Comments on PW Digital Gateway and Comp Plan Changes

The streams, rivers and groundwater in the Occoquan Watershed in Prince William County are at risk of degradation from PW Digital Gateway,  and the land use and zoning changes in the 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update.  As demand for local lands and resources increases and landowners seek to maximize the sale value of their land, developers look to create massive industrial development in the Rural Crescent where there is inadequate road systems, no stormwater infrastructure, no public water supply, no available source for cooling water supply, no sewage, etc.  

This development in the northern portion of the Rural Crescent threatens the health of the Occoquan watershed and the very sustainability and affordability of the drinking water supply for Northern Virginia. When an undeveloped or generally open rural area is developed stormwater runoff increases in quantity and velocity washing away stream banks, flooding roads and buildings carrying fertilizers, oil and grease, and road salt to the Occoquan Reservoir.

Increased development in the Bull Run and Occoquan watershed as outlined in the PW Digital Gateway CPA, the 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update will increase paved surfaces and runoff and decreased forested and agricultural land. The result will be increase salinity and chemical and sediment contamination.

The salinity in the reservoir has been rising over time and may be reaching a critical stage.  The rising salt in the reservoir is primarily from watershed runoff during wet weather and reclaimed water from UOSA during dry weather. Sodium concentration in the reclaimed water is higher than in outflow from the two watersheds right now and will rise with the increase in blowdown from data center cooling and increased population density. However, increasing paved areas increases the salt runoff into the watershed.

The only way to remove salt from the drinking water supply is to invest billions of dollars (from your water rates) in building and installing desalination equipment in the region’s water treatment plants which are not currently capable of removing salt from the source water. There is no other source of water to supply our area. The costs to add treatment lines at Fairfax Water to keep the Occoquan Potable is estimated to cost between $1 and $2 billion. This is a cost that will be borne by the water rate payers including the 350,000 in Prince William County.

Prince William County did not even consider the impact of the proposed changes to the quality, availability and sustainability water supply as they are required to do under the Comprehensive Plan law. Before we do irreversible harm to the ecology and our regional drinking water supply, we need to look at what the impacts of planned changes will be to the water supply.

Fairfax Water has taken the unusual step to ask that Prince William County convene the Occoquan Basin Policy Board and oversee a Comprehensive Study of the proposed PW Digital Gateway CPA and the 2040 Comprehensive Plan Update to evaluate their impact on water quality in the Occoquan Reservoir before any action is taken. The cost to restore the basin and treat the water is in the billions of dollars that will be borne by us, the residents who remain.

The Occoquan Watershed Model was developed over decades to evaluate the impact of land use decisions and compare potential land use scenarios and their impact on the Occoquan Reservoir water quality. Prince William County helped pay for the creation of that model, yet did not use it to evaluate the wholesale change in the land use of the county. 

Prince William County failed also to consider the impact of the proposed zoning changes to the quality, availability and sustainability of the water supply as they are required to do under the Comprehensive Plan law.   Nor did they consider the impact on meeting goals for the Chesapeake Bay pollution diet.

Rio+20 UN Conference on Sustainable Development

United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20) is taking place this week, June 20-22, 2012 in Rio de Janeiro Brazil to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development in Rio de Janeiro, and the 10th anniversary of the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg. Sustainable development’s goals are to meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. It is an ideal that is seen as the guiding principle for long-term global sustainable development and consists of three pillars: economic development, social development and environmental protection.  

The first UN Conference on Environment and Development was held in Rio de Janeiro in June 1992 and adopted an agenda for development in the 21st Century, “Agenda 21 : A Programme of Action for Sustainable Development.” Agenda 21 is the integration of environment and development concerns to fulfill the basic needs of all people (very broadly defined), improved living standards for all, better protected and managed ecosystems and a safer, more prosperous future for all. The plan was to achieve this in a global partnership for sustainable development paid for by the first world nations of 1992. The economic development principals detailed in the Agenda tend to sound like world socialism, but that happens when the goal is for every human being to share equally in food, water, wealth and to use the minimum resources to maximize the number of people who can live on the planet. I expect that the Rio +20 conference will fail with European nations currently under economic stress back peddling on the developing world’s expectations for aid and China and India not using their resource to solve their own problems. The U.S. is sending Secretary Clinton and hosting a U.S. Conference Center.

