Fox Mill Road will be closed at the beginning of next month to allow for a pipe replacement.

Virginia Department of Transportation crews are replacing a drainage pipe, prompting the closure between Pinecrest Road and John Milton Drive in Herndon on Monday, April 1 from 9 a.m. to 2:30 p.m.

Individuals who need to access properties along Fox Mill Road will still have access, but drivers will not be allowed to go beyond the point where the pipe is being replaced, which will be located roughly at 2516 Fox Mill Road near Pinecrest Road.

“Through traffic will be detoured via Pinecrest Road, Viking Drive (Route 5340) and John Milton Drive back to Fox Mill Road. Drivers are asked to follow posted detour signs,” VDOT said in a press release.

(Updated at 3:30 p.m. on 3/29/2024) Clogged-up pipes will force Scott’s Run Nature Preserve to close for more than a month, starting later this week.

Contractors will begin work on the “emergency project” to clear and repair wastewater pipes in the McLean park this Thursday (March 28), the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services recently announced.

The 385-acre park at 7400 Georgetown Pike will be closed throughout the project’s first phase, which is expected to take about six weeks and will remove an estimated 80 tons of sediment from the pipes, according to DPWES.

Also known as siphons, the pipes carry wastewater from McLean across the Potomac River and into Maryland, connecting to a DC Water interceptor through Carderock National Park.

“During a recent inspection two of the three pipes at the wastewater siphon were found to be non-operational,” DPWES said in a news release. “An emergency repair is necessary, as there is no reasonable bypass alternative if the last pipe fails, which would mean millions of gallons of sewage per day going into the Potomac.”

According to the project page, the park needs to close during the project so construction crews and equipment can access the trails without creating conflicts for visitors or pushing pedestrians off-trail, which would damage the natural environment.

Work will take place Monday through Saturday from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., depending on the weather. The closure will apply to all trails and the east and west parking lots.

In addition to removing sediment, which will be transported out of Scott’s Run daily by truck, the project will involve replacing valves and cleaning the siphon barrels. The siphon barrel cleaning will be done in Carderock National Park.

A second phase of work focused on maintenance repairs is expected later, requiring another park closure, but the exact timing will be determined after “additional investigations are made during the cleaning process,” DPWES said.

In total, the work at Scott’s Run is expected to take three months, though the overall project has an anticipated timeline of six to nine months.

DPWES says no other properties should be affected by the project, and traffic into and out of the Scott’s Run parking lot will be “limited” after the contractors arrive Thursday morning.

“Materials and construction equipment for the project will be safely stored onsite,” the project page says. “Additionally, Fairfax County McLean District Police have been notified of the project and will be monitoring traffic patterns in the area to ensure safety of residents and commuters.”

The county says it’s identifying “methods to optimize and enhance its inspection and cleaning procedures to reduce the likelihood” that an emergency response of this level will be needed in the future.

Correction: DPWES says 80 tons of sediment are being removed from the Scott’s Run pipes, not 80,000 tons as first reported.

A water tank erected in Idylwood around the time of the Korean War is on its last legs, Fairfax Water says.

The water authority is seeking to replace the 71-year-old Poplar Heights tank with a bigger, elevated tank that will be able to hold approximately 1.25 million gallons of water, according to an application submitted in December to Fairfax County’s planning department.

“The Elevated Tank is required to provide a more consistent level of water service within the existing distribution system and will improve system reliability, water quality and water flow and pressure for many customers in Fairfax County and Falls Church,” Fairfax Water’s statement of justification for the application says.

Fairfax Water took control of the existing 700,000-gallon tank at 7407 Tower Street in 2014 when it acquired Falls Church City’s water system. The facility was built in 1952, predating the creation of the neighborhood’s civic association.

The authority says it “identified multiple system deficiencies” in areas previously served by Falls Church, including in the Poplar Heights Pressure Zone west of the city. The zone extends from Shreve Road to Graham Road Elementary School.

Issues with the Poplar Heights tank included low water service pressures, insufficient storage volume and “water quality concerns associated with the existing standpipe water tank.”

