A key commuter road in McLean could be closed for days after getting seriously damaged by a water main break this morning (Friday).
Police officers responded to Kirby Road around 4:45 a.m., shutting down both lanes between Sugarstone Court and Claiborne Drive. A video shared by the Fairfax County Police Department shows water gushing up onto the asphalt roadway, buckling what appears to be the southbound lane.
Fairfax Water says it received reports from customers around 1400 Kirby Road that they had lost water service. A total of 18 homes have been affected, according to public information officer Jesse Aranda.
“This outage has been identified as a water main break and our crews and technicians are working on resolving the break as soon as possible,” the utility company said in an alert on its website. “We ask that affected customers watch social media and our main website to receive the latest updates regarding the progress of the main break repair.”
The “extensive damage” to Kirby Road “is estimated to take several days to repair,” the FCPD said, advising drivers to “plan accordingly” and avoid the area.
Update: The water main break caused extensive damage to the road which is estimated to take several days to repair. Please plan accordingly and continue to avoid the area. #FCPD pic.twitter.com/Rdnsg09vft
— Fairfax County Police (@FairfaxCountyPD) October 20, 2023
Aranda didn’t have an estimate for how long the repairs will take, but he said Fairfax Water teams are “going in right now” to restore service to the affected homes.
‘We’re going to try to take care of it as soon as possible,” Aranda told FFXnow, noting that the utility is taking into account that Kirby Road is heavily used by commuters.
While the exact cause of this rupture isn’t known yet, water main breaks are usually the result of wear and tear on aging pipes, Aranda says. Per Fairfax Water, freezing or severe weather, soil conditions, ground movement and construction can also be contributing factors.
He says Fairfax Water is working to upgrade its pipes as they get older, but with more than 4,000 miles of main in the county, it’s a long process. The company’s new pipes are made out of ductile iron, a stronger and more durable material.
“It’s something we work on over time,” Aranda said. “And then, we replace it with something…that’s going to last a very long time.”
Construction is about to ramp up on Dominion Energy’s undergrounding of a power line near the Spring Hill Metro station in Tysons.
The project will require an extended closure of the entire Vesper Trail from Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) to Vesper Street at Higdon Drive, starting Nov. 1, the utility company recently told residents in the area.
Expected to last until February 2024, the closure is needed so crews can work within the trail path, Dominion Energy said, noting that signs alerting users to the closure will be placed at the trail.
“We appreciate your patience and understanding as we work in your neighborhood,” Dominion said in a postcard sent to residents. “We are committed to completing this work safely and expeditiously to minimize disruptions to the Vesper Trail and your community.”
Preliminary construction activities on the Spring Hill project began this spring, necessitating a roughly five-day trail closure in late April as crews installed a manhole.
To increase the capacity of its power grid as Tysons continues to grow, Dominion is moving part of an existing, overhead electric transmission line underground. The 230-kilovolt line will run a half-mile from a Tyco Road substation to a transition pole near a new substation around the Vesper Trail’s midpoint.
Construction on the new, 75-foot-tall substation will begin after crews finish undergrounding the power line. The overall project is currently on track to be complete and in service by the end of 2025, according to Dominion spokesperson Peggy Fox.
Dominion says the project will “generally” serve its customers south of Leesburg Pike and outside of the Capital Beltway (I-495).
Graphic via Dominion Energy
The Pimmit Hills neighborhood has officially reached the “let’s put on a show” stage of its battle against a planned Washington Gas pipeline.
Faced with escalating legal fees, residents have banded together to stage a “Protect Pimmit Hills Hoedown” benefit concert from 5-7 p.m. on Saturday (June 3) as a fundraiser for four of their neighbors who were sued by the utility company.
The concert will be held at Pimmit Barn (1845 Cherri Drive) with “limited” food available for sale from the food truck, The Big Cheese. Providing the music will be the Pimmit Hillbillies, a band that neighborhood residents formed for this occasion.
