To the Editor:

I recently participated in a Great Falls Citizen Association (GFCA) Town Hall Meeting and spoke, as a panel participant, to my personal experience living in Great Falls and dealing with Stormwater. I spent 19 years working with Fairfax County trying to alleviate and repair damage from water runoff through my property. This was a long process with many lessons learned. Small changes within the neighborhood made visible changes to the erosion problem but our neighborhood woodlands began to deteriorate when a new subdivision was constructed up the hill from our property, with no thought to controlling water runoff. Six houses with lawns and driveways and roofs and the road supporting them, all sloping downhill, added a hundred years like flood every spring/fall. The water runs from this development, across the pipeline which is kept mowed, and continues downhill through the woods to my property.

The destruction was very detrimental. It cut my property down to bedrock and this began to widen. I was very worried about losing our big old shade trees. I continued to work with the county but they could barely keep up with the changes. From my kitchen window in the winter time I would see the banks breaking off in chunks just like a glacier, with the chunks falling into the bottom of the stream bed. And this was without any rain. Our bridge was washed away. The county continued to work to find and develop state of the art methods to remediate and restore the damage and that would be in keeping with and maintain the rural/woods and beautiful nature we have. At long last, they did a beautiful restoration and saved our shade trees. It now looks like an extension of Great Falls Park with strategically placed boulders and stone and catch ponds to slow down the flow of water and stop the erosion.

However, given my experience I am very concerned about the continued development in our community. New houses, more roofs, driveways, lawns, clearing of beautiful trees, denuded woods from the deer and development will add an enormous amount of runoff and continued destruction of our woods and properties including bridges, roads and trails, schools, broken dams and drained ponds, exposure of geothermal pipes, and more.

So here’s my take from all of this: Educate yourself. Talk to your neighbors and work with them. Go online and look at the county plans and new ordinances. Work through issues, work together with your neighbors. If you have erosion on your property, get in queue with the county. It is very helpful to take pictures and video and send and show them to the county. If you can, put together your own neighbor stormwater group, give yourself a name and present your own issue or project to the county. Take field trips if you can to neighboring counties and see what they have done. The more up to speed and organized you are the better. These are community issues. Work with and support the Great Falls Citizens Association and contact the Storm Water Task Force at SWTF_Help@GFCA.org. Get involved and help yourself and our community.

Beverly Geserick

Great Falls