To the Editor:

Our neighborhood experience with a Fairfax County Stormwater Management project is nothing like the rosy picture painted by Mr. Eric Knudsen (“Stormwater Management Engages Community,” Great Falls Connection, April 20-26, 2016). After three years of project planning and six months of destruction of private property, the finishing touches and clean-up are still not complete on our neighborhood “Stormwater Retrofit.” Our old, efficient storm drainage system was approved by the County and installed 35 years ago,effectively preventing erosion of land and flooding of roadways by massive flows of storm water and melting snow. It was just removed and replaced with swamps and unfenced ponds on private front lawns, just as the mosquito season is beginning and the Zika virus is moving to Virginia. Easement rights were claimed!

Our original drainage system routed the stormwater to an existing retention lake a few hundred feet away, without damaging erosion and no chance for mosquito reproduction. Now, with the new project, the water sits in the new mosquito producing ponds where toddlers and children used to play. They’ve been full for almost three months now. No water tests were done to see how much of our lawn fertilizer or deer poop washed into the existing retention lake. No consideration was given to locating the ponds just 30 feet south onto County property already in the flow path to the lake. No consideration was given to the loss of property values due to the presence of mosquito farms in the front yards.. No consideration was given to the number of pregnancies that would produce babies with microcephaly.

At a time when our nation’s infrastructure is crumbling and we can’t even afford to maintain the Memorial Bridge or the Metro, Fairfax County wastes millions on projects that corrupt the environment even further, and the GFCA proudly brings them to Great Falls.

Gene Phillip

Great Falls