“We hope this concert helps reinforce our community spirit by getting neighbors out and meeting each other to join fight this project that affects us all,” resident guitarist Tom Gillespie said. “We will bond over great tunes, grilled cheese sandwiches, and chocolate chip cookies while we talk about our ongoing pipeline battle.”
Filed by Washington Gas on March 3, 2022, the lawsuit challenges a Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals ruling that a special exception permit and 2232 review are required for the natural gas pipeline, the last phase of the Strip 1 Tysons project to upgrade about five miles of pipe from Tyco Road to Pimmit Drive.
A bench trial in Fairfax County Circuit Court had been scheduled for April 25 and 26, but the judge postponed it to the first week of September after the Virginia Supreme Court voided the zoning ordinance that guided the BZA’s decision, according to Christina Chen Zinner, one of the Pimmit Hills residents involved in the case.
Though the ordinance known as zMOD was readopted on May 9, it remains unclear how the Supreme Court’s ruling affected zoning decisions made during the two years when the code was initially in effect.
Because of the trial delay, Zinner and her fellow defendants shared earlier this month that they need to raise an additional $20,000 to cover their legal costs, which have climbed to $45,000. With the help of a recent neighborhood pizza party, they’ve made progress on that goal, raising $38,700 through Gofundme.
The Pimmit Hillbillies hope to finish the job. The band emerged from a virtual meeting, where residents brainstormed fundraising ideas.
“Knowing that I like to sing and play guitar, and compose my own songs, [my wife Stephanie] challenged me during the meeting to compose a protest song to help us promote our Gofundme drive,” Gillespie recalled. “I feel so passionate about fighting this pipeline that the lyrics and notes just flowed out of me.” Read More
(Updated at 12:15 a.m. on 4/27/2023) Preliminary construction activities will kick into gear this weekend on a long-gestating project to move part of an electric transmission line underground in the Spring Hill area of Tysons.
Starting this Friday (April 28) evening, Dominion Energy will close the Vesper Trail from Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) to Vesper Street so its crews can install a manhole needed for the project, spokesperson Peggy Fox said. The trail closure will last until Tuesday (May 2).
“This closure is necessary to keep community members safe while we install a manhole,” Fox told FFXnow.
Replacing an existing above-ground line, the new 230-kilovolt transmission line will span approximately half a mile from Dominion’s Tyco Road substation to the vicinity of a planned Spring Hill substation just southwest of Leesburg Pike and Spring Hill Road.
An underground line will be safer and less visually obtrusive, while helping Tysons meet the demand for electricity as the area continues to develop, Dominion has said. Removal of the existing overhead line will also “facilitate” construction on The View, a mixed-use development planned next to the Spring Hill Metro station, according to documents filed with the State Corporation Commission.
The project was endorsed by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors in March 2020 and approved by the SCC on June 24, 2021.
Dominion notified residents in the area on April 14 that construction on the power line would begin this month, noting that the county has waived noise restrictions for the project until Oct. 31 since some work will occur at night.
“To limit traffic impacts on major roadways, particularly Leesburg Pike, construction will be performed at night,” the utility company said. “This allows our crews to obtain necessary lane closures to complete the work safely and efficiently.”
Split into five phases, the project includes the installation of two manholes, which will occur throughout the day and night so they can be completed “as expeditiously as possible.”
“There will be more impacts to the trail in fall 2023 when we begin installing the underground line in this area, and outreach will take place prior,” Fox said by email. “No impacts to electric service are anticipated as a result of this work.”
Including the addition of a transition pole at the end of the new line and removal of the old overhead line, the project is expected to finish in late 2024. At that point, Dominion says it will begin construction on the Spring Hill substation, which will occupy a 1-acre site near Raglan Road Park.
The new substation will support customers south of Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) and outside of I-495, according to Dominion.
Cheers went up after the Fairfax County Board of Zoning Appeals (BZA) ruled last year that a natural gas pipeline planned through the residential neighborhood of Pimmit Hills will need to be reviewed and approved by the county.
