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CLARKES GAP ROAD
PARTIALLY CLOSED FOR UP TO A YEAR!!!

Yes, you heard right!  If this Paeonian Springs and Waterford Interconnected Community Water and Wastewater Systems Project moves forward, or even if just part of this project moves forward, Clarkes Gap Road could be shut down for at least a year, possibly much longer!

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Think about your commute then and learn how you can have a voice in the matter!

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Here are some things to think about...

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After two years of trying to get the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors ("BOS") to work with the communities most affected by this proposed unnecessary project, it seems Supervisor Kershner and potentially others are of a mind to rubber stamp the approval of a poorly conceived $60+ million Interconnected Community Water and Wastewater Systems Project between Paeonian Springs and Waterford, to address an unknown small number of houses with low yield wells or problematic septic systems.  The preliminary design calls for the digging up the full length of Clarkes Gap Road or else cutting down all the trees and razing stretches of properties on one side of the road in order to dig in water and sewer piping (10 feet apart) and corresponding manhole covers.
 

Commuter Impacts:  For the pipe installation on Clarkes Gap Road between Route 9 and Hamilton Station Road, the most recent County estimates for Clarkes Gap Road detouring are for 12 months (closure or 1-way flagging).  For most of the closure approach, the County has said they would redirect traffic onto Hamilton Station Road, putting morning commuters over 2 1/2 miles farther West in the heavy Route 9 congestion...and there will, of course, be a backup just to get onto Route 9 from Hamilton Station Road.  For the portions of Clarkes Gap Road between Hamilton Station Road and Waterford, that portion of the road would either be fully closed during the extensive entrenchments or 1-way flagged, causing extraordinary rerouting of commuters.  If you do not live in the groundwater impact areas within the blue dotted line noted in Figure 2, go directly to What you can do at the bottom of this email.

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Unknown "Need":  The County does not know how many homes in Waterford are impacted by very low yield wells, nor how many homes in Paeonian Springs have issues with their septic systems.  Right now, the Paeonian Springs and Waterford Joint Water and Wastewater System Feasibility Study calls for as many as 355 residential units to be serviced by the joint water system, which would likely average well over 100,000 gallons per day, extracted from wells between the two towns.  However, the new water system is being designed to provide 1.2 gallons per minute to each residence within the two service areas, which equates to just under 600,000 gallons per day being extracted from the Clarkes Gap corridor! 

 

Resident Well Impacts:  A simulation of well impacts by just 31 new homes outside of Waterford shows in Figure 1 below that nearby water tables would drop over 30 feet, while even a mile away, the water table would drop 20 feet.  

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Figure 1: Water table impacts from a simulation of a 31 house development in Western Loudoun

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Residents living within 1 mile from the five Potential Groundwater Development Zone (PSD) water extraction sites shown in Figure 2 should expect the water tables at your well site to potentially drop far more than 20 feet at the outermost periphery (blue dotted line) and potentially far more than 30 feet for those residents living closer to the extraction sites.

 

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Figure 2: Purple areas are potential sites for the 5 proposed extraction wells.  The pink area represents the

most intense water impacts.  The blue dotted line roughly estimates the 1 mile impact zone. 

As the proposed plan could serve 355 residential units in Waterford and Paeonian Springs,

the impacts would be 10 times greater than those in Figure 1

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Alternatives: To avoid all of these impacts, the Waterford Preservation Group recommends several positive solutions to meet the needs of our neighbors in Waterford and Paeonian Springs in the A Better Path Forward:  Separate Community-Specific Solutions section of our proposal in the document A Perspective on Water & Wastewater Issues in Waterford and Paeonian Springs.
 

What you can do:

 

Contact each County Supervisor individually at the following email addresses (sending to BoS@loudoun.gov yields far fewer views):

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Ask them to:

  • Have County staff identify the specific existing residential units that have very low yield wells or problematic septic fields whose owners want to pay to connect to the proposed Joint Waterford and Paeonian Springs Interconnected System

  • Shelve the proposed Joint System and focus on the Better Path Forward:  Separate Community-Specific Solutions section of our proposal in the document A Perspective on Water & Wastewater Issues in Waterford and Paeonian Springs.

 

Join our mailing list to receive alerts:

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If you would like to learn more, please click here to go to our home page.

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FIGURE 1 SAVECGR.png
FIGURE 2 SAVECGR.png
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