Archive for the ‘Green’ Category

A group determined to kick frog legs off American menus came to Ballston over the weekend to protest in front of Uncle Julio’s Rio Grande Cafe.

Fifteen demonstrators, including two George Mason University students and eight elementary and middle school students, held homemade signs calling for Uncle Julio’s to stop serving frog legs.

“Uncle Julio: Stop driving frogs to extinction,” one young girl’s sign read.

The protest was organized by Save the Frogs, a California-based group dedicated to saving “the world’s remaining amphibian species.” This was the second time this year the organization held a protest outside the Ballston Uncle Julio’s. The non-profit has also demonstrated outside Uncle Julio’s restaurants in Maryland and Texas.

“America is on track to overtake France and Belgium to become the number one frog-eating country on the planet,” Save the Frogs founder and Manassas native Dr. Kerry Kriger said in a statement. “The frog leg trade is responsible for the spread of infectious diseases, the depletion of wild frog populations, and the spread of harmful invasive species”.

The CEO of Uncle Julio’s has previously denied that the chain’s frog legs come from an endangered species or are raised in an unhealthy environment.

Photos courtesy Save the Frogs

Arlington’s first Capital Bikeshare station is scheduled to be installed this morning in Crystal City. The station will be installed at 27th Street and Crystal Drive, with another station set to be installed at 18th and Bell Streets immediately afterward.

The Capital Bikeshare system will feature 1,100 specially-designed bikes that visitors or commuters can rent. Mechanics have started assembling the bikes in a local warehouse.

“History in the making,” said Crystal City Business Improvement District President Angela Fox on today’s installation.

Photo via CommuterPage blog.

An oasis of wetlands and wildlife, tucked between the office towers of Ballston and the traffic of I-66, is safe from highway construction impacts, the county’s Department of Environmental Services says.

The Ballston Beaver Pond, as it’s called, was initially designed to collect stormwater runoff from I-66. But that started to change in the 1990s when beavers moved in and dammed up the drainage system, creating a pond and wetlands to form. The Beaver Pond is now a habitat frequented by muskrat, geese, ducks, heron, egrets, redwing blackbirds, fish, turtles and the occasional beaver.

The Beaver Pond is located next to a bike trail that connects Ballston and the Custis Trail, just north of the ramp from Fairfax Drive to I-66.

Residents of the nearby Waycroft Woodlawn neighborhood have become fond of the pond and became worried when a bulldozer arrived in the area as part of the I-66 widening project. But not to fear says Aileen Winquist, of the county’s Environmental Management Bureau.

“The Beaver Pond is not in danger from the current I-66 spot improvement project and widening of westbound I-66,” Winquist said in an email.

Winquist noted that the design work on a planned restoration of the Beaver Pond will begin this fall. The restoration will clean up trash and sediment from the pond and provide better water quality treatment. There will be several public meetings held to educate residents about the project.

Although the Beaver Pond will be largely unaffected by the I-66 widening, a VDOT-owned stormwater retention pond across the street will be impacted. Construction is planned for the facility, but details about the exact nature of the work were not immediately available.

More photos after the jump.

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In an effort to promote the use of energy-saving solar water heaters, Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment is launching a new initiative this fall. The group will organize volunteers to install solar water heaters for Arlington residents willing to shell out the cash to purchase the systems.

ACE is calling it their “Solar Raisers Program” — a take-off on Amish barn raisings. They’ve started recruiting members to volunteer on weekends for the day-long installations. They’re also looking for homeowners who are interested in the solar systems.

Homeowners who participate in the program will save $3,500 in labor costs, ACE says. They will still have to purchase the water heating system itself — which should cost about $2,300 after tax rebates. And they will have to provide food and drink to the volunteers.

“With the reduced labor costs, the system typically pays for itself in less than four years,” ACE noted in an email to supporters. ”This compares to a seven to nine year period payback a full-priced installation.”

Arlington homeowners interested in participating (and anyone who wants to volunteer) should contact Dan Conant at conantd [at] gmail.com or 571-243-0745.

Conant says he’s received 15 applications from homeowners and has about 30 volunteers who have expressed interest in helping out.

