Clean Up, 19 March 2011

My most sincere thanks going out to the Woodbridge Potomac Community Civic Association, Porter Traditional School, Supervisor Frank Principi and the local community for an unbelievable clean up effort for Neabsco Creek.  56 people came out, pulled a shopping cart, at least a dozen tires, a car battery, and a half a construction-size dumpster worth of trash out of the creek and surrounding flood plain.   The Prince William Clean Community Council, the PW Soil and Conservation District Adopt a Stream Coordinator Kelly Jimenez also joined the effort.

We had great success cleaning up the simple trash...what we could not clean included an old commercial refrigerator (buried), a truck axle (tires still attached), piles of construction debris, tons of logs and dead trees and a leaking oil boom. 

Here are some pictures, courtesy of Kelly Jimenez (I am the crazy person in the waders).

Where we started

So this is the monitored location.  This map shows Route 1 and Neabsco Rd in Woodbridge Virginia.  The building on the left is a Wawa gas station, which was essentially built on a manufactured penninsula on the creek flood plain.  Our housing development was also built on fill to elevate it above the flood plain.  About a mile to the east is the Potomac River. 
All of this land used to be part of the Lee Family (as in Cival War General Robert E. Lee) Plantation.  Leesylvania State Park is about a mile downstream, too.  The bulk of the land in this photo around the creek is now owned by Prince William County Park Authority and developer Robert B. Hart.



VDOT Picture Taken in 2007



Until 2009, this portion of Neabsco Creek had a nasty habit of flooding Route 1 (a major Northern Virginia Road) because of the huge amount of debris that collected under the old bridge.  So, the Virginia DOT solved that problem by building a higher bridge so all of the debris would not get stuck any longer. 

This, of course, did not even remotely solve the problem, it just pushed all of the trash into the creek wetlands and the Potomac River.  Solves VDOT's problem, but since my drinking water comes from the Potomac--like most of Northern Virginia--I am not as fond of this solution as they were.



My picture taken during rain storm in Fall 2010--after new bridge completed



One of dozens of tires in the creek--along with an oil sheen

What is difficult to see in the above satellite photo is that only a few yards west of Route 1, bordering the creek is a complex of auto repair shops.  Now, we all need auto repair businesses (I have to go to work, too), but I am pretty sure I pay a disposal fee each time I need new tires so the company can properly dispose of them.  Paying them to throw tires into the creek does not really qualify as "Properly dispose" in my book.  Yet there are dozens of tires within 4 blocks of those shops.  Not a coincidence.

In addition to the Wawa shown in the picture, there are 4 more gas stations within 2 blocks of the creek at this point--7-11, Shell and a PW Police Vehicle gas station.  ALL of the runoff flows directly to the creek.  Add the auto repair oil changes and absolutely nothing in place to clean up accidental spills and we get a glossy sheen on the water. 

Living on Neabsco Creek

So, when my family found a beautiful new house bordering the Neabsco Creek wetlands in Woodbridge, VA in February 2010, I had no idea that it would evolve into a cause.   

But, as the months progress, I watched the state of the little waterway behind my house deteriorate at a rapid pace.  Of course, the builder of my community neglected to tell me how much debris and trash they had pulled out of the creek prior to selling my tiny community.  Trash, pollution, trees, tires, construction trash...it is all here. 

The problem is overwhelmingly bad...and this is the point just before the creek flows into the Potomac River, which then flows to the Chesapeake Bay and the Atlantic Ocean.  So, the problem of my little creek is a single example that is mirrored a thousand times in the US into the river that provides our drinking water.  That thought makes me slightly ill.

This creek at the point I am monitoring it sits on Prince William County Park Authority property.  So, this is blog is my journal of working with county officials and local non-profits and environmental groups to do my small part cleaning up the water...and my astonishment at the indifference from the people I thought were handling the problem.