To set the stage for a replacement, Fairfax Water spent five years buying the single-family residential lots around the tank. Two of the four houses will be demolished, along with the existing tank, as part of the project.

According to the application, the new, elevated water tank will be approximately 100 feet tall — roughly the same height as the current tank. The site will have no public access, but Fairfax Water staff will visit weekly to conduct maintenance and repairs between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. Monday through Friday.

The application says “several of the existing mature trees” on the 0.9-acre property will be preserved to screen the tank from other residences, supplemented by new deciduous and evergreen trees and shrubs and a 7-foot-tall fence around the perimeter.

In addition to replacing and upgrading the water tank, Fairfax Water plans to install new transmission water mains along neighboring streets to connect the facility to the existing system, according to the project page.

After holding public outreach meetings on the project last year, the authority doesn’t anticipate starting construction on the tank until the second quarter of 2025.

The application for a special exception and 2232 review — which determines whether a public facility is compatible with the proposed site — is currently being reviewed for acceptance by county staff.

The next wastewater pump station to serve Tysons West will be able to handle 25 times as much water as its predecessor.

That added capacity will provide critical support for an area expected to add more than 10,000 new residents by the end of this decade, according to Fairfax County staff and the planning commission, which unanimously approved a plan last Wednesday (Oct. 25) to build a new station at 8608 Leesburg Pike.

“The addition to the public infrastructure must be viewed as essential,” Providence District Commissioner Phil Niedzielski-Eichner, who represents most of Tysons, said. “Without it, development in Tysons would end, and the risk of overflows and backups for the broader community will grow.”

Replacing the existing Tysons Dodge Wastewater Pump Station on the same site, the new facility will consist of an 11,200-square-foot pump station and a 2,500-square-foot generator building, county planning and public works staff told the commission.

With four pumps, including one as a backup, and a storage tank that can hold up to 12,000 gallons of diesel fuel to support the generator, the station will have the capacity for 25 million gallons of water per day — a significant boost from the 1 million gallons that the current station can process.

The facility will occupy just 1.5 acres on the 3-acre site, which includes the adjacent parcel at 8608 Leesburg Pike. Tysons Self Storage, the previous occupant, was razed after the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors bought the property for $14.1 million in 2021, according to county property records.

The remainder of the site will be left undeveloped for now, but the county intends to utilize it “for another potential public facility for the future,” according to Mohamed Ali with the Department of Planning and Development.

“This project is probably our highest priority [capital] project right now,” Department of Public Works and Environmental Services engineer Tom Grala said. “The reason for its high priority is both capacity related to Tysons development and also the time when that capacity is needed.”

He noted that the facility will be designed to limit greenhouse gas emissions, odors and its visibility from the road, including with an enclosure for the generator and evergreen vegetation along the north and south property line.

“Since there will be other facilities nearby, that’s going to be very important,” Dranesville District Commissioner John Ulfelder said of controlling emissions and noise from the generator. “I think the last thing the county needs is for people to come in and complain about what they’ve installed and what it’s doing to their quality of life.”

Niedzielski-Eichner praised the design from an aesthetic standpoint as “high quality” and “sensitive to the fact that Tysons is an evolving urban center,” but he and Braddock District Commissioner Mary Cortina questioned why the planned facility isn’t able to meet county standards for stormwater retention.

In a report, county planning staff urged DPWES to find “additional opportunities” to increase the 0.37 inches of rainfall that the facility will be able to retain on-site as currently designed to 1 inch, as required.

“I know we need [the pump station], but if DPWES can’t reach the standard in Tysons, it’s a cringe for asking everybody else to do it,” Cortina said.

Grala said the team is trying to “fine-tune its design,” but the property’s high groundwater table limits options for containing stormwater.

The new pump station is part of a larger DPWES initiative to upgrade the wastewater system in Tysons, including by installing new, larger pipes to carry water from individual properties to the station from the station to the county’s Norman J. Cole Pollution Control Plant in Lorton.

The county estimates that it’ll take until summer 2025 to finish designing all elements, and construction isn’t projected to finish until summer 2028.

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.”

The value of an office building just outside the Mosaic District will determine whether Fairfax County has to go to court to boost a Merrifield sewer’s capacity.

