Arlington is one of the most climate resilient places in the nation, according to a new set of rankings.
USA Today ranks Arlington No. 2 on its new-for-2024 “top-ranking cities for climate resiliency” list.
“Arlington, Virginia, has a low coastal and riverine flooding risk, and an even lower projected water stress score,” the newspaper wrote. “Arlington has made efforts to lower the risk of flooding… through stormwater management initiatives, including adding more capacity to stormwater processing facilities and increasing stormwater requirements to reduce pollution from new developments.”
Arlington also scored well for tree density and on a risk score published by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
“Out of a possible score of 100, Arlington has a FEMA risk score of 73.91, the third lowest of any city in our study,” a PR rep noted. “Arlington has a tree equity score of 88 out of 100. Greater tree density helps mitigate the effects of climate change by reducing energy demands for cooling and lowering overall greenhouse gas emissions.”
While climate change fuels rising oceans and more devastating natural disasters, Arlington is relatively insulated from the biggest risks. But that’s not to say we’re immune from some of the effects of climate change here.
Arlington has seen significant flooding events in recent years, with storms dropping large amounts of rain in a relatively short period of time. And that’s not to mention the occasional tornado.
But as USA Today points out, the county has been taking measures to mitigate the flooding risk, with increased investment in stormwater management infrastructure. Much of the newer investment was made in response to community concerns that arose after significant flooding throughout the county in July 2019.
An intensifying climate and ongoing impacts of the shift to remote work will transform Arlington over the next 25 years, experts say.
At the same time, the county’s workforce will need to become more nimble to keep up with changes driven by artificial intelligence.
Speakers made these predictions on Monday during a panel that kicked off a year-long discussion of what Arlington should look like two-and-a-half decades from now, called the Arlington 2050 Initiative.
Arlington County Board Chair Libby Garvey, who moderated the event, said the county will use community input to produce two or three visions to guide later decisions.
“For now, we’re just trying to get as many views as we can, as possible, to begin to form those alternate visions of what our future should be,” Garvey said.
At the end of the evening, a crowd of about 150 attendees filled out postcards imagining that they were describing Arlington in the year 2050. Common themes included more green spaces, expanded public transit and the erasure of racial and economic disparities.
“Diverse thought and opinions are prioritized in order to make Arlington a place where people can live comfortably, and at times during difficult conversations, uncomfortably, in order to progress our county,” said a 16-year-old representative from the Teen Network Board, reading aloud from a postcard.
The climate in 2050
In terms of the climate, Arlington’s 2050 forecast calls for hotter summers and more intense precipitation.
In the 1800s, Arlington used to experience about 20 days each summer above 90 degrees, said panelist Jason Samenow, a meteorologist and weather journalist at the Washington Post. These days, it’s more like 40.
Between 2041 and 2070, Arlington is expected to average 65 days each year above 90 degrees — and that’s based on an optimistic model. More aggressive scenarios, he said, call for even more serious impacts.
“It just means more suffering, especially for vulnerable populations, for people who are poor, the homeless,” Samenow said. “On hot summer nights, they can’t cool off. That increases heat-related illness, heat-related mortality.”
A warming climate disparately impacts urban areas such as Arlington, which tend to have lots of concrete and asphalt, he said. These surfaces absorb heat and radiate it back into the environment, making them hotter than more rural areas. The county can combat these effects by planting more trees and investing in surfaces that reflect heat instead of absorbing it.
In addition to heatwaves, heavy rainstorms are expected to take a toll and the meteorologist warned of more flash flooding such as the severe floods Arlington saw in 2019.
He urged the county to find ways to reroute traffic and redirect floodwaters during torrential rain.
“I think we have to start thinking real mitigation, from the perspective of how an engineer sees mitigation,” Samenow said. “That means redesigning how we live, redesigning how we work, redesigning how we play.”
Adapting to remote work
Another challenge that Arlington faces is people leaving.
Even before the pandemic, many young urban professionals across the country were seeking less expensive places to live, said Hamilton Lombard, a demographer at the University of Virginia Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service. Arlington was not immune from this trend, exacerbated by the shift to remote work, the consequences of which are still playing out.
