Prior Flood Remedies Were Ignored
As Huntington Continues Mop-Up, Army Corps Probes Cause

By Bill Turque
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 24, 2006; B01

Fairfax County commissioned two major studies that recommended a floodwall or an earthen berm to protect the Huntington neighborhood that was inundated by waters from Cameron Run during heavy rains last month.

Officials said last week that they are not sure why the studies -- one completed in December 1977 and the other in April 1982 -- failed to trigger any action. It appears, however, that the flood protection measures were considered too costly.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has begun investigating the June 25 flooding that seriously damaged more than half of the neighborhood's 311 homes and caused an estimated $10 million in losses -- making it one of the hardest-hit areas in the region. The foul, sewage-laden water rose to nearly 14 feet in some locations, the county estimates.

The two reports are part of a virtual library of data that Fairfax has forwarded to the Corps of Engineers for its inquiry. Officials have found at least six studies by government agencies examining aspects of the neighborhood near the tip of the Cameron Run watershed, which drains runoff from a 42-square-mile area, including Tysons Corner, into the Potomac River.

County officials have declined to speculate on the cause of last month's flooding. One possible contributor is a construction barge from the Woodrow Wilson Bridge project that broke loose during the storm, blocking parts of Cameron Run. Some residents suspect the new bridge itself of obstructing storm water, a claim disputed by state officials. One widely discussed possibility -- that Lake Barcroft opened its floodgates -- was effectively ruled out last week by the county.

The other explanation is that silt, sediment and other byproducts from years of intensive development have simply turned Cameron Run into the equivalent of a coronary artery narrowed by plaque. It left the torrents of storm water with nowhere to go but into a community that has experienced episodes of flooding before, but nothing approaching the ferocity of last month's deluge.

"We're better off sitting down with the Corps and working things through," said county Public Works Director Jimmie Jenkins, declining to discuss possible causes.

The 1977 study, prepared by the consulting engineering firm Parsons Brinckerhoff, proposed a 5,100-foot berm with a maximum height of 14.5 feet to protect the Huntington neighborhood, including Fenwick Drive and Arlington Terrace, the two residential streets hardest hit last month. Such a structure might have contained Cameron Run.

But the estimated cost, from $2.4 million to $3.2 million, or more than $10 million in today's dollars, was considered too steep. In a memo to then-Mount Vernon District Supervisor Warren I. Cikins, former county executive Robert W. Wilson said, "Current storm bond funds cannot support a project of such magnitude."

Officials said they have yet to find any indication in the minutes of the Board of Supervisors, then chaired by the late John F. "Jack" Herrity, that the study was discussed by the whole board.

Jenkins said the project would have been even costlier because the consultants' estimates did not take into account modifications to storm sewers that would have been necessary for the berm to be effective.

Parsons Brinckerhoff warned that there was no easy fix. "Although the cost is high, any solution to this extensive problem will be costly," the firm's 1977 study concluded.

A 1982 study by the engineering firm Camp Dresser and McKee proposed a concrete floodwall to contain waters rising to 14.8 feet, which might also have spared Huntington. Again, the estimated cost was high -- $3.5 million, or about $6.3 million today. And the study appears to have sunk without a trace.

County spokeswoman Merni Fitzgerald said there is "a shared responsibility" for the inaction, pointing to voters' rejection of proposed bond issues for storm drainage in 1978 and 1990.

Nevertheless, Supervisor Gerald W. Hyland (D-Mount Vernon) said he intends to reopen the issue. "This community deserves and should demand a flood control project to keep the water out," he said last week.

For Huntington residents, who saw Cameron Run rise to blow out windows, buckle brick walls and drench basements in raw sewage, the long, sweaty slog back to normalcy continues.

Watermarks run like nasty surgical scars along backyard fences and front doors. Most of the 150 houses damaged by the flood are legally habitable but a long way from being home again. Harry Shepler, a county social worker on Fenwick Drive, estimates that only 10 to 15 of the 48 houses on the street have people living there full time.

Basements, still drying out, are empty save for the buzzing dehumidifiers. Debt, mold and mosquitoes are on everyone's list of worries. One contractor with jobs in the area estimates that those without flood insurance face paying $20,000 to $35,000 to replace appliances, water heaters, paneling and hardwood floors. Still, many consider the worst behind them.

"We're seeing a little bit of light at the end of the tunnel," said Robert Pagnella, a retired Postal Service worker whose basement, like most of those on Fenwick Drive, was flooded to the ceiling. His wife, Ella, who at first teared up when she tried to describe the lost china and other totaled family treasures from their home of 39 years, quickly brightened.

"Just talking about it makes me feel better," she said.

Almost to a person, they are full of praise for the county's response, which ranged from supplying drinking water and ice to paying for hotel rooms. At a community meeting Tuesday night, residents presented a cake to Hyland, who has been a bulldoglike presence at the Huntington Community Center, snipping red tape and nipping at the heels of county staff members he thinks are not moving quickly enough.

"The county has been very proactive," Shepler said. "The services have been outstanding."

Henny Toeti, a retired bartender and restaurant manager who lives across the street from Shepler on Fenwick Drive, said the disaster has brought the diverse neighborhood of modest 1950s-vintage duplexes together as never before.

"We see each other now! I've gained more of a family," she said, upbeat even after a bulldozer removing foul-smelling mud dislodged a light pole, which fell on wires connected to her house, yanking out part of an upstairs wall.

But also lingering are uncertainties about the future and whether residents are repairing their homes only to have them flooded again. More studies are on the way -- including a long-range plan for the Cameron Run watershed, currently in draft form, that makes recommendations for flood protection.

The Rev. Carolyn Boyd, sitting wilted and forlorn on the front steps of her Arlington Terrace home, wonders whether other, more prosperous areas of the county -- a McLean or a Reston -- would be left so vulnerable for so long.

"They wouldn't do this to other communities," she said. "There's this perception that we don't matter."