U.S. EPA Administrator Lisa Jackson is participating in the Rio +20 conference and has a US Center set up to hold events related to climate change, green economies, sustainable agriculture and sustainable cities. Events at the US Center will be live streamed at http://conx.state.gov/event/rio20/ if you want to watch the events the U.S. is hosting. The UN proceedings are being streamed at this link if you prefer to watch those. Live streaming is a nifty opportunity for those of us who will never have the opportunity to attend the live conference.  http://webtv.un.org/meetings-events/conferencessummits/rio20-13-22-june-2012-rio-de-janeiro-brazil/press-conferences/watch/forests-rio-dialogues-session-5-press-conference-rio20/1694285685001

While the stated objectives of Rio+20 are grand and broad. The most basic need is for every human to have access to clean drinking water and adequate sanitation. According to Rose George in her book “The Big Necessity,” there are 2.6 billion people on earth without a toilet. The lack of sanitation is the real cause of most dirty drinking water, and results in the death of 1.8 million children each year.  “The…2006 Human Development Report, and annual publication of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), wrote that ‘when it comes to water and sanitation, the world suffers from a surplus of conference activity and a deficit of action.’” The need to improve the level of basic water and sanitation services and the management of the world's water resources as well as wastewater has been emphasized at both previous Earth Summits, Rio (1992) and Johannesburg (2002). These conferences called for actions to improve the way water is managed and used, but has diluted the message with other agendas. Water and especially sanitation services for the poor are lagging behind in key regions of the world and are being buried at the pre-conference meetings by other agendas.

Board Vote Stops Mid-County Project in the Prince William Rural Crescent

On Tuesday, March 20th, 2012 at their regular meeting the Prince William County Board of Supervisors voted on the 2012 Annual Comprehensive Plan Amendments that were submitted to the planning office this past January. There were six changes in zoning requested, only two of the requests that appeared to fit within the long term goals of the comprehensive plan had the staff recommendation for approval: the New Dominion Square and Bradley Square both in the Coles District. These were requests to change from community employment center to building townhouses and included the redevelopment of the speedway property. However, the Mid-County Park and Estate Homes request for a rezoning in the Rural Crescent (also in the Coles District) was stopped by the motion and presentation of Supervisor Nohe and the support of the majority of the BOCS. This project would have effectively removed this property from the Rural Crescent to increase density from 33 homes to 104 single-family homes connected to the public sewer system, but would have also created 195 acres of public open space. The project had received considerable publicity and raised passions on both sides as evidenced by the citizens comments earlier in the meeting.

The plan for long range land use in Prince William County is designed to develop employment centers in the community, revitalize the Route 1 corridor, preserve the rural areas and areas of environmental sensitivity including lands regulated under the Chesapeake Bay Protection Act and preserve our existing neighborhoods. In short the comprehensive plan is really a forward looking document for sustainable development that needs to continue to evolve over time. Prince William has learned from Fairfax, Alexandria and Arlington to carefully plan the growth of our community. The 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 additional study as the best way to achieve employment, transportation and open space goals of the county, asking for analysis of the usefulness of the Rural Crescent in achieving those goals and the future of the last contiguous large (864 acre) parcel in the development area of the western half of the county.

