Sewage Plant Makeover Is Flushed

Perhaps it was a marriage doomed from the start: an avant-garde environmental artist from New York and the engineers at Arlington's sewer plant.

Three years ago, eco-friendly Arlington hired the Tribeca artist to redecorate its sewage treatment plant, hoping to transform a stinky industrial site near Route 1 into a pretty "gateway" to its "world-class community."

For two years, the artist worked on her vision: A fern garden would grow in part of an abandoned digester where tiny bugs once devoured the unmentionable. Flowering crossvines would climb unsightly tanks. Visitors could gather on a terrace to watch clean water bubble into pools. There would be trellises and rain gardens and fountains.

Now, after $646,000 of public money has been spent on artist fees, the plan itself has landed in the toilet.

"It's like a bad dream," said the fired artist, Mary Miss. "I can't bear to think about this."

Arlington officials quietly shelved it after learning that a required upgrade of the plant that they are rushing to complete could cost $60 million more than expected. The complex of tanks and snaking white pipes -- which sits at a prominent spot near the Potomac Yard shopping center -- is often overloaded with sewage, and Arlington must expand its capacity by next year or face state fines.

"Mary was trying to change the tires on a tractor-trailer going down the road at 95 miles an hour," said Larry Slattery, the plant's bureau chief. Some of her ideas were innovative, he said, but he added dryly, "It's very difficult to put a rain garden over existing utilities we have to maintain."

Miss, who has also overseen public art projects in New York's Battery Park and in Santa Fe, N.M., said she envisioned making the "invisible visible," prompting residents who might prefer not to know what happens after the toilet flushes to contemplate or even tour the plant. Information kiosks were to dot the Edenlike landscape. She thought people might even picnic there.

"The challenge, I believe, was Mary's attempt to create connectivity through art," said Joseph Maurer, a Brooklyn, N.Y., landscape architect who worked on the project. "Here is a landscape that's entirely industrial in appearance . . . an eyesore. Rather than just prettify this urban landscape, she tried to give it a sense of importance in our daily life."

To say that the nuts-and-bolts guys at the plant did not get it is an understatement, everyone involved concedes.

Take the discussion about the green moiré fence.

Miss wanted to run layers of steel mesh fence, painted bright green, around the perimeter of the plant. To passersby, she said, it would look like a glittering geometric pattern, "activating the fencing and making it seem lively."