However, even when proposing that decision on Feb. 2, 2022 after a multi-day public hearing, BZA Vice Chairman James Hart acknowedged that the case over the sixth phase of Washington Gas’ Strip 1 Tysons project was likely headed to court.
That court date will arrive this month. The utility company’s lawsuit seeking to vacate the board’s decision will go before a Fairfax County Circuit Court judge for a trial on April 25 and 26, spurring Pimmit Hills residents to rally together once again in opposition to the pipeline.
“We’re concerned citizens, you know. It’s our neighborhoods, our streets, our children, our playgrounds, our schools,” said Kurt Iselt, one of four residents named as defendants in the lawsuit after they brought the case to the BZA.
The challenged pipeline segment is the last stage of a push by Washington Gas to upgrade its natural gas infrastructure in the Tysons area, replacing a 14-inch-wide line with a 2-feet-wide, high-pressure one.
In the works since 2012, the overall project will span approximately five miles from Tyco Road to a regulator station at the Pimmit Drive and Route 7 (Leesburg Pike) intersection.
Phase six will be routed from Peabody Drive to Cherri Drive and Pimmit Drive to Route 7 — right through the heart of Pimmit Hills. Washington Gas had considered an alternate route along Magarity Road and Route 7 but said construction would take longer and bring more disruptions.
After initially denying it twice, the Virginia Department of Transportation approved a permit for the project in 2019, despite opposition from residents and local and state politicians representing the area.
At the request of Islet and fellow residents Christina Chen Zinner, Sarah Ellis and Lillian Whitesell, a county zoning administrator reviewed the project and decided it qualified as a “light utility facility” exempt from local regulation per the county’s zoning ordinance (page 241), which hadn’t yet been struck down.
The lawsuit by Washington Gas argues that the BZA lacked the authority to partially overturn the zoning administrator’s determination and require the project to obtain a special exception permit and undergo a 2232 review.
“Phase 6 is part of [the] Petitioner’s ‘ordinary distribution system’ that delivers natural gas to its customers and located in a VDOT right-of-way. Accordingly, Phase 6 is exempt from the zoning ordinance,” the petition filed on March 3, 2022 states, asserting that the BZA’s decision violated “decades of precedent” and state law. Read More
(Updated at 3:45 p.m. on 1/5/2023) The search is still on for a new site to host a cell tower in McLean that has to be removed to make room for the widening Capital Beltway.
The monopole, which is owned by American Cell Towers and supports AT&T and T-Mobile service, was officially decommissioned on Dec. 9, according to the Virginia Department of Transportation.
“Cell providers are working to minimize any potential impacts to existing service, and VDOT is working with the project’s design-build contractor to facilitate a relocated cell tower as soon as possible,” the department told FFXnow.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors expressed concern at a Sept. 30 transportation committee meeting that losing the tower may cause wireless service disruptions, something that AT&T admitted was a possibility.
Fears of disruptions were particularly high after the removal of a cell facility at Lake Anne in Reston resulted in slow, spotty service for residents in that area over the summer, including for 911 calls.
Fortunately, those anticipated issues don’t seem to have come to fruition. Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust’s office, which represents McLean, says it hasn’t gotten any emails from constituents about the decommissioned cell tower, as of Dec. 20.
VDOT had hoped to see the tower relocated by Dec. 31 — an extension from the original deadline of Sept. 30 — but a new location still hasn’t been identified. VDOT didn’t respond by press time when asked if the deadline got extended again.
“[There’s] no timeline yet,” Jane Edmondson, Foust’s chief of staff, said by email. “The County has not yet received an application for a new location.”
Located by the Old Dominion Drive bridge, the 135-foot-tall monopole needs to be moved to make room for the I-495 Northern Extension (495 NEXT) project, which is adding about three miles of toll lanes on the Beltway from the Dulles Toll Road in Tysons to the George Washington Memorial Parkway in McLean.
The project will also replace the Old Dominion bridge, which has one lane each for eastbound and westbound traffic. The new bridge will have two lanes and a 14-foot-wide shared-use path on the south side. (Correction: This article initially said two lanes would be added on the bridge in each direction.)