In the next several years the county will have to find ways to meet the ever tightening requirements under the Virginia Watershed Implementation Plan for the mandated Chesapeake Bay TMDL and we need to make sure that there will be adequate drinking water for the county. The first half of sustainable development is the redevelopment of the Brownfields along the Route 1 corridor rather than Greenfield development in rural areas where there is no existing infrastructure as highlighted by Supervisor Nohe’s presentations. Redevelopment along Route 1 would help Prince William County to reduce storm water damage by instituting storm water management in locations where storm water management is inadequate (and score nutrient reduction points under the Watershed Implementation Plan) as well as revitalize these older areas of the county. This redevelopment would take place without significantly increasing pavement and impervious surfaces. The second portion of sustainable development is to ensure adequate water for our county now and in the future. Preserving the open land in the Rural Crescent is essential to sustainable development of Prince William County. According to the EPA, in order to maintain the natural hydrology the impervious cover of a region must remain below 10%.

The Rural Crescent in Prince William County aligns roughly with the Mesozoic basin aquifer of the Culpeper groundwater basin, one of the more important watersheds in Virginia. The rocks of the Culpeper basin are highly fractured and overlain by a thin cover of overburden. These sedimentary rocks are productive aquifers and feed not only the groundwater wells that provide drinking water to Manassas and other communities, but also feeds the tributaries to Bull Run and the Potomac. The fractured rock system that is so rich in water is also our weakness; there is no natural attenuation in a fractured system so that the groundwater as a drinking water resource can be easily contaminated without any real ability to recover. Any malfunctioning septic system, underground fuel storage tank, improper disposal, improperly managed horse property or hobby farm or hazardous spill on any property within this area has the potential to impact the drinking water wells to the south, southeast or east. Development and improper use in this area introduces potential sources of contamination that could never (in our lifetimes) be remediated. In addition, ground cover, roads and pavement will impact recharge of the groundwater reducing the total amount of water available.

A small portion of Prince William County is located within the Coastal Plain and should serve as a warning to us of what happens if you do not protect your watershed and its recharge zone. The Coastal Plain of Virginia is composed mostly of unconsolidated geologic deposits and extends from the Atlantic coast to the “fall zone” a geological line that runs north-south through Fairfax, Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg along Route 95. There are two groundwater systems, an unconfined aquifer and a lower artesian aquifer both flow in the general direction of the topography slope towards the ocean. The fall zone was the area of recharge for the artesian aquifer, it was the geologic area where the earth folded and the lower mostly isolated artesian aquifer reached the surface and could be recharged with rainfall. By building Route 95 along the fall zone and developing the adjacent areas Virginia essentially paved over a significant portion of the recharge zone for the artesian groundwater aquifer-permanently reducing water supply while increasing water demand. In addition, poor storm water management in older developed areas has created a significant erosion and sediment problem in the Quantico Watershed, for example, where on-site stormwater capture and retention needs to be beefed up and repaired, and the streams need debris removal, channel restoration or enhancements, and riparian buffer restoration to stabilize the watershed.

The county may be moving towards reevaluating the zoning and land use decisions made at the end of the 20th century when the Rural Crescent was created. Owners of large tracks of land within the Rural Crescent feel (and rightly so) that limitations on development reduce land values. Many residents of the area spoke of the quality of life. The groundwater and watershed must always be considered because without water there is no property value. On any request to amend the Comprehensive Plan the Board of County Supervisors, BOCS, has the discretion to vote to initiate, initiate with a different study area, do not initiate or take no action. After citizen comments, staff presentations the BOCS discussed the proposals within the entire the land use plan and the county goals then voted to:

A. Do Not Initiate, the change of the Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00224 Stone Haven, but to initiate another Planning Study of the Stone Haven Project Area within the Brentsville Magisterial District with community outreach and input to determine the best use of this land and additional acreage owned by the same entity that could be the site of the needed new high school in the western end of the county. These 337 acres were proposed to convert from industrial to residential and the BOCS recalling community reaction to an industrial project that had been considered years ago felt that compatible use and community needs should be carefully considered before any decision is made for this property.
B. Do Not Initiate – Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00225, that would have allowed the building of 104 clustered homes within the Rural Crescent and have those homes hooked up to the sanitary sewer system for a development called Mid-County Park and Estate Homes and place the 77 acres that are resource protect area, RPA, under the Chesapeake Bay Protection Act) and an additional 62 acres and place them as permanent open space. Supervisor Martin Nohe argued to keep the boundaries of the Rural Crescent and the BOCS voted to support him. However, Supervisor Nohe further suggested that the BOCS examine the Rural Crescent policy the tools available to achieve the county environmental goals and maintain open space. The staff was charged with examining whether maintaining the Rural Crescent as is was in conformance with the open space goals of the county and what were the results of the policy after 14 years.
C. & D. Initiate. Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00226, New Dominion Square and Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00228, Bradley Square were voted to be combined and Initiated with an expanded study area both projects are located in the Coles Magisterial District. They were appropriately viewed as combined and related. The Dominion Square is a Brownfield redevelopment of the speedway and use of the Bradley Square is impacted by the use and redevelopment of the speedway property.
E. Withdrawn. Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00227, Wheeler Estate Property was withdrawn. This property is located within the Gainesville Magisterial District and had been recommended by staff to not be initiated. It would have represented a change from flexible employment to residential eliminating a significant number of jobs and adding commuter traffic on Route 66.
F. Initiate. Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00229, Bell Property which is adjacent to the Rural Crescent leaving the RPA area undeveloped and developing the SRR planned area for 55+ housing. The staff had recommended “Do Not Initiate,” but Supervisor Candland of the Gainesville Magisterial District where the property is located supported the development and argued persuasively to move forward and the majority of the BOCS voted with him.
G. Initiate. Comprehensive Plan Amendment #PLN2012-00301 the addition of Five Properties as County-Registered Historic Sites in the Cultural Resource Chapter of the Comprehensive Plan was voted to initiate without much discussion. The properties are located within the Gainesville and Brentsville Magisterial Districts.

Sustainability of Prince William County and the Rural Crescent

In the recent Prince William County local elections the candidates ran and were elected on schools, roads and jobs. Those are the immediate concerns of residents, but our elected officials need to look to the future and worry about the sustainability of Prince William County. We need to meet the ever tightening requirements under the Virginia Watershed Implementation Plan for the mandated Chesapeake Bay TMDL and we need to make sure that our water resources are not impaired. Preserving the Rural Crescent is essential to sustainable development of Prince William County. The first half of sustainable development is the redevelopment of Brownfields along the Route 1 corridor rather than Greenfield development in rural areas where there is no existing infrastructure. Redevelopment along Route 1 would help Prince William County to improve storm water management (and score nutrient reduction points under the Watershed Implementation Plan) as well as revitalize these older areas of the county. This redevelopment would take place without significantly increasing pavement and impervious surfaces. The second portion of sustainable development is to ensure adequate water for our county now and in the future.

Our geology and climate determines our water resources. The geological regions of Virginia are (from east to west) the Coastal Plain, the Piedmont, the Blue Ridge, the Valley and Ridge and the (Cumberland) Plateau. The Coastal Plain of Virginia is composed mostly of unconsolidated geologic deposits and extends from the Atlantic coast to the “fall zone” a geological line that runs north-south through Fairfax, Fredericksburg, Richmond, and Petersburg, to a large extent along Route 95. At its widest portion the Coastal Plain is over 100 miles wide.

Coastal Plain deposits consist of alternating layers of unconsolidated sand, gravel, silt, shell strata and clay and slopes generally southeast. There are two groundwater systems, an unconfined aquifer and a lower artesian aquifer both flow in the general direction of the topography slope towards the ocean. In the 1990’s it was estimated that approximately half of Virginia’s groundwater use was in this region. The principal recharge area for these aquifers is the land around the fall zone where the aquifers outcrop, unfortunately that area was paved and covered along with the development of Route 95. The Costal Plain’s artesian aquifer has an enormous groundwater storage capacity and Virginia remains a relatively wet location, but pumping (possibly over pumping) has lowered the artesian pressure allowing some salt water intrusion near the coast and development and building in the recharge zone has impacted the availability of water. It is projected with little more population growth that during drought years Fairfax and the Norfolk-Virginia Beach area will have inadequate water.

