Sewage Plant Makeover Is Flushed
Pricey Upgrade Quashes Arlington Art Project -- Minus $646,000

By Annie Gowen
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, April 17, 2006

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."

When she explained her idea to a room full of engineers, however, she heard a collective intake of horror. Someone pointed out the window to the fencing they used to secure their construction trailers.

"They pointed to it and said, 'That's what she's going to do on the site,' " Miss recalled. "Everybody kind of gasps and says, 'Oh, that's horrible.' It was just so frustrating. I was trying to use industrial material in a way that would be visually compelling."

In recent years, urban communities across the country trying to reclaim green space for parks have used public art to spiff up wastewater plants and former industrial sites. Outside Seattle, for example, artist Lorna Jordan was hired to transform a stormwater drainage pond into a series of "garden rooms" and a grotto where weddings are now held.

But the events in Arlington show the pitfalls facing localities here, where governments -- rich with tax revenue from rising real estate assessments -- have begun adding upscale amenities to please an increasingly affluent population. When the Arlington County Board approved the beautification project in 2004, more than a dozen neighbors weary of the malodorous plant showed up to support the project. None opposed it.

But the county's hopes for a sewer plant with Getty-worthy trimmings crashed amid a changing construction market and the county's rush to finish a vast $410 million expansion before strict state deadlines.

In a little more than a year, the cost for Miss's project had ballooned from a $2 million public art project to an $11 million part of the plant's infrastructure tab. At one point, she had a staff of two assistants each working full time at $80 an hour.

Officials at Arlington's Water Pollution Control Plant were facing a deadline after a consent agreement signed in March 2005 with the state's Department of Environmental Quality mandated expansion of plant capacity and reducing nitrogen levels that harm the Chesapeake Bay.

The plant must be expanded because the amount of sewage flowing in often exceeds the limit of 30 million gallons a day. On some rainy days, it reaches 70 million gallons. When the plant is overloaded, it is forced to discharge partially treated sewage into Four Mile Run.

Additional tanks to increase the capacity must be installed by December 2007 or the county could face stiff fines.

As officials grappled with the large-scale engineering task at hand, Miss's project faltered in late 2004 because of "internal discord," according to county documents. But Miss said County Manager Ron Carlee remained so taken with her vision that he dispatched his deputy, Kenneth L. Chandler, to visit Miss in her New York studio and persuade her to return.

Chandler "was very compelling about how important the project was to the county," Miss recalled. "I outlined the things I needed: being treated first of all as a respected member of the team. We were always seen as the errant troublemakers. We had to be treated with respect. . . . No more six-hour conference calls. We just wanted our lives not to be miserable."

She returned but not for long. Faced with skyrocketing costs of such construction materials steel and concrete, the county terminated her contract over the summer.

"The people operating the plant felt they could not deal with the art project," Miss said. "They were very overwhelmed by the huge expansion of the plant, and their expertise was in engineering. It was hard for them to wrap their minds around what we were trying to do. They couldn't handle it."

Arlington taxpayers -- who face 15 percent increases in their utility costs for the next five to 10 years to pay for the expansion -- will foot the $646,706 bill for the ill-fated project.

"To hear that the county spent $650,000 just for an artist's perception borders on lunacy," said Timothy Wise, president of the Arlington County Taxpayers Association.

Chandler said he hopes the county can deal with the aesthetics of the plant after the expansion is complete, possibly in 2012.

But Miss won't be involved. She has moved onto greener pastures -- literally. She's working on a design team recently chosen to turn 1,300 acres of a former military air base in Southern California into an enormous park.