Overlooked no more?

It may be the most overlooked election in Henrico County every four years.

Every four years, that is, except maybe this year.

Not only is the race for seats on Henricopolis Soil and Water Conservation District board crowded, with five candidates for the three elected director positions, it's also resulting in some unique alignments.

Though the five-member board (the other two directors are appointed) is apolitical and all candidates appear as independents on the ballot, the two incumbents are a Democrat and a Republican who are endorsing each other.

The three challengers – at least one of whom will win a spot on the board – are registered Democrats whose joint alignment earlier in the race drew pushback from some party supporters who viewed it as an attempt to oust one of their own.

The candidates themselves, tho-ugh, seem to have little interest in stirring up, or disrupting, party allegiances.

Incumbents Nicole Anderson-Ellis, who has served two four-year terms, and James Beckley, who has served one, both felt called to the board for specific reasons – Anderson-Ellis to help establish a program to establish conservation easements on smaller properties, Beckley to enhance water testing efforts. They want to continue those efforts and others during the next four years. The two weren't even aware that they sit on the opposite ends of the political spectrum (Anderson-Ellis is a Democrat and Beckley a Republican) until recently, and they enthusiastically are supporting each other's re-election bids.

"With soil and water, there's no political spectrum," Beckley said. "I consider her a good friend. I'm definitely very passionate; I know Nicole's very passionate [about the work of the board]."

The Henricopolis board, established in 1975, is one of many nationwide born from the Dust Bowl disaster in the Great Plains in the 1930s, when a long drought dried up soil and eventually led to massive dust storms. That prompted federal lawmakers to prioritize soil and water conservation to avoid similar disasters in the future.

The Henricopolis SWCD provides educational training to students and teachers countywide; assists with creation of conservation easements on land in the county; conducts annual Envirothon and poster contest events for students; helped create the Cornerstone Farm at Fairfield Middle School (a working farm operated by students); and conducts tree seedling giveaways and provides rain barrels to residents, among many other efforts. Board members receive no pay.

The three challengers for seats on the board – Anne-Marie Leake, Michael Phillips and Claiborne Yarbrough – each entered with a desire to serve their county in an elected capacity and help provide more exposure for the board and its efforts.

Yarbrough, who has worked in sales and marketing for 25 years, has travelled the county campaigning and heard two key things from citizens, she said: Unanimous support for environmentally friendly efforts and surprise about the existence of the Henricopolis board.

"Mainly they're just incredulous that there is such a board and that they've never heard of it before," she said.

Phillips and Leake echoed her sentiments.

"I want to change this," said Leake, who serves as communications strategist for 4VABlue, a Virginia Democratic campaign strategy organization. "I want voters to know . . . about the great work the Conservation District does and all the resources it offers to empower them to be intentional stewards of their environment, which is especially important as we experience the reversal of environmental protections at higher levels of government."

Said Phillips, a legislative aide for Democratic Virginia Delegate Lamont Bagby (74th District), "We need to make sure that the board is more visible throughout the county."

But Anderson-Ellis disagrees.

"That's not the fix we actually need," she said. "People interested in our programming can find us. We have a waitlist for all our in-school teaching programs, a waitlist for the Virginia Conservation program. We give away thousands of tree seedlings in the East End and West End every spring. What we need is new ways of doing more with less. The challenge that we face is not P.R. problems."

Party confusion
When current Henricopolis board member Tom Herbert announced he would not seek re-election, Leake, Phillips and Yarbrough each decided to seek election to the board. All three are dues-paying members of the Democratic Party of Henrico, and the party began promoting them together for the three elected seats on sample ballots.

That surprised and upset a number of local Democrats, who couldn't understand why the party would have omitted Anderson-Ellis, a VCU professor and longtime environmental advocate in Varina who's been endorsed by a number of elected Democrats in the past, including Varina Supervisor Tyrone Nelson and U.S. Congressman Donald McEachin.

Some felt that the newcomers lacked sufficient experience to serve on the board and that several may have filed as a way to begin climbing the political ladder in search of more prominent positions (claims that each denied).

The sample ballots caught Anderson-Ellis off guard, too, until she learned that the party had recently changed its policy and would only endorse dues-paying members. She joined the party, and it now is promoting all four candidates for the three spots on sample ballots.

"There's no ill will, none at all," Anderson-Ellis said. "My only regret is . . . any time that is spent campaigning, I wish it was time spent on conservation."

Anderson-Ellis ran for a Henricopolis seat in 2011 with land preservation in mind, then once on the board helped established a land preservation committee that developed a partnership with the Capital Region Land Conservancy. The two agencies have combined to complete six conservation easements (through which landowners permanently remove a number of future development possibilities on the land) totaling about 530 acres.

"There's nothing that I could identify that is more important than that, perhaps with the exception of the educational work," Anderson-Ellis said. "We created the relationship and memorandum of understand with the county and have been educating people about what these mean and why they're beneficial."

Anderson-Ellis also is proud of the creation of Cornerstone Farm, a working farm that the board helped create at Fairfield Middle School, where students grow and sell food as a way to learn about the environment and the operation of a business. The effort helped address stormwater runoff in the area, too, while combating food insecurity in the community, according to county officials.

Beckley has spent two decades working in water monitoring roles, including in his current job as quality assurance coordinator for the Department of Environmental Quality. Since joining the Henricopolis board as an elected director in 2016, following four years as a non-voting associate director, he's helped created the HAWQS (Henrico Area Water Quality Samplers) program, through which volunteers test the water quality of various county waterways, then report the data to the county and DEQ. Earlier this year, a volunteer discovered a fuel spill in Jordan's Branch and alerted officials.

