The Northern Virginia Regional Park Authority (NOVA Parks) is turning up the pressure on Dominion Energy to end widespread tree clearings along the Washington & Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail.
At the regional agency’s request, the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors voted 9-0 to approve a resolution on Tuesday (March 18) urging Dominion to halt reported plans to cut down any tree along the 45-mile-long trail that might someday interfere with its overhead power lines.
The D.C. region’s upcoming cherry-blossom season is expected to give Metro another boost as it continues a post-Covid rebound.
“If all goes to plan, we’re hoping for our first combined one-million-trip day since the onset of the pandemic,” Paul Smedberg, first vice president of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), said on Thursday (March 6).
Some tree trimmings and removals were expected when Dominion Energy initated a project last year to replace electrical lines in the Vienna section of the Washington and Old Dominion (W&OD) Trail, but the extent of the clearings has taken local residents, elected officials and even the agency that owns the trail by surprise.
Starting in November, the utility began cutting down trees and vegetation along a 4-mile stretch of the trail from Vienna to Dunn Loring at a much more “aggressive” scale than it has in the past, according to Paul Gilbert, executive director of the Northern Virginia Regional Parks Authority (NOVA Parks).
D.C.’s National Cherry Blossom Festival recently branched out to Reston with the planting of six Yoshino cherry trees at South Lakes High School.
Representatives of the festival and the Japanese airline All-Nippon Airways (ANA), which sponsored the trees, joined school officials and students on Nov. 13 for a ceremony to celebrate the plantings, which had taken place on Oct. 23.
Multiple trees have been erroneously cut down along a ramp from Wiehle Avenue to the Dulles Toll Road in Reston, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority says.
Kevin Lerner, who works in a Reston Station office building, says he noticed a team of contractors starting to remove trees along the entrance ramp to the westbound toll road lanes around 10 a.m. on Oct. 31. By 1 p.m., over half of the tree stand had been cut down.
While the environment is generally a priority for Fairfax County, issues related to trees and invasive plants appear likely to take a backseat to other concerns when local elected officials lobby their state counterparts in the General Assembly next year.
At its legislative committee meeting on Tuesday (Oct. 15), the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors reviewed a number of proposals for promoting tree conservation and addressing invasive species from the Fairfax County Tree Commission and Environmental Quality Advisory Council (EQAC).
Fairfax County has updated its Chesapeake Bay Preservation Ordinance to reinforce requirements for developers along the Potomac River and its tributaries to protect older trees and guard against rising sea levels.
However, even as they voted unanimously yesterday (Tuesday) to amend regulations related to the ordinance, Fairfax County supervisors expressed some frustration with a lack of clarity in the guidance handed down by Virginia’s State Water Control Board (SWCB).
Bad news for anyone who has already gotten roots in the ground: Fairfax County’s window for planting trees has shifted back following a record-hot summer.
Forest Conservation (FCON) staff in the county’s Department of Land Development Services (LDS) updated its policy this spring to designate Oct. 1 through May 31 as the recommended time frame for planting trees, pushing back the previous start date of Sept. 1 and extending it through the winter.
A forest in Fairfax Station is set to receive some laurels.
The five-acre St. Peter’s in the Woods Episcopal Church Sanctuary Forest (5911 Fairview Woods Drive) will be designated as a community forest by the Old-Growth Forest Network (OGFN) on Sept. 14.
Going forward, developers in the Town of Vienna will be required to save trees, not just replace them.
After years of study and discussion, the Vienna Town Council voted on April 29 to adopt a new tree conservation ordinance and create an advocacy committee in a bid to preserve and expand the town’s declining canopy.
