Inside RLEP, Fall 2007

by Paul Farmer, President

Once again I find myself reflecting upon the many accomplishments of RLEP well in advance of the year's end. But that is a natural consequence of this being the last RLEP News for 2007 and of the need to draft these articles well in advance of publication deadlines.

One area of RLEP progress that I have been very pleased to watch is the increasingly effective way that we have been communicating with membership and the public. Our newsletter and our website have matured as vehicles for getting our message out. And our Communications Committee is supplementing those two standards with effective media articles and ads, press releases, direct mail campaigns, e-mail messaging, and Action Alerts.

For the third year running, our expanding Biodiversity Task Force activities have provided education and field opportunities for members and the community. People and ecosystems stand to benefit as this effort continues to grow. It is something that I hope will endure as a core RLEP program.

Our second annual Piedmont Alternative Energy Expo put us on the map for a topic with ever-increasing relevance in a world that continues to run largely on nonrenewable resources. We found the event a little easier to put on in its second year, and we were very pleased that, with experience, we were able to move it from a cash-consuming enterprise to one that did a little better than break even. The Fauquier County Fair Grounds are already reserved for May 2008, and plans are under way for another hit event.

Rappahannock County now has a new sludge ordinance in place. It is a good ordinance, probably the strongest in the commonwealth. RLEP gets part of the credit—for standing up to defend the county against proposed applications of sludge to agricultural land here last year and for helping to draft the new legislation this year. We hope the new local ordinance will deter potential sludge appliers. RLEP is determined to do all that can be done to see that sludge is never applied to land in the county.

RLEP, which began life in 1970 fighting the routing of a high-voltage electric transmission line through the county, has come full circle. Now we find ourselves in a similar fight, working to protect our scenic, pastoral, wild, and rural landscape from the defacing encroachment of another industrial power line. This ill-conceived plan, born in corporate board rooms, would bring unnecessary energy, produced from nonrenewable resources, on an unnecessarily circuitous route from old, polluting plants in the Ohio Valley to wasteful consumers in Northern Virginia and the far Northeast, not in Rappahannock.

Much energy will be wasted along the way, and we in Rappahannock County will be visited not just by another disruptive eyesore and destroyer of forest ecosystems in the form of ugly towers and lines and cleared right-of-ways, but by more of the dirty air from those dirty power plants that have already hazed our skies and threaten our health. There is still time to defeat this menace, and our chances are good if our members and friends support RLEP like never before. Visit the Powerline Task Force Home Page for more information.

My time as President and Chairman of the RLEP Board is rapidly coming to a close. At our October 26 annual meeting, you will elect new directors and the board will elect a new president. The time I served in this capacity is a time that I will always look back upon with fondest memories. I have enjoyed the strong support, passion, competence, and good will of our directors, volunteers, friends, and well-wishers. I thank them for the many RLEP successes of the last few years. And I thank you for the opportunity to have served RLEP, the community, and the land we love.