Remote workers continue to leave Arlington en masse, Lombard said, noting that last year, people moved out of Arlington “on a scale comparable with 2020 and 2021.”
If many workers can live anywhere, the county needs to figure out why people should choose to remain here.
“There’s a lot of rural counties in Virginia that are very happy to compete with Arlington,” the demographer said. “I think five years ago, people would have laughed at that idea. But they’re not. They’re very serious about it now.”
As Arlington continues to seek solutions to the effects of remote work, Lombard said the county should consider just how much it has adapted and changed at other points in recent history, such as its “smart growth” along Metro corridors.
“Arlington has shown in the past that it has the capacity to make some serious adaptations and changes,” he said. “It did this with Metro. I think in the next couple decades, [Arlington is] going to have to make changes on a scale that has been successful in the past.”
A climate change protest temporarily shut down a Rosslyn bank this morning.
The relatively small demonstration drew a handful of older protests and a few of grad-school age to the Wells Fargo at 1500 Wilson Blvd.
The organizers, ThirdAct Virginia, touted it as a protest of elders demanding climate action alongside youth climate activists. It featured rocking chairs outside the bank and a sit-in inside. Just over a dozen people participated, most of them older.
The issue, according to organizers, is Wells Fargo’s role in the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a planned 300-mile natural gas pipeline which would run through parts of Virginia. Construction on the pipeline was again halted by a federal court this week, despite being fast-tracked by Congress in the recent debt limit deal.
More on the protest, below, from a ThirdAct Virginia press release.
Members of ThirdAct Virginia, elders demanding climate action, and youth climate activists shut down an Arlington branch of Wells Fargo, disrupting business by staging a sit-in inside and protesting outside.
The multi-generational group, some sitting in rocking chairs outside the bank, sang songs and chanted, and waved signs and banners, demanding that the bank stop funding new fossil fuel projects including the contested Mountain Valley Pipeline that cuts across the mountains of southern Appalachia in West Virginia and Virginia.
The Friday protest is part of a series of actions across the country against the big four dirty banks (Wells Fargo, Chase, Bank of America, and Citibank) that are the worst offenders, continuing to finance billions of dollars in new fossil fuel projects, despite surging climate disasters. A large public protest with art, music and dance is planned for later in the day outside Wells Fargo headquarters in San Francisco.
The July 14 protests are timed to coincide with the announcement Friday of the bank’s 2023 second quarter earnings results.
This spring, Arlington County began buying up properties in the Waverly Hills area to combat flooding.
Already, despite some concerns about how the program would work, three residents have agreed to sell their homes. The county will tear them down and replant the land so water has a place to flow during large rain storms.
All seven Arlington County Board candidates — six of whom are vying for the support of the local Democratic party this primary — say the county needs to change its land-use policies and get more people on board with adding stormwater infrastructure in their backyards, in order to make neighborhoods more resilient to a predicted increase in flooding.
“The July 2018 and 2019 floods in particular really drove this home for us — we had some real life-safety issues pertaining to flooding,” Susan Cunningham said in a forum hosted by nonprofit advocacy group EcoAction Arlington last week.
“[It] highlighted that, not only because of climate change but really because of lack of long-range planning, we have very outdated stormwater management systems that we don’t have a budget to improve,” she continued. “We do have a lot of catch up to do.”
Since the floods, Arlington County has taken steps to manage stormwater beyond buying homes for flood relief.
Starting next year, Arlington will fund its stormwater management plan with a stormwater utility fee. The county will charge property owners a rate based on how much of their property is covered in hard surfaces, like roofs and driveways. (Currently, it is funded by a tax based on property assessments.)
Other changes include new regulations requiring single-family home construction projects to retain more water and some $90 million in bond referenda from 2020 and 2022 for stormwater projects.
Developers of single-family homes report higher construction costs due to retention regulations. Bonds and the new stormwater utility fee, meanwhile, could spell higher taxes for residents.
So, in this race, some candidates say the county should examine how its own policies encourage flooding before requiring more of residents.
Cunningham and Natalie Roy, both of whom have opposed the recently adopted Missing Middle zoning changes, that starts with reducing the allowable buildable area that homes can occupy on a lot.
