By Brian Trompeter
A proposed replacement water tower in the Poplar Heights neighborhood in Falls Church has garnered much opposition from surrounding residents, who say the tower drastically would alter the neighborhood’s character.
Following a three-hour-long public hearing July 24, the Fairfax County Planning Commission delayed until Sept. 11 its decision on whether to recommend that the Board of Supervisors grant Fairfax Water a special exception to replace its Tower Street water tank with a new one.
The utility wants to build an approximately 1.25-million-gallon elevated water tank, which would have 78.5 percent more capacity than the current tank, between the southeast side of Tower Street and north side of the cul-de-sac at the end of Ronald Street.
The replacement tank would be about 100 feet tall, or just a smidgeon taller than the existing standpipe tank that would be removed. It would have piping, electrical instrumentation and water-quality-monitoring equipment inside a 40-foot-wide concrete pedestal located below the tank’s 80-foot-diameter steel bowl.
The facility would be operated remotely around the clock by Fairfax Water staff, who would access the site one weekday per week for maintenance under normal operating conditions.
The existing 700,000-gallon water tank, which is 94 feet tall and 37.5 feet wide, occupies a 6,400-square-foot parcel, but the proposed tank would need 40,692 square feet of space using three parcels and parts of two others, all of which are owned by the utility.
Four of the five parcels now are developed with single-family detached homes, two of which would need to be demolished under the proposal. The fifth parcel is where the existing tank is located.
Most of the surrounding parcels have single-family homes, but one nearby piece of land has a 323-foot-tall telecommunications tower and some associated support structures.
The Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals in March 1951 granted the Falls Church government a permit to build the current tank, which now is 72 years old.
In 2014, Fairfax Water acquired the Falls Church system.
The existing tank is “functionally deficient,” has reached the end of its useful life, with 60 percent of its water being unusable, said John McGranahan, an attorney representing Fairfax Water.
The current site has no transitional screening. Fairfax Water would plant a 50-foot-wide vegetated transitional-screening yard along the site’s north, east and west property lines and provide a nearly 17-foot-wide screening yard along the southern property line. The utility also would install a solid-wood barrier fence, between 6 and 7 feet tall, around the tank’s perimeter.
The utility hopes to finish design-and-permitting work by mid-2025, install water mains in 2025 and 2026, begin constructing the tank in 2026 and finish it the following year.
While a 2016 study recommended a 2.5-million-gallon tank at the site, Fairfax Water officials decided that would be too large for the surrounding community, McGranahan said. The proposed 1.25-million-gallon tank would meet the utility’s minimum needs, which include 700,000 gallons for daily water service and 540,000 gallons for fires and emergency purposes, he said.
Commission member Mary Cortina (Braddock District) suggested the number of dwellings that would need to be removed for the project seemed “excessive.” McGranahan said Fairfax Water bought the four surrounding properties to provide sufficient buffering for neighbors. The utility will sell two of those parcels – with the future owners fully cognizant of the new tank – when the project is done, he said.
Neighbors who spoke at the hearing uniformly opposed the new tower.
Carmen Smith, who resides across the street from the site, said the new tower would “hover over our neighborhood like a giant spaceship.”
Matt Davey, who has lived on Tower Street since 2000, said a larger tower might cast massive shadows on solar panels that could be installed on residents’ roofs.
Neighbor Julie Kasten said the replacement tower would alter the neighborhood dramatically by demolishing homes and removing mature trees.
“This is not repurposing, as you’ve been hearing,” she told the commission. “It’s destroying.”