Photo via Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment

A group of 20 volunteers conducted one of the more eventful clean-ups of Four Mile Run over the weekend.

The group, which cleaned up the portion of the stream that runs through Barcroft Park, filled 28 trash bags with items found in or around the water. Among the items they found were a bicycle, a computer, a 70 pound metal beam and — most amazingly — the severed head of a goat, horns and all.

“I have no clue what it was doing down there amongst the plastic bottles, pens, styrofoam cups, baseballs, etc… but it smelled quite foul and we bagged it with all the other garbage,” Dan Bronson of Arlington’s Community Volunteer Network wrote in an email. “It still had the skin on it so it hadn’t been there too long.”

Bronson said “everyone was mystified” as to how the goat’s head got here in the first place. One theory was that it washed downstream during Thursday’s storm.

“Who knows!” Bronson wrote. “In my experience Four Mile Run stream clean-ups tend to have at least one quite unusual object.”

To say the least.

Saturday’s stream clean-up was a joint effort of several volunteer organizations. There were six wounded warriors on hand from the veteran groups Team River Runner and The Mission Continues. Arlingtonians for a Clean Environment and the Community Volunteer Network sent volunteers and helped to organize the event. A couple of Lockheed Martin employees also joined the clean-up.

In addition to the stream clean-up, volunteers also pulled and threw away a number of invasive plants found around the park.

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The county parks department has posted a sign reminding dog owners that playing fetch in Ft. Myer Heights Park is strictly prohibited. Ode Street Tribune has a photo of the sign, which designates the park as a “target enforcement area.”

Owners who don’t keep their dog on a leash in the park risk being banned from all county parks.

The county has revised its sprayground park hours after receiving complaints from parents.

This year, budget cuts force the parks department to reduce Monday through Thursday summer hours from 10:00 a.m. – 8:00 p.m. to 12:00 – 5:00 p.m. Now, the hours have been revised to make sure parents have the option of using the parks in the morning, before the heat of the day reaches its peak.

Now, park hours will alternate between 2:00 – 8:00 p.m. and 10:00 a.m. – 3:00 p.m. Each park will still be closed one day per week.

The new park hours took effect July 17.

The county has three sprayground parks: Drew Park, Hayes Park, and Lyon Village Park.

The Friends of the David M. Brown Planetarium organization is planning a “Night at the Planetarium” fundraising event with young astronomy buffs in mind.

From 4:00 p.m. to 9:30 p.m. on Saturday, July 31, the Friends and the Northern Virginia Astronomy Club will be holding a marathon session of planetarium shows, to be followed by a chance to look at real stars through NOVAC’s telescopes.

The stargazing will take place outside the planetarium (1426 North Quincy Street). The County will shut off the lights at the nearby Washington-Lee High School track so the dark sky will be visible.

In addition to the shows and the stargazing, there will also be outdoor lessons and science activities throughout the event. The event is especially geared toward children, but all community members are welcome, the group says.

The Friends hope to collect donations of $5 from individuals and $10 from families. The money will go to the group’s effort to renovate the planetarium in order to save it from proposed school budget cuts.

So far the Friends have raised a total of $3,350 from 53 donors, well below the more than $400,000 they’ll need for the renovation. By a timetable set by Arlington Public Schools Superintendent Patrick Murphy, the group needs to raise $161,120 by September 31.

A rebel faction of tradition-bound military officers has declared a legal war on the management of Army Navy Country Club for having the temerity to allow Arlington to build a bike path along the northeastern edge of the golf course.

A gang infestation, hoards of recreation-seeking youngsters and liability issues are a few of the undesirable consequences that the dissident club members fear. The officers, 14 in number, have enlisted a lawyer and are suing the club.

The Washington Post reports that the “grumpy generals,” as they’re called, are seeking a club-wide vote on the trail, which had initially been received with enthusiasm by local bicyclists and county transportation planners.

Someone has been busy creating mathematical and geometric graffiti (in chalk) on the W&OD trail. Mark Blacknell, who may or may not be organizing a posse of rogue road bicyclists to find the culprit(s), has more photos.

Photo courtesy Mark Blacknell.