Running tomcat7 maven plugin with custom classpath using VirtualWebappLoader - tomcat7

Question

I have a maven war project, that I'm trying to run with tomcat7-maven-plugin. The problem I'm having is that the configuration for each of the environments is in custom folder (it's not inside /resources), as we have a different set of configuration files for each environments (local, test, uat or production).
I'm trying to figure out how can I run the plugin, while specifying a custom classpath that includes the local configuration directory. I've read on this improvement ticket that the way to do it, is to provide a context.xml with a Loader element, but if I do this, the webapp fails to start.
The configuration I have in the pom is
<plugin>
<groupId>org.apache.tomcat.maven</groupId>
<artifactId>tomcat7-maven-plugin</artifactId>
<version>2.0</version>
<configuration>
<path>/${project.build.finalName}</path>
<contextFile>${basedir}/src/env/local/context.xml</contextFile>
<contextReloadable>true</contextReloadable>
</configuration>
</plugin>
the context.xml file (the tomcat plugin does the filtering on this file automatically)
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Context>
<Loader className="org.apache.catalina.loader.VirtualWebappLoader"
virtualClasspath="${basedir}/src/env/local/" />
<JarScanner scanAllDirectories="true" />
</Context>
And the error I get is
[INFO] create webapp with contextPath: /webapp
Handler error
java.lang.ClassNotFoundException: org.apache.juli.FileHandler
at java.net.URLClassLoader$1.run(URLClassLoader.java:202)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at java.net.URLClassLoader.findClass(URLClassLoader.java:190)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:306)
at sun.misc.Launcher$AppClassLoader.loadClass(Launcher.java:301)
at java.lang.ClassLoader.loadClass(ClassLoader.java:247)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager.readConfiguration(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:521)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager.readConfiguration(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:464)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager$2.run(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:377)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager$2.run(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:373)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager.getClassLoaderInfo(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:373)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager.readConfiguration(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:452)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager$2.run(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:377)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager$2.run(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:373)
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager.getClassLoaderInfo(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:373)
at org.apache.juli.ClassLoaderLogManager.getLogger(ClassLoaderLogManager.java:223)
at java.util.logging.LogManager.demandLogger(LogManager.java:389)
at java.util.logging.Logger.getLogger(Logger.java:288)
at org.apache.juli.logging.DirectJDKLog.<init>(DirectJDKLog.java:71)
at org.apache.juli.logging.DirectJDKLog.getInstance(DirectJDKLog.java:196)
at org.apache.juli.logging.LogFactory.getInstance(LogFactory.java:170)
at org.apache.juli.logging.LogFactory.getLog(LogFactory.java:311)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase.getLogger(ContainerBase.java:452)
at org.apache.catalina.core.StandardContext.startInternal(StandardContext.java:5162)
at org.apache.catalina.util.LifecycleBase.start(LifecycleBase.java:150)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1559)
at org.apache.catalina.core.ContainerBase$StartChild.call(ContainerBase.java:1549)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask$Sync.innerRun(FutureTask.java:303)
at java.util.concurrent.FutureTask.run(FutureTask.java:138)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.runTask(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:886)
at java.util.concurrent.ThreadPoolExecutor$Worker.run(ThreadPoolExecutor.java:908)
at java.lang.Thread.run(Thread.java:662)
Does anyone have any suggestion about how to fix this or achieve the same in a different way?
I've been able to do this with the cargo plugin, but the tomcat plugin has some features that I like :).