Future of Albemarle Farmland.” The 900 farms in Albemarle County cover roughly 160,000 acres, helping define the character of our community, enriching the local economy, and maintaining open space that provides environmental benefits to all residents. Just about everyone—certainly including members of the Albemarle County Farm Bureau and members of ASAP—insist they want to maintain and strengthen healthy farms; we all say the land should be kept agricultural rather than succumb to residential development. So why does the community have trouble agreeing on policies to ensure that we achieve this common objective?

With the aim of finding common ground not simply on the goals, but the means of reaching them, this meeting brings together:

• Carl Tinder, President of the Albemarle County Farm Bureau and owner of The Homeplace Vineyard and a 120-head cow-calf herd. He also manages Adventure Farm LLC, which consists of a 500-head cow-calf herd, a small meat goat herd and a vineyard. The 1995 Virginia Tech graduate holds a degree in animal science.
• Stephen Levine, on the ASAP Board of Directors, a Scholar in Residence in the history department at the University of Virginia. He is vice president of the Proffit Community Association and the owner of the Forks of the Rivanna, a 154.5 acre Nature Conservancy reserve. He is also the owner of a farm where he keeps horses, goats, cows, and chickens.
• Ann Mallek, Albemarle County Supervisor and owner of an Earlysville farm in her family for generations. She will serve as moderator.

The two speakers will outline the concerns and goals of their respective organizations and respond to questions prepared in advance regarding acceptable paths toward meeting common goals. Questions and comments from the audience will follow.

This event will begin at 7:30 PM, Thursday, June 18, in the library of Westminster Presbyterian Church, 190 Rugby Rd. For more information, call 434-974-4582

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ASAP Awarded $50,000 Grant by Colcom Foundation

The Colcom Foundation has awarded Advocates for a Sustainable Population (ASAP) a $50,000 grant to help fund the first phase of ASAP’s Optimal Sustainable Population Size (OSPS) research initiative. John Rohe, Colcom Program Director, said, “The [Colcom] Board recognized this as a vital project, and it was highly impressed with the caliber of the participants.” The study will examine a number of approaches – including both socio-economic indicators and measures of environmental carrying capacity – to help estimate a “right size” as a planning tool for the Charlottesville-Albemarle County community.

Announcing the grant, ASAP President Jack Marshall stated, “Colcom awarded the funds not only because the OSPS project is a well-conceived, common-sense, and cutting-edge initiative, but also because of the support displayed by challenge grants from the City of Charlottesville ($11,000) and Albemarle County ($25,000), and because of the generous contributions for the project from over 75 ASAP members and friends (about $25,000 so far).”

ASAP was founded in 2002 by a group of local citizens concerned about the effects of growth and development on the Charlottesville-Albemarle community and surrounding areas. ASAP’s mission is to increase knowledge and awareness about the effects of population growth on our natural environment and on our quality of life, and to encourage policies and mechanisms that will enable our region to identify and maintain a sustainable population size. The OSPS project will help provide informed discussion about how big our community can grow while still maintaining its character, ensuring a quality of life current citizens expect and deserve, and protecting the environment.

The Colcom Foundation, headquartered in Pittsburgh, was created in 1996 to provide a forum for the examination and discussion of the major causes and consequences of overpopulation and its impact on environmental sustainability. Its mission is to “foster a sustainable environment to ensure quality of life for all Americans by encouraging reasonable U.S. population levels.” The Foundation makes grants in four areas: environmental sustainability, natural resource preservation, land and water conservation, and efforts to establish a sustainable population.

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ASAP Optimal Sustainable Population Size (OSPS) Project: SUMMARY

(click here for complete “Scope of Work”)

Since ASAP was founded in 2004, the organization has argued that local population growth— in most localities occurring largely accidentally, or driven by the wishes of those who profit from growth—should be determined by voluntary, democratic decisions of residents aware of the benefits and costs of an expanding population. ASAP contends that every community should identify its “right size” and aim to level off population growth at roughly that point. No place need grow past its optimal size.

When presented by ASAP with this position, Albemarle County supervisors and Charlottesville City councilors responded with a logical question: what is our community’s “right size”? With insufficient staff to answer the question themselves, the two local governments contributed to ASAP’s effort to provide an answer through research.

This research in the OSPS Project, begun in 2008, aims to help identify an optimal sustainable population size (or range) for the community of Charlottesville and surrounding Albemarle County, now with a combined total of 135,000 residents. The specific public policy question is: How big can we grow and still ensure the quality of life we currently enjoy, protect our environment, and maintain the character of our community? Would a population size of 200,000 be optimal and sustainable? Half a million?

No other community has undertaken research to define its optimal sustainable population size, so there was no clearly established methodology for us to follow. But a number of approaches have been developed in an attempt to better understand the fit of a human population size to a finite area. Building on this prior research, during the first year of the project five studies of the community's biological carrying capacity were undertaken:

o Impacts of population growth on local ecosystem services

o Our community's environmental footprint and local bioproductivity

o Threats of growth and density on stream health in Albemarle County and Charlottesville

o Effects of local population size on local air quality

o Consequences of local population growth on local groundwater : 

All five studies will be completed in Spring 2009.

Four additional studies focusing on socio-economic issues in defining “optimal” size will be carried out when the reports of the carrying capacity investigations are completed:

o Residents' opinions about optimal population size as gleaned from recent local surveys

o Character of a community as a function of size and scale

o Effect of size on our community's ‘ Best Place to Live' ranking

o Economic costs of growth

In the fall of 2009 ASAP plans to launch, in collaboration with UVA’s Institute for Environmental Negotiations, an extensive community outreach program. This new project will inform local residents about the findings of the OSPS research, and seek community consensus about its implications for policies affecting local growth and development.

Donate to Advocates for a Sustainable Albemarle Population