Beckley is passionate about helping citizens understand the issues caused by stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces, such as roads and sidewalks, and how prevalent they are.

"A lot of people think storm drains [in the streets] go to a treatment plant, but the water actually goes right into streams and carries off things like motor oil and weed killer with it," he said. As development increases, it takes less and less rain to create more powerful runoff, which feeds into streams and creeks with obvious consequences.

"I've seen a big change in the past 15 years in the Chickahominy River," he said. "There are a lot more trees falling down in the river. We're getting more flow from all the stormwater runoff from the development, and it just kind of overwhelms the river and erodes the trees."

Newcomers have new ideas
Leake, Phillips and Yarbrough took issue with the notion that they were trying to push anyone out. In addition to seeking greater visibility for the board, each pointed to a variety of other reasons for seeking office.

Yarbrough, who grew up in Richmond and lived for a number of years in the Outer Banks before moving to Henrico six years ago, was unfamiliar with the Henricopolis board until recently. But its mission is a natural fit for her, she said, recalling that she started an afterschool club in the Outer Banks to teach children about environmental topics and later worked to install renewable energy in various spots there. She also served on the planning board in Duck, N.C.

She wants to help educate children and adults here about the effects – good and bad – that they can have on the environment.

"I think we don't have a good understanding of how to recycle, of all the single-use plastics and their impact on our waterways," she said, referencing the 20 bags of litter 10 volunteers picked out of Jordan's Branch near Libbie Mill library last weekend as part of a stream cleanup led by Beckley. "We've got to help everybody in Henrico understand that we have to start taking care of our environment so we can take care of ourselves and our children and our children's children."

Yarbrough would like to provide more help to the one Henricopolis staff member who is solely responsible for all educational training for students and teachers in Henrico's public schools – and she'd like to expand education training to adults, perhaps with weekend seminars.

For Leake, whose father (Robert Johnson) was the Fairfield District representative on the Henrico Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s, it was a lifelong passion for environmental stewardship that drew her to the idea of running for a seat, she said.

"But I know that passion alone is not enough, so I have been actively increasing my understanding of the issues the board faces by attending their meetings and participating in events like the recent EnviroFair at the Varina Library and [last] weekend’s stream cleanup at Libbie Mill," she said. Leake also is working to become a certified Chesapeake Bay Steward. She's served as a PTA president in Henrico twice and helped lead the effort to rename Byrd Middle School as Quioccasin Middle.

Phillips was moved to run as a way to give back to his community through public service. His experience working in the General Assembly has helped him develop connections with elected and appointed officials statewide, including with members of the conservation community, he said.

"I don't have this grand, long-term political path that I'm on," he said. "I think it's just a desire to get involved, start here, focus on the job at hand and hopefully allow the board to grow and do greater things."

He said he'd work to help market the board in more effective ways, through local media sources and other avenues, so that citizens know about assistance programs for landowners and other educational programs.

"I think we just need to take a stronger approach to marketing these programs and making sure that a wider swath of the county is aware of the impact that fertilizing and watering their lawns can have on the environment as a whole."
Leake, Phillips and Yarbrough took issue with the notion that they were trying to push anyone out. In addition to seeking greater visibility for the board, each pointed to a variety of other reasons for seeking office.

Yarbrough, who grew up in Richmond and lived for a number of years in the Outer Banks before moving to Henrico six years ago, was unfamiliar with the Henricopolis board until recently. But its mission is a natural fit for her, she said, recalling that she started an afterschool club in the Outer Banks to teach children about environmental topics and later worked to install renewable energy in various spots there. She also served on the planning board in Duck, N.C.

She wants to help educate children and adults here about the effects – good and bad – that they can have on the environment.

"I think we don't have a good understanding of how to recycle, of all the single-use plastics and their impact on our waterways," she said, referencing the 20 bags of litter 10 volunteers picked out of Jordan's Branch near Libbie Mill library last weekend as part of a stream cleanup led by Beckley. "We've got to help everybody in Henrico understand that we have to start taking care of our environment so we can take care of ourselves and our children and our children's children."

Yarbrough would like to provide more help to the one Henricopolis staff member who is solely responsible for all educational training for students and teachers in Henrico's public schools – and she'd like to expand education training to adults, perhaps with weekend seminars.

For Leake, whose father (Robert Johnson) was the Fairfield District representative on the Henrico Board of Supervisors in the late 1970s, it was a lifelong passion for environmental stewardship that drew her to the idea of running for a seat, she said.

"But I know that passion alone is not enough, so I have been actively increasing my understanding of the issues the board faces by attending their meetings and participating in events like the recent EnviroFair at the Varina Library and [last] weekend’s stream cleanup at Libbie Mill," she said. Leake also is working to become a certified Chesapeake Bay Steward. She's served as a PTA president in Henrico twice and helped lead the effort to rename Byrd Middle School as Quioccasin Middle.

Phillips was moved to run as a way to give back to his community through public service. His experience working in the General Assembly has helped him develop connections with elected and appointed officials statewide, including with members of the conservation community, he said.

"I don't have this grand, long-term political path that I'm on," he said. "I think it's just a desire to get involved, start here, focus on the job at hand and hopefully allow the board to grow and do greater things."

He said he'd work to help market the board in more effective ways, through local media sources and other avenues, so that citizens know about assistance programs for landowners and other educational programs.

"I think we just need to take a stronger approach to marketing these programs and making sure that a wider swath of the county is aware of the impact that fertilizing and watering their lawns can have on the environment as a whole."