“This is something that we should’ve done 10 years ago and definitely something we should have done before approving the misguided [Missing Middle] plan,” Roy said.
Perennial independent candidate Audrey Clement said she would call for the repeal of Missing Middle, linking the new policy to tree loss and thus, increased flooding.
She said she would also end a practice among developers to subdivide lots to circumvent state environmental ordinances preventing construction near protected land along Arlington streams called “resource protection areas,” or RPAs.
“It was by this sleight of hand that the county permitted a tear-down McMansion in a North Arlington RPA in 2018 but also the destruction of a 100-foot state champion redwood on the same lot,” she said.
The northbound lanes of the GW Parkway are blocked near Potomac Overlook Regional Park in Arlington due to a protest.
Climate protesters associated with the group Declare Emergency blocked the busy commuter route shortly before 8:45 a.m.
U.S. Park Police officers are on the scene.
Northbound traffic on the Parkway is backed up to Spout Run.
Update at 9:25 a.m. — Traffic is starting to move again, according to WTOP and USPP.
Traffic update: Road closures on the George Washington Memorial Parkway have reopened. https://t.co/CNWBkhHXu2
— USPPNEWS (@usparkpolicepio) April 26, 2023
Declare Emergency supporters block traffic because this is an emergency, we all need to act like it!#a22network #ClimateEmergency #ClimateAction #declareemergency pic.twitter.com/wXEglGiu36
— Declare Emergency (@DecEmergency) April 26, 2023
#DeclareEmergency supporters step out onto the #gwparkway to demand climate action. This is nonviolent #civildisobedience, this is done out of love for our fellow humans and our collective future. #A22Network #stopwillow #ClimateAction pic.twitter.com/gwqOsheFwN
— Declare Emergency (@DecEmergency) April 26, 2023
Police are on scene with Declare Emergency protestors on the #gwparkway
We disrupt the status quo for a livable future. #A22Network #declareemergency #climateaction #civildisobedience pic.twitter.com/hM3zvtRloJ
— Declare Emergency (@DecEmergency) April 26, 2023
U.S. Park Police are dealing with a large group of protesters who are blocking traffic on the George Washington Parkway. #VATraffic @ARLnowDOTcom https://t.co/cLchLHsvMP
— Alan Henney (@alanhenney) April 26, 2023
LOCATION: NB George Washington Parkway / Spout Run Parkway
INCIDENT: Police Department Activity
IMPACT: Traffic is blocked on the George Washington Parkway from Spout Run Parkway to Chain Bridge. Seek Alternate routes. pic.twitter.com/JXpMk2Rf5M— Arlington Alert (@ArlingtonAlert) April 26, 2023
Hat tip to Alan Henney. Map via Google Maps.
(Updated at 4:35 p.m.) Tree canopy in Arlington County is lower than it was in 2016, according to a new privately-funded study paid for local residents.
The residents, who are involved in Arlington County Civic Federation, Arlington Tree Action Group and EcoAction Arlington, funded the study to how much tree canopy declined since the last county study in 2017.
Based on imaging from 2021, a consultant found that trees cover 33% of land — excluding the Pentagon and Reagan National Airport — down from 41% on the same land six years ago. Coverage ranges by civic association, from 14% in Crystal City to 66% in the county’s northernmost neighborhood of Arlingwood, compared to 26% and 75%, respectively, in 2011.
“It’s really eye-opening,” one of the residents behind the study, Mary Glass, tells ARLnow. “Ideally, the county would have had this, but they didn’t.”
The tree lovers commissioned the study out of frustration with the county for not doing so before beginning work on a Forestry Natural Resource Plan (FNRP).
This updates a 2004 Urban Forest Master Plan and a 2010 Natural Resources Management Plan in one document to address climate change, population growth and threats such as diseases and invasive species, says Dept. of Parks and Recreation spokeswoman Jerry Solomon. It has an eye toward racial equity and environmental justice, to make sure all residents benefit physically and mentally from Arlington’s natural resources.
Combining the plans “allows us to consider Arlington’s ecosystem holistically and craft a more comprehensive set of recommendations for conservation and resource management in the future,” Solomon said.