The Piedmont is bordered by the “fall zone” on the east and the Blue Ridge Mountains on the west. The Piedmont is the largest geological region in Virginia and has a diverse geology largely dominated by igneous and metamorphic rocks, with some areas of sedimentary rocks. The area has limited overburden and the fractures and fault lines formed in the rocks store and transmit groundwater. The size and number of water bearing fractures decrease with depth so significant supplies of water are generally located in the first few hundred feet. There is a wide variation in groundwater quality and yield ranging from under 1 gallon to over 50 gallons a minute. The largest yields are obtained where fracture and fault system are extensive. In other areas of the Piedmont, disintegration of the granite bedrock forms a zone of granular material with slow recharge and relatively high and annoying amounts of iron and sulfur. While providing very productive wells the fractures and faults offer a natural route of transport for any contaminant so that the most water rich areas that supply Bull Run and the Occoquan are the most susceptible to contamination.

Prince William traverses both the coastal plane and the Piedmont. The Rural Crescent in Prince William County is contained within the Piedmont region of the county within the water rich fracture and fault system and its waters feed the surface waters of the eastern portion of the county. The Rural Crescent should remain an urban growth boundary for the county not to preserve our agricultural heritage and sense of place, but to preserve our water. While I strongly support redevelopment of areas with preexisting infrastructure (Brownfield redevelopment) which would allow Prince William County to improve storm water management as well as revitalize older areas of the county and preserve the Greenfields areas in my general support of sustainable development; my strong support for preserving the Rural Crescent is about protecting the groundwater from depletion and contamination.

The Rural Crescent in Prince William County aligns roughly with the Mesozoic basin aquifer of the Culpeper groundwater basin, one of the more important watersheds in Virginia. My home and much of the Prince William County Rural Crescent is located within the northeast quadrant and eastern quadrant of the Culpeper basin and consists of sandstone, siltstone, and conglomerate of Late Triassic age; with the fault and fracture system that produces water rich wells and the easy transport routes for contaminants into the groundwater supply.

The Culpeper basin is part of a much larger Piedmont Geologic Province and has only begun to be studied thanks to the careful groundwater measurements taken by Loudoun County as excessive development of the western part of the county began to impact water supplies. Each groundwater system or basin is unique and must be understood and managed individually. 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 could be reduced.

There are limits to the amount of groundwater available for extraction from the aquifer. The amount of groundwater removed from an aquifer needs to be sustainable and should ideally match the recharge rate. Increasing the direct demand by pumping to supply water to commercial or industrial users or reducing the recharge rate by diverting surface flow and adding pavement and roads will result in changes in the local or regional hydraulic balance- a reduction in discharge to surface water at some other location, an increase in recharge from surface water, or a loss of storage in the aquifer by falling water table or some combination of these effects.

Our freshwater resources need to be managed as a whole. The utilization of groundwater resources in an unsustainable manner can result in impacts to the entire region, including the decrease in water level and aquifer storage, reductions in stream flow and lake levels, loss of wetland and riparian ecosystems, land subsidence, saltwater intrusion and changes in groundwater quality. Our future and our children’s future is our water. We can’t allow it to be destroyed by those who only see short term gain.

Sustainability the Development of the Concept

Tomorrow is Earth Day 2011 and there is not much going on in Washington to mark the day. So today I am going to take a look at sustainability, where environmental awareness has taken us. Sustainability is traditionally defined as a practice that allows for the use of a resource without depleting it or impairing it. That simple concept; however, is not what the sustainability movement uses to define the concept. The definition accepted varies among different people and groups that are talking about sustainability. So let’s look at the development of the concept.

A world view accepting the interconnections among the nature and the society of mankind is a very ancient world view that appears in many indigenous and ancient civilizations. Only in the 20th century did large parts of society lose that understanding. Rachel Carson reminded us of that interconnection. Her book, Silent Spring, first appeared in serial form in the New Yorker and then as a best selling book in 1962. The science in the book may have been shallow, but her literary genius and emotional appeal created a movement. Followers flocked to Carson's cause which was rendered all the more powerful by her premature death in 1964 from breast cancer. The book's release was considered by many to be a turning point in our understanding of the interconnection between the environment and societal well-being.