The owner of 8315 Lee Highway is the lone remaining holdout in land rights negotiations with the county, which has reached agreements for six of the seven properties that will be affected by the project, land acquisition staff reported to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors last week.

While hopeful that a resolution can be achieved without a court visit, the board voted 8-2 last Tuesday (Sept. 12) to authorize staff to complete the land acquisitions — including by exercising the county’s eminent domain powers if necessary.

“A lot of times, this is the impetus to get to the finish line,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Jeff McKay said before the vote. “…This has been a long process, and to make sure we’re continuing to make progress on this, hopefully, we reach an agreement before it has to go to court.”

The sewer capacity upgrade will replace a 12-inch-wide line with a 20-inch PVC pipe wrapped in 30-inch steel casing. The new pipe will extend 563 linear feet between the corner of Route 29 and Eskridge Road and the U.S. Postal Service’s Merrifield facility.

The project will also add three new manholes. The existing sewer line will be abandoned in place.

The Department of Public Works and Environmental Services determined that existing pipes were “at risk” of overflows that could affect nearby buildings and the environment “due to the current average daily flows and the current pipe size,” according to a staff report in the board meeting package.

“The goal of the project is to alleviate this public health risk concern and provide additional capacity to account for the growing population size upstream of the pipes in the Merrifield area,” staff wrote.

DPWES says it hopes to begin construction on the project in January to avoid disrupting post office operations during the busy winter holiday shopping season.

However, the county and CJC Associates LP, which owns the building at 8315 Lee Highway, are still “very far apart” in their assessments of the site’s redevelopment potential and the project’s impact on its value, Land Acquisition Division Director Dennis Cade admitted at last week’s public hearing.

Negotiations for sewer and temporary access and construction easements needed to allow construction and equipment staging on the property have been underway since spring 2022, according to Jocelyn Campbell, a right-of-way agent for the county.

Confirming that his company recently presented a counteroffer to the county, CJC Associates partner Jim Coakley said “outside parties” have estimated that the building could lose about $325,000 in income from leasing during the construction period. Read More

Additional growth in the Town of Herndon is prompting town officials to consider adding additional capacity to its sewer system.

At a Herndon Town Council work session on Tuesday (July 11), Public Works Director Tammy Chastain told the council that the town is working with Fairfax County to install a new sewer pump station. The project would take roughly two years to design and three years to construct.

Additional development and growth — particularly in the Herndon Transit-Oriented Core and the Transit Related Growth areas — is expected to place more strain on public utilities overall, Chastain said. The town is in the midst of planning ways to accommodate that growth, she said.

“We need to look at our utilities,” Chastain said.

The town is considering two sites for the pump station. So far, officials are favoring a site opposite Marjorie Lane and Herndon Parkway that preserves an undeveloped area and does not require any easements. The location is also further away from historic structures and a swim club, Chastain said.

The area will flow into the Sugarland Run sewer lane.

Chastain said the pump station is needed because the capacity of the regional Potomac Interceptor is maxed out.

The county will share the cost and capacity of the project. The timing of the project is dependent on development, Chastain said.

A hole was recently found in a sewer pipe along Shreve Road in Idylwood, necessitating emergency repairs that started yesterday (Wednesday).

The issue was discovered during a “routine inspection” of the pipe, which carries wastewater from 34 homes and Shrevewood Elementary School, according to the Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services.

DPWES described the defect as a visible “hole void.”

Identified by the department’s Wastewater Collection Division (WCD) last week, the defect is severe enough that “immediate action” was required to repair the pipe and prevent it from collapsing, Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik said yesterday.

“WCD is initiating an emergency response to perform the point repair,” Palchik said in a tweet. “The work will be performed with Utilities Unlimited and is anticipated to start TODAY and be completed within one week.”

According to DPWES spokesperson Sharon North, the actual pipe repair is expected to be finished this week, but more time may be needed to repave the site, depending on whether the Virginia Department of Transportation allows crews to work over the Fourth of July holiday weekend.

“We anticipate the pipe repair will be completed this week, but site restoration (repaving) may need to be completed next week pending VDOT decision,” North said. “When the work commences, since the sewer is in the middle of the road, the repair will require some traffic lane closures with flaggers directing traffic to safely perform the work.”