During this process, and during the Missing Middle housing discussions that concluded with zoning updates earlier this month, preserving trees from redevelopment was mentioned as a top priority for many residents. (The zoning changes approved by the County Board specifies requirements for shade trees on properties redeveloped with Missing Middle housing.)
To help, volunteers from Marymount University and EcoAction Arlington have been planting trees in the hotter, less leafy parts of Arlington.
Now, Glass says, she hopes people will use the new data when the next Forestry Natural Resource Plan draft is published and ready for community input.
“This information is going to be right there so when the next draft comes out, in the next month or so, we’ll be able to make specific comments and recommendations based on the information we have,” Glass said.
The draft could be ready for community feedback this spring or early summer, Solomon said. The parks department spokesperson added that staff have seen the new study and “are excited about the community’s enthusiasm for our urban forests.”
However, she added, “we have not seen the underlying data and don’t have a full understanding of the methodology. As a result, we cannot speak to any discrepancies without adequately assessing it for accuracy, margin of error, or underlying assumptions.”
The department said it felt comfortable starting the plan update based on the overall downward trends in the previous tree canopy studies. Solomon said the current draft acknowledges and has recommendations for reversing the decline in tree canopy.
Despite marginal fluctuations, from a high of 43% in 2008 to a low of 40% in 2011 and a slight uptick to 41% in 2017, the county says tree coverage in parks is offsetting declining tree coverage on residential properties.
“Knowing this, we decided to prioritize the update of the FNRP in order to identify strategies to reverse that trend and address other environmental challenges sooner rather than later,” she said. Read More
(Updated at 1 p.m. on 03/21/23) Arlington County is looking to buy its first home for flood prevention.
The county has entered an agreement to buy the home at 4437 18th Street N. in the Waverly Hills neighborhood for $969,200, according to a staff report to the Arlington County Board.
The Board is set to review and approve the agreement during its meeting on Saturday.
The single-family home and detached garage is located in the Spout Run watershed, which has been hit hard by recent flooding events, such as the floods seen in July 2019. It will be torn down and the property will be replanted to serve as “overland relief,” at a cost of around $350,000.
Overland relief is a safe flowpath for flood waters to the nearest stream or storm drain during a large storm event. (An earlier version of this story incorrectly explained overland relief.)
Arlington County is looking to step up its mitigation efforts in response to severe weather events. While the 2019 flood has been described as a “100-year flood” — or a flood that has a 1% chance of happening each year — some research suggests these may occur more frequently due to rising sea levels and more frequent and severe storms, which are linked to climate change.
As part of this effort, last year county staff sent letters of interest to 38 properties in parts of the Waverly Hills and Cherrydale neighborhoods where overland relief is “an essential element” to manage extreme flooding, the report says. Funding for this voluntary property acquisition program was included in the adopted one-year 2022 capital improvement plan.
“The County will pursue acquisitions of properties whose owners are willing to sell to the County, and whose properties would allow for greater access to existing stormwater infrastructure for potential future upgrades, provide overland relief during periods of intense rainfall,and other future engineering solutions,” it says.
“Several” owners have indicated interest in selling to the county, the report added.
ARLnow last reported that there is some interest among residents in selling, while a number of others say that uprooting their families would come at too high a cost.
We were also told several had unanswered questions about the process and how these properties will be managed. One concern is that a piecemeal acquisition process would result in a “checkerboard” of homes and blighted-looking properties.
That “checkerboard” could result in “community fragmentation, difficulty with providing municipal services, and inability to restore full floodplain functionality,” and is one reason local governments may have a hard time getting enough community support for buyouts, according to a Congressional Research Service report.
Other reasons include the potential impacts on property values and housing stock and fears of displacement, it says.
Still, people are more likely to be interested in selling after a major flooding event.
“Buyouts are often a politically unpopular option unless there is a particularly catastrophic event that changes people’s willingness to move and creates unified state and local support for relocation,” the report noted.
Other research shows that property buyouts are one of the most effective tools at the disposal of local governments to combat frequent flooding.
“At their best, they provide a permanent solution,” according to Pew Research. “Effective buyouts prevent future damage, make people safer, and ideally protect entire neighborhoods or communities. Moreover, once bought-out properties become natural open space, they can provide an added benefit of absorbing additional stormwater, further reducing flooding and helping to conserve habitats.”
