Fairfax County has agreed to enter into a partnership with the U.S. Geological Survey to gain a better understanding of the county’s ailing waterways.
As part of the partnership, the USGS will install four water gauging stations throughout the county, which will collect flow and quality data each 15 minutes.
“It’s going to provide us a much better understanding of the condition these streams are in,” said Randy Bartlett, the county’s director of stormwater planning.
He said the sites haven’t been selected yet for the project, which he expects to begin this summer.
Fairfax County touts the effort as a means to examine the effects of “water quality best management practices” the county has put in place to reduce runoff and pollutants. The new stations will for the first time show the effect of those practices on an entire watershed, according to information provided by the county.
The effort, however, comes at a grim time for streams in the built-up county, and environmentalists say growth in Fairfax has caused extensive harm to water quality. More roads, sidewalks and parking lots have allowed greater amounts of unfiltered runoff and pollutants to pass into the water.
Ed Merrifield, executive director of Potomac Riverkeeper Inc., praised the monitoring plan but said efforts to fix the streams will be more important.
“It’s a lot easier to collect data than it is to do something,” he said. “Although we need the data, it’s important to stop polluting the water now.”
