At the regular March meeting of the Prince William County Board of
Supervisors while considering requests for exceptions to the comprehensive plan,
Supervisor Martin Nohe supported
by the other county Supervisors seemed to feel that it was time to reconsider
some of the planning and development decisions that had been made in the past
and asked for staff to produce an analysis of the usefulness of the Rural
Crescent in achieving those goals. The request was made by Supervisor Nohe to
Prince William County staff and noted in the minutes.
The Rural Crescent was created in
1998 and has been chipped away at with exception requests every year. Higher
density development means money to developers and landowners. There is much
passion when money is on the table. The Rural Crescent in Prince William County
was originally intended as an urban growth boundary for the county designed to
preserve our agricultural heritage and force redevelopment along the Route 1
corridor rather than Greenfield development in the remaining rural areas.
Maintaining the emphasis on redevelopment of areas with preexisting
infrastructure would allow Prince William County to improve storm water
management, achieve nutrient and sediment reductions for the EPA mandated TMDL,
revitalize older areas of the county and preserve the Greenfields. The Rural
Crescent may have started with different intentions; but today the Rural
Crescent is about water, groundwater and ecosystem preservation.
Supervisor Nohe’s interest in
transforming the 80,000-acre rural
crescent where development has generally limited to one home per 10 acres with
no access to public sewer is of great concern. Even though I believe that Supervisor
Nohe is interested in moving towards sustainable community concepts, high
density communities utilizing the strategies of Low Impact Development, LID, which
include dedicated open space will not guarantee the preservation of our
ecosystem and water. When development disturbs more than 10% of the natural
land by covering surfaces with roads, driveways, walkways, patios, and homes
the natural hydrology of the land is disturbed, irreparably disturbed. These
developments while much better than traditional developments still disturb more
than half the land area by significantly increasing allowed building density.
While it has been demonstrated that LID strategies
can reduce the impact of development, there is no demonstrated strategy of how
communities can control and maintain natural storm water features and preserve
and maintain the safety and ecology of preserved open space. There are no regional
groundwater studies, regional ecosystem pans and no budgets for maintaining the
open space. Access control and
prevention of improper use (underage drinking, drug use and sale, other illicit activities, dirt bike racing)
addressing deer population management and hunting adjacent to high density
homes, litter and trash removal, maintenance of natural landscapes and
supervision all cost money and time. No legal structures exist that guarantee
open spaces will not be developed in the future to defray maintenance
costs. Why the Rural Crescent was formed
is less important than understanding that the Rural Crescent provides a
significant portion of our green infrastructure to our community.
According to NVRC there are three priority regional conservation
corridors in Prince William County. Bull
Run Mountain and Catoctin Mountain corridor is a north-south corridor
connecting the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains in Northern Virginia. The corridor provides significant intact
habitat for Northern Virginia wildlife. North of Leesburg, the corridor is the karst
terrain of Loudoun underlain by limestone, and highly susceptible to pollution
that provides a significant ground water recharge.
Karst aquifers are highly
vulnerable to contamination. This vulnerability results from: sinkholes,
widened flow paths, and rapid velocities of ground water and contaminants.
Contaminants can be transmitted quickly from entry in a sinkhole to wells and
springs in the vicinity. Sinkhole creation, sinkhole flooding, and groundwater
contamination are the major hazards associated with karst terrain, and unlike
other natural hazards they are chronic in nature. South of
Route 50 the Bull Run Mountain ridge is the location of a significant area of
recharge for the groundwater that ultimately maintains and feeds Bull Run and
the Occoquan River. This area is part of a fractured rock system with limited
overburden and no natural attenuation. A polluted plume could be carried for
miles without dilution.
The second priority conservation area is begins at the Bull Run
Mountains and heads east across Route 15 to Manassas covering the land between
Route 50 and 29 to the confluence of the Occoquan River with Belmont Bay. This
corridor is rich in water and environmental resources that ultimately deliver
drinking water to over one million Northern Virginia residents. The Occoquan
Reservoir, one of the country’s first water reclamation facilities where sewage
treatment water is returned to provide water recreation. The western portion of
the area is part of the Culpeper Basin Important Birding Area and the Culpeper
Basin Groundwater Aquifer. Preventing water contamination and ensuring adequate
groundwater recharge are vital to ensuring safe water supplies, recreation
opportunities and the ecological integrity of the region.
The third priority conservation area is the Potomac Gorge and
Quantico Corridor, the greenbelt that connects Prince William National Forest
Park with Manassas Battlefield. This area includes large tracks of undeveloped
private land. The western portion of the Rural Crescent was not identified by
NVRC as a high priority conservation area because they failed to consider the
importance of the groundwater aquifer. The Culpeper basin is part of a much larger PiedmontGeologic Province and has only begun to be studied thanks to the carefulgroundwater measurements taken by Loudoun County as excessive development ofthe western part of the county began to impact water supplies. Groundwater quantity and quality in our region impacts not
only groundwater wells, but stream flow and recharge to the surface water. In
short all the drinking water in Prince William County. Groundwater recharges at
various rates from precipitation and other sources of infiltration. The
recharge is not spread evenly across the land. Pave over the land, change
surface flow and infiltration and groundwater recharge are reduced.
Important regional waterways, such as Goose Creek, Bull Run, the
Potomac River and Occoquan Reservoir thrive because they are shaded by trees
and vegetation that filter stormwater, prevent erosion, and facilitate ground
water recharge and moderate temperatures. Green infrastructure maintenance ensures
the forested buffers are maintained and enhanced over time, protecting public
health and water quality. Maintaining and enhancing forested buffers near
Northern Virginia’s waterways requires focus on how to maintain and protect
these ecological resources. The EPA has identified nitrogen, phosphorus and
sediment as the three primary pollutants that must be reduced to restore the
health of the Chesapeake Bay and its tributaries. They have mandated to
Virginia and the other Chesapeake Bay Watershed states and Washington DC an
approximate 25% reduction in these pollutants. A wide range of approaches can
address these impairments, including reducing runoff and restoring stream banks
and buffer areas. Adding more development in the Rural Crescent will not reduce
the current level of sediment and nutrient pollution, and will not assure our
water resources and ecology.
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