The most scorching parts of Arlington are along the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor and Reagan National Airport, according to a new study.
On a hot day last July, volunteers and Marymount University research students and staff recorded temperatures at morning, afternoon and evening throughout the county as part of the Virginia Foundation for Independent Colleges’ Heat Watch Campaign. Residents across the Commonwealth also contributed to the statewide data collection effort.
That data has since been compiled into heat maps, released this week, that cover more than 300 square miles of Virginia. Environmentalists say this information is helpful for targeting solutions to heat: planting more trees where possible and, where that is not possible, adding amenities like community gardens and planted walls.
Although Arlington County is compact, temperatures varied by up to 7 degrees depending on location. The Rosslyn-Ballston corridor, for example, recorded a temperature of 94.8 degrees at 3 p.m., and less than two miles away, neighborhoods near the Potomac Overlook Regional Park clocked in at 87.8 degrees.
Marymount University assistant biology professor Susan Agolini says highly populated areas like Ballston and Clarendon are often hotter because concrete and asphalt absorb heat and radiate it back into the environment, while the North Arlington neighborhoods closest to the Potomac River have trees and gardens to soak up that sunshine.
“I do not think there were any surprises here with regard to what areas were hotter,” Agolini said. “We know that locations with a lot of pavement and cement are going to be hotter than areas with a lot of trees and green space. The question is what do we do about that?”
Agolini says she will bring this data to conversations with county officials about urban planning and cooling solutions, such as planting trees and incentivizing the creation of community gardens around buildings and on their rooftops.
For example, 23% of the Ballston-Virginia Square Civic Association had tree canopy compared to 74% of the Bellevue Forest Civic Association, according to the most recent county tree canopy data, from 2016.
“I find it really compelling that the benefits of and need for increased space for urban agriculture could actually serve multiple purposes,” Agolini said. “It would not only provide Arlington residents with the physical and mental health benefits of growing their own food, but it could also have the added benefit of decreasing the impact of heat disparities throughout the county.”
Elenor Hodges — the executive director of the community organization promoting environmental stewardship, EcoAction Arlington — helped collect temperature data last summer. She says the data provide “another way of looking at a known issue.”
And the solution — more trees and plantings — has benefits that bleed into other environmental and public health goals, she said.
“If you’re building in an area and you can think about having it be as green and plant-based green as possible then that makes the space cooler,” she said. “You can be happier in this space, healthier, and it helps with carbon and it reduces stormwater runoff.”
Hodges said EcoAction Arlington would like to see this data inform developments currently going through the county review processes so that the projects can reduce, rather than contribute to, Arlington’s heat zones.
This includes planting walls of plants, blending indoor and outdoor spaces, and adding trees and plantings to grass-covered parks, as grass doesn’t absorb as much heat.
The organization, which oversees a county program that plants trees on private property through developer contributions, will be launching a campaign to encourage planting in neighborhoods with less tree canopy that also have higher rates of poverty and substantial non-white populations.
For example, tree canopy levels are under 30% in the Arlington View, Buckingham and Green Valley neighborhoods, she said.
“Those are neighborhoods we are going to be looking at more carefully,” Hodges said.
