Two Fairfax County supervisors are proposing to set up a county-funded flood insurance program to aid homeowners in storm-ravaged Huntington.
The announcement Thursday evening coincided with the release of a broad study by the Army Corps of Engineers on why the community was so severely devastated by floodwaters last summer.
About 150 homes on Arlington Terrace and Fenwick Drive sustained what amounted to millions of dollars of damage on June 25 when a wall of sewage-infested water crashed through from nearby Cameron Run. Only a few of the homeowners in the area had flood coverage.
Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerald Connolly and Mount Vernon District Supervisor Gerry Hyland are proposing the insurance program, which must be approved by the rest of the board.
“We’re going to provide grants and we’re going to help them fill out the paperwork, so they’ll all be covered with flood insurance,” Connolly said Friday.
But serious flood-prevention measures are a long way off, officials say, and the possibility that the community can be shored up this year against a repeat of last summer’s flooding seems bleak.
“I’m positive that we’re going to be flooded again,” said Mack Rhoades, president of the Huntington Community Association. “We’re already flooded now when we get heavy rains … if we get that kind of heavy rain again, I suspect there will be water up to the homes on Fenwick and Arlington Terrace.”
Projects such as dredging Cameron Run, or building flood walls and levees are “typically in the five-to-seven-year range” to complete, said Fairfax County spokesman Jim Person. “There are a lot of studies that have to go through,” he said. “[The projects are] very expensive, so funding hasto be found.”
The Army Corps of Engineers concluded that 40 years worth of sediment in Cameron Run added as much as 2 feet to flood levels, a fact not reflected in county and FEMA floodplain data.
It’s yet undetermined what jurisdiction or agency would be responsible for dredging the channel, which could cost upward of $17 million, according to Corps estimates.
Connolly was not enthusiastic about the idea of subsidizing a dredge with county coffers.