The pipe has the capacity to convey approximately 1.4 million gallons per day of wastewater flow from residents and the school, according to DPWES.

The sewer line was already scheduled to undergo “trenchless” cured-in-place pipe rehabilitation — a type of repair for pipe lining that can be implemented without digging up the pipe.

That rehabilitation work will now begin after the emergency repairs are completed, Palchik said.

WCD is initiating an emergency response to perform the point repair. The work will be performed with Utilities Unlimited and is anticipated to start TODAY and be completed within one week. Following the repair, the entire pipe will be rehabilitated using trenchless CIPP method.

— Dalia Palchik (@SupvPalchik) June 28, 2023

Fairfax County is pushing forward on a program that could have the county government split the bill for private stormwater projects with property owners.

Flooding doesn’t end at the property line and the Local Stormwater Management Assistance Fund aims to help boost stormwater management on private property. At an environmental committee meeting of the Board of Supervisors on April 25, staff presented an update on the program.

“This is a good example of how: even when we say everything is private, it’s your responsibility, at the end of the day, if things fall apart, they somehow end up in our lap,” said Hunter Mill District Supervisor Walter Alcorn.

The pilot divided the cost-sharing based on the percentage of property that’s public versus private. For a stormwater issue where most of the drainage is on public land, the county will pay most of the bill, whereas for an issue where the drainage is mostly on private property, the owners would pay the majority.

The initial budget for the program would be $250,000, with up to $7,000 allowed for each project applying to the fund. Staff said no more than 30 projects could be funded per year through the program, butwith the current eligibility restrictions, even 30 projects was somewhat optimistic.

The county is currently finishing up a pilot program that included the Millwood Pond, Virginia Center or Nutley, Green Trails and Gunston Corner facilities.

The county has signed an agreement with the Millwood Pond owners but determined no maintenance was needed. A “complex” maintenance project at Nutley has been completed, while one at Green Trails is under construction. Negotiations on an agreement for the Gunston Corner pond are still underway.

After the pilot finishes, staff will return to the Board of Supervisors’ environmental committee.

Maintenance work on the Circle Woods stormwater pond in Oakton will have to wait until this summer — or until the hawks nesting in a nearby tree take their leave.

The Fairfax County Department of Public Works and Environmental Services (DPWES) shared on Monday (April 3) that its contractor had encountered an “active hawks nest” in a tree that has been slated for removal.

The birds and their nest are protected by the federal Migratory Bird Treat Act and a nationwide permit issued by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to the county.

“The construction team and our Fairfax County Park Authority partners made the decision to pause active work to limit disruption that could impact the nesting birds and ensure we maintain compliance with the permit and federal law,” DPWES said in an update on the project page.

DPWES spokesperson Sharon North confirmed that only one nest has been found, but it’s unclear how many birds are using it. At least two hawks have been photographed in the area.

Work will resume after the nesting period, which is expected to last through early June, or once the project team determines that the nest is no longer being used.

Construction on the pond was scheduled to begin on March 3, according to Providence District Supervisor Dalia Palchik. Some initial setup and tree-clearing activities had gotten underway when workers found the hawk nest.

@ffxpublicworks completed survey, permitting, design, & support services for the Circle Woods Pond Improvement Project to perform necessary maintenance on an existing stormwater detention facility & make improvements within the pond floor and at the outfall. pic.twitter.com/eyjNWzUdv4

— Dalia Palchik (@SupvPalchik) February 21, 2023

DPWES says it initiated the project after maintenance workers detected “dam and control structure deficiencies” with the detention pond, which is located near East Blake Lane Park.

In addition to making “necessary repairs” to the dam and replacing the control structure, the project will involve the removal of sediment and an “extensive” tree root structure that has begun to encroach on the dam embankment, according to the county.

With a total budget of $685,000, the project was expected to be finished in November, suggesting that if construction work doesn’t resume until June, it will now continue into 2023.

Once construction restarts, the East Blake Lane Trail will be closed between Vaden Dr. and Route 29 will be closed throughout the project.