In the 49 years since that time the environmental movement has reached middle age. The widespread acceptance of the validity of the environmental movement, which began in earnest in the 1950’s, followed by the first Earth Day in April 1970 and by the founding of the US EPA in December of 1970 established the environmental movement as mainstream. The current generation of young adults has grown up with the three “R” being “reduce, reuse, and recycle.” While society was embracing the environment, the leading edge of the environmental movement journeyed towards a broader concept: sustainability and sustainable development.

Since the late 1980s sustainability has been used more in the sense of human sustainability on planet Earth. One of the most widely quoted definition of sustainability and sustainable development is from the United Nations World Commission on Environment and Development commonly called the “Brundtland Commission.” They defined sustainability and sustainable development as:
"Development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs."

In late 1983 Gro Harlem Brundtland, the former Prime Minister of Norway was asked by the Secretary-General of the United Nations to establish and chair the World Commission on Environment and Development, a special, independent commission convened to formulate "a global agenda for change." After three years the commission produced what is commonly known as "The Brundtland Report." Published in book form in 1987 as Our Common Future, the report addresses what it identifies as "common concerns," such as a population growth, lack of food security, dwindling biodiversity, and excessive use of polluting energy. Finally, the report lists "common endeavors," such as managing communally or society owned resources, making industry more efficient, maintaining peace and security while not suspending development or degrading the environment, and changing institutional and legal structures.

The Bruntland report has often been subject to criticism, on the grounds that many of its 'forecasts' proved to be inaccurate and in fact many of the causal assumptions were not studied. As the Development Education Program of the World Bank Institute (WBI) points out many of the relationships are just not measurable; and many of the goals are in conflict with each other. So what has survived of the Bruntland report is the first sentence. The Bruntland report should be viewed as a product of its time and its focus on inequalities between rich and poor should be seen in that context. Even in 1987 Brundtland Commission stated “Globally, wealthier nations are better placed financially and technologically to cope with the effects of possible climatic change. The world must quickly design strategies that will allow nations to move from their present, often destructive, processes of growth and development onto sustainable development paths.”

The World Commission on Environment and Development (Bruntland Commission) was followed in 1992 by the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, (Rio Declaration) which was developed at the 1992 United Nations "Conference on Environment and Development," often called the Earth Summit. The document consists of 27 principals that range from youth mobilization to eradication of poverty to compensation for environmental impact and national environmental policies. The most lasting portion of that document was the “Three Dimension Concept” which coined the concept that sustainable development was a balance of three dimensions: • Environmental Protection • Economic Growth • Social Development

In 1993 President Clinton created the President’s Council on Sustainable Development, a panel of leaders from business, science and other areas. The committee was tasked with bringing together industry, environmental groups, and government agencies to form consensus on policy; and implement programs to promote sustainable development. They focused on programs to lower greenhouse gas emissions, and policies that might foster sustainable communities.

Still, common themes run through most definitions of sustainability. They usually deal with nature, the economy, society or, perhaps most often, all three together. Most are not about maintaining life precisely as it is today. They are about the rate of change, and about equity between generations or political groups. Many see sustainability as a continually evolving process. The World Conservation Strategy views sustainable development as integrating conservation with satisfying basic human needs, achieving equity and social justice, providing for social self-determination and cultural diversity, and maintaining ecological integrity.

The US EPA states “Sustainable development can be facilitated by policies that integrate environmental, economic, and social values in decision making. From a business perspective, sustainable development is accomplished by capturing system dynamics, building resilient and adaptive systems, anticipating and managing variability and risk, and earning a profit.” It sounds good, but I have no idea what that means in real life and how we apply the principals of sustainable living and development to our lives and our communities, but I note they were able to include the three dimensions from the Rio Declaration. All of these different organizations address different aspects and definitions of sustainable development, but all are vague and remain open to interpretation.