While touted as necessary to mitigate traffic congestion, 495 NEXT has been criticized by some McLean residents as harmful to their neighborhoods and the environment.
Construction began in mid-2022 and is expected to continue into 2026, with the new express lanes opening in 2025.
Photo via Google Maps
A cell tower by the Capital Beltway in McLean must be removed before the end of this year to make way for the road’s widening, leaving Fairfax County and state transportation leaders scrambling to prevent future service disruptions.
The 135-foot-tall monopole stands right next to I-495 at the Old Dominion Drive bridge, which will be replaced by a new two-lane bridge with a shared-use path as part of the Virginia Department of Transportation’s I-495 Northern Extension (495 NEXT) project.
VDOT determined that the tower needs to be relocated “well over a year ago,” but no progress has been made to identify a temporary or permanent new site, Megaprojects Director Susan Shaw told the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors on Friday (Sept. 30).
“The providers to date have said that there is no temporary location that’s acceptable to them,” she said. “…We’re all working very hard to try to resolve it, and I think we’ve tried to provide a lot of ideas for where they might find acceptable locations on VDOT right of way, but again, we’re not experts. It’s very specific technically in terms of what would work for them and maintaining the kind of service that they have.”
Construction on 495 NEXT is underway, but work hasn’t started yet on the Old Dominion bridge.
American Cell Towers, which owns the monopole, initially faced a Sept. 30 deadline for the removal, but that has been extended to Dec. 31. The tower has to be decommissioned in November so that the utilities can be taken off and the structure dismantled, according to Shaw.
In conversations with AT&T and T-Mobile, the providers that use the pole, VDOT was told that service along the Beltway won’t be affected, but service for the surrounding communities “would be degraded,” particularly during periods of peak demand, Shaw said.
AT&T confirmed that some of its customers “may experience intermittent wireless service disruptions near Old Dominion Drive and the Capital Beltway.”
“We, like other carriers, are being forced to remove our antennas so that they can widen the Beltway,” an AT&T spokesperson said. “We apologize for the inconvenience, and we are working with state and Fairfax County officials to identify an alternative site for our equipment. In the meantime, we have optimized other nearby sites to try and extend coverage until this is resolved.”
The provider added that people who experience disruptions can utilize its Wi-Fi Calling service instead.
While the availability of other cell carriers in the area suggests 911 calls won’t be affected, Shaw said the providers told VDOT they “couldn’t guarantee” that there would be no impact. American Towers didn’t immediately respond to FFXnow’s requests for comment. Read More
A sidewalk is coming to Vienna’s Alma Street SE, whether the residents there want it or not.
Construction to add about 1,500 linear feet of concrete, curb and gutter, driveway aprons, and ramps on the northwest side between Follin Lane and Delano Drive will begin by the end of this week, the Town of Vienna shared on Monday (Aug. 8).
One of many sidewalks in the works as part of Vienna’s Robinson Trust Sidewalk Initiative, the Alma Street project drew some particularly strong opposition from residents along the road, who petitioned against the proposal as it moved through the engineering and design process last year.
The town maintains that the sidewalk is needed for older residents, people with mobility challenges, and anyone else who doesn’t want to walk in the roadway or might benefit from the accompanying ramp, crosswalk and other accessibility improvements.
“The Town believes that sidewalks are an important amenity for residents of a street — and for the community at large,” Department of Public Works Engineer Robert Froh said in an email. “Sidewalks promote good health and pedestrian safety, connect individuals and destinations in the community, support Town businesses and sustainability goals, and enhance the ‘greater good’ of the community — today and in the future.”
Alert! By the end of this week, sidewalk construction is expected to begin on Alma Street SE, from Follin Lane to Delano Drive, as part of the Robinson Trust Sidewalk Initiative. Curb and gutter, driveway aprons, and handicap ramps will also be installed. Please use caution. pic.twitter.com/sVISceoJdK
— Town of Vienna, VA (@TownofViennaVA) August 8, 2022
A flier dated Aug. 4 that a resident shared with FFXnow said construction would take about three weeks, depending on weather. It will require relocations of water meters for five houses, and homeowners were told to move sprinkler systems and any personal belongings out of the right-of-way.
Street also targeted for Dominion undergrounding project
The resident says they learned earlier this week that Dominion Energy will underground its electric lines, which are on the same side of Alma Street as the incoming sidewalk, leading them to question the location and timing of construction.
Dominion Energy confirmed it has a project for Alma Street SE under its Strategic Underground Program, which focuses on moving its “most outage-prone overhead power lines” underground. Read More
Cellular service issues continue to plague residents in the Lake Anne area of Reston, but a recently added, temporary truck will at least ensure AT&T customers can call 911.
A spokesperson for AT&T said that since Friday (July 29) — when information about the outage was first released — the company has been trying to restore an antenna in the area.
AT&T says it is working on placing a temporary cellular support truck in the Lake Anne area to help give customers a boost and improve service until the issue is resolved.
“We have deployed temporary emergency coverage for first responders, and are working as quickly as possible to restore full service in the area. We sincerely apologize for this inconvenience,” an AT&T spokesperson told FFXnow.
The company did not provide information on when the issue was first identified and what efforts have been made to restore the site.
However, Fairfax County said in a statement that it worked with the telecommunications company “to expedite placement of a cellular support vehicle” that was put in place Saturday morning (July 30).
“The AT&T cellular support vehicle allows for residents to call 9-1-1 and provides cellular coverage for public safety,” county spokesperson Tony Castrilli said. “The full restoration for AT&T customers in Lake Anne is scheduled to be completed in two weeks.”
The problem comes after Verizon and other cell carriers removed a cell phone communications facility at the rooftop of Lake Anne Fellowship House, which is set to be demolished next year.
Fairfax County is encouraging residents to use a landline or make calls through the WiFi on devices where that’s an option.
A spokesperson for Verizon said the company is actively looking for a replacement site. Its original plans fell earlier this year. Since then, the company says that it has been looking for another site but with no success.
A project to underground Richmond Highway utilities may be buried due to cost, construction delays, and the risk it poses to federal funding for other projects happening along the corridor.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors weighed the pros and cons of undergrounding utilities along the highway, also known as Route 1, at an economic initiatives committee meeting on Tuesday (July 26).
Undergrounding utilities is a fairly common (and supported) practice, but the Route 1 proposal is complicated by two other major infrastructure projects in the corridor: the highway widening and the build-out of a bus rapid transit (BRT) service.
While the board didn’t take any definitive action on Tuesday, it was clear that a number of committee members, including Chairman Jeff McKay, were leaning towards scrapping the project altogether.
“It feels a little bit like ‘why wouldn’t we do it?’ if you just look at it on the surface, but as we dug into it today quite a bit…it makes it a little bit clearer how unclear it is,” Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said.
In a presentation, staff said the county would be solely responsible for financing any undergrounding, with no assistance from the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) or the Federal Transit Authority (FTA).
Undergrounding utilities could also result in a two-year delay for the Route 1 widening and BRT projects, tacking on an extra year each for design work and construction. That would push the completion date for the widening to 2031 and for the BRT to 2032.
Utility undergrounding would also increase the cost of the two projects by at least $264 million, requiring an additional $136 million for the actual construction and potentially another $128 million to account for inflation during the two-year delay.
To raise the needed funds, county staff proposed working with the General Assembly to implement a utility “surcharge.” A $1 per month surcharge for residents and a 2.5% surcharge on commercial properties that could reach a maximum of 6.67% would bring in $40 million in revenue annually.
However, a surcharge would require an agreement with utility companies, mainly Dominion Energy, Verizon, Cox, and NOVEC. Even if an agreement is reached, it could take 12 to 18 months for the companies to sign off through their own “internal legal review” processes, delaying the undergrounding even more.
According to staff, undergrounding utilities could also result in the loss of $334 million in federal funding that the FTA is providing for the BRT project. Read More
