In 2025, Arlington County will embark on a major project to rehabilitate the Gulf Branch stream.
Planning for the project began in 2019. The project was paused during the pandemic due to budget constraints but remained in focus due to the stream’s poor conditions today.
“Gulf Branch is a high-priority stream resilience project because of active erosion, infrastructure concerns and habitat degradation,” the county said.
After a two-year pause, Arlington resumed design work and had 60% complete designs by last October. Now, the county’s Dept. of Environmental Services is seeking feedback on the designs.
Final design work, permit acquisition and procurement are all expected to happen this this year. Construction would then start in 2025.
Arlington County aims to combat future erosion and ensure the stream can handle surges of water during storms. The extent of erosion today can be seen in a county video, below, walking through the most recent project updates.
As part of the project, the stream corridor will be replanted and stone and log structures and step pools will be added behind the Glebe Park tennis courts and near Broyhill Forest Park and the Gulf Branch Nature Center.
Also near Broyhill Forest Park and the nature center, stream beds will be raised to bury exposed sanitary sewer pipes. This is intended to prevent sewage from seeping into the stream and stave off emergency repairs, according to a project webpage.
Excess sediment will be reduced to meet regulatory requirements for what flows into the Potomac River and the Chesapeake Bay, the website said. The work also includes habitat enhancements for the local wildlife and increased public access to the stream.
During earlier feedback periods, some community members urged DES to take a more proactive approach to tackling erosion, according to an online survey. In response, the county says it expanded the project scope to include a dry stream bed that is west of the Nature Center, running the width of Glebe Road Park.
Additionally, residents were concerned about