County Prepping New Tree Study — “Arlington leaders may take their next crack at guesstimating the number of trees in the county – a topic not without political as well as environmental ramifications – early in 2023, if all goes according to plan… estimating the cost at $100,000 to $150,000.” [Sun Gazette]
New Name for GMU Arlington Campus — “George Mason University announced today that its Arlington Campus will be renamed Mason Square as the new centerpiece of the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor for multi-disciplinary talent and business development, as well as a civic and cultural destination. Also being announced is Fuse at Mason Square, the name of the new technology-forward building that is the heart of Mason’s commitment to growing Northern Virginia’s next-generation workforce. A groundbreaking ceremony for Fuse at Mason Square will take place April 6.” [Press Release]
FBI Warns of ‘Sextortion’ of Boys — “The FBI Washington Field Office is warning parents and caregivers about an increase in incidents involving sextortion of young children. The FBI is receiving an increasing number of reports of adults posing as young girls coercing young boys through social media to produce sexual images and videos and then extorting money from them.” [FBI]
Nature Center Staffing Slowly Returning — “Don’t expect hours of operation at Arlington’s two county-government natures centers to return to pre-pandemic levels in the coming year, or maybe ever, but local leaders say that doesn’t mean nature programs won’t have priority in coming years… [the] hope for the coming year was to use funding for temporary workers to increase hours at the nature center, including perhaps evening hours.” [Sun Gazette]
Church Wins Climate Award — “Rock Spring Congregational United Church of Christ’s commitment to fighting climate change over the past 15 years landed it a top award in the 2022 Cool Congregations Challenge. Rock Spring, on Little Falls Road in Arlington, was named the 2022 winner of the Energy Saver category in the challenge, sponsored by Interfaith Power & Light, a nonprofit group that seeks to motivate people of faith to take steps to address climate change.” [Patch]
Alexandria Schools Propose SRO Extension — “Alexandria City Public Schools is requesting an extension of its controversial school resource officer (SRO) program through the end of the 2022-2023 school year. School Board Chair Meagan Alderton says that the extension is part of the reimagining of the $800,000 program.” [ALXnow]
It’s Friday — Mostly cloudy throughout the day. High of 58 and low of 47. Sunrise at 7:05 am and sunset at 7:26 pm. [Weather.gov]
Arrests in Cold Case Murder — Updated at 7:50 a.m. — “The Arlington County Police Department’s Cold Case Unit is announcing James Christopher Johnson, 59, of Alexandria, Va, and Bobby Joe Leonard, 53, have been charged in relation to the 1998 homicide of Andrea Cincotta in the Colonial Village neighborhood. Mr. Johnson is being held without bond at the Arlington County Detention Center and Mr. Leonard is being held on unrelated charges at Wallens Ridge State Prison. On August 21, 1998, 52-year-old Andrea Cincotta was found dead inside the bedroom of the apartment she shared with Mr. Johnson in the 1700 block of N. Rhodes Street.” [Washington Post, ACPD]
Cool Reception for Climate Emergency Push — “A proposal by two local environmental groups that the Arlington County government declare a ‘climate-change emergency’ received the back of the hand, albeit politely delivered, from County Board members on Nov. 13… ‘We hear you… but understand that we are not able to declare an emergency that gives the local government broader power,’ [said] County Board member Christian Dorsey.” [Sun Gazette]
It’s Friday — Today will be sunny, with a high near 47. Northwest wind 11 to 17 mph, with gusts as high as 30 mph. Sunrise at 6:56 a.m. and sunset at 4:51 p.m. Increasing clouds Saturday, with a high near 49. A slight chance of showers after 1 p.m. Sunday, but otherwise mostly cloudy with a high near 55. [Weather.gov]
Photo courtesy Tom Mockler/Twitter
In our area it seems like every September there’s a stretch of perfect late-summer or early-fall weather, with sunny skies and comfortable temperatures.
And it appears we have just entered such a stretch.
The ten-day forecast currently includes no rain, and a range of high temperatures between 75-84 degrees. Granted, such stretches are often too fleeting, but — it sure is nice while it lasts.
Today’s kickoff of the D.C. area’s Nice September Stretch follows an extended period of awful weather. Deluges of rain, storms that knock out power, and borderline unbearable combinations of heat and humidity in between. It felt like it was never going to end.
With our weather dreams coming true, albeit temporarily, we were wondering just how excited locals were about it. Beyond extended stretches of nice weather being a bit… well, boring… there’s also a thought given to the need to water plants, wash the car, etc. if it stays dry for too long.
And, just how much do locals care about the weather after all? If we really prioritized warm temperatures and sunny skies to go along with the expensive real estate, wouldn’t more of us be packing up and moving to Southern California?
Given the national picture — destruction caused by Hurricane Ida and deadly floods and devastating wildfires — we should be counting our weather blessings. This is not to minimize the suffering of those recently affected by severe weather, which top scientists say is being made worse by climate change.
But sticking to our local reality here in Arlington, this morning we’re wondering just how jazzed everyone is for our run of September weather perfection.