[This is the third in a series of articles that were front-paged at ePluribus Media as well as appearing here. See Part I and Part II.]
First it was "just one little stream" in Fairfax County Virginia that was stripped of the buffers that shielded it from the contaminated run-off identified by scientists as the main reason for record "dead zones" this year in the Chesapeake Bay. Now there are two more, and the stage is set for yet another.
One of the arguments we ran into in connection with protesting the stripping of environmental protection from a Chespeake Bay tributary on the Wedderburn property in Fairfax County was that this was "just one little stream." Specifically, the cancellation of the construction buffer around the stream involved "just a few hundred feet" at the headwaters of the stream, and a constituted a special case that County staff felt sure would be "a rare occurrence" Surely we were exaggerating in claiming that County policies allowing this stream to be removed from protected status would have any kind of effect on the Chesapeake Bay.
Well, it's not just one little stream....
Two weeks ago we heard about a similar case in Fairfax, also involving a developer who is finding the 100 foot construction buffers around protected streams to be inconvenient. The property involved lies right along Scott's Run, already on VDEQ's List of Waters of Concern, due to overall site conditions rated as "poor" and "very poor" and which in the area at issue parallels the Beltway around Washington D.C. See watershed map. In fact, the bulk of the property is unbuildable, lying within the main Scott's Run RPA and a wide 100-year flood plain (shown on the left in this map, between the two protruding tributaries and their RPAs). A closer view of the main parcel is here. But that hasn't stopped four different developers from trying over the past five years to find a way to route the development gravy train right through this sensitive area.
The latest effort involves an incredible gerrymandering of lots in order to meet local zoning requirements for road frontage, combining unbuildable parcels along the stream and the Beltway with small upland parcels long distances away, but connected via the thinnest of paths. Here is a drawing. As you look at this drawing, understand that each of the buildable lots numbered 7-12 in the northeast corner (near the "Site" legend) is linked by a minuscule umbilical cord of land tracking along the northern boundary of the main parcel to another plot in the unbuildable RPA section next to the stream and the Beltway.
This contorted design allows the developer to meet the one-acre per house zoning requirement, and - as of August 15th - the County Zoning Administrator has blessed the gross lot distortions as satisfying road frontage requirements, despite the fact that the Beltway is of course completely inaccessible from the "back forty."
While these actions won't change the Scott's Run RPA boundaries or facially allow any degradation of the stream, carving up the stream valley RPA among seventeen different home owners - some of whom clearly won't understand their obligations to protect sensitive stream buffers - will certainly end up compromising this stream's protection. Adding in a drainage ditch and a stormwater drainage pit to route run-off from the new "estates" straight to Scott's Run will also exacerbate the considerable silt problems already present.
But this isn't the actual stream story. This is simply important background for the real story, below, as it shows the incredible lengths to which developers will go - and to which Fairfax County will go to accommodate them - in order to cash-in on the incredible housing market here in verdant Virginia.
Now the stage is set for the attack on the streams feeding into Scott's Run.
The developer, The Williamson Group, has retained a consulting firm, Wetland Studies and Solutions, Inc., to conduct "field work" on the parcels. WSSI, incidentally, is the same consulting firm that performed the "eye-ball" examination of surface-water flow in the Wedderburn stream which resulted in that stream's exit from protected status this summer. On June 27, 2005, WSSI made an application to the County to declassify a small tributary running across a corner of the Williamson Group property and feeding into Scott's Run. The basis for this? -- "we observed that the stream was dry at the time of our study."
On July 11th, the County Board of Supervisors in connection with the Wedderburn stream blessed the use of such visual observations to trump original stream classifications based on a scientifically-robust 26-factor Protocol (See Item 80 in the above summary report and County memoranda here). What is particularly ironic is that visual evidence of stream flow is one - but just one - of the twenty-six factors. Thus, if a stream appears to be dry when the Protocol is originally run, that won't stop a stream from qualifying as perennial if it scores high enough on the other twenty-five factors, which include assessments of soils, hydrology and biological indicators. But the very next day, another observation of the same lack of visually apparent moving water could result in the stream's declassification, without regard to the other twenty-five factors. This is now the law in Faifax County.
Next week, on August 24th, the County is sending staff out to look at this little Scott's Run tributary with the developer's consultant - but that is the problem, they are just going to "look" at it. Moreover, they won't allow members of the surrounding (and very concerned) community to accompany them. Once the stream is declassified, as it very likely will be (after all, this is August, when all sorts of small streams temporarily lose surface flow), the big "pregnant belly" on the Scott's Run RPA that currently extends around this tributary will be shaved off, instantly and permanently, with no right of appeal by the public. And that means... oh yippee ... more buildable space for the developer!
But the story doesn't stop there. On July 22, 2005, The Williamson Group sent letters to home-owners to the north of the property to be developed, whose homes back up to yet another RPA on yet another tributary to Scott's Run, seeking access "to determine if an RPA does exist." If this stream upon further inspection appears dry to the eye, then the RPA will cease to exist at the stroke of a pen and, yes, there will then be yet more buildable space for the developer. Late August is clearly "open-season" on streams in Fairfax.
So, by the end of the summer, there may be two more "little streams" besides Wedderburn whose buffers will be stripped away to accommodate development. Will this have any sort of demonstrable effect on water quality in the Accotink watershed and the Chesapeake Bay? No, but what happens when this little trinity of precedents opens the floodgates (excuse the bad pun) for further RPA erasures?
Last week I attended a meeting of a "Special Study Task Force" set up by our County Supervisors to address the possible "re-planning" of an area along the corridor between Tysons Corner and Dulles International Airport to increase density in a location where developers wants to build 1720 homes. And, guess what, there is a big fat RPA on the property (emanating down from top-right on map). The artist's sketches exhibited by the developer at the meeting showed this area being avoided for the most part, but what happens if the "up-planning" goes forward and the developer then seeks to eliminate the RPA to take advantage of some of that land for yet more construction? After all, by then there will be at least three precedents for this sort of thing. How many streams does it take to make a trend? And what does such a trend mean for the Chesapeake Bay? Just what will those "dead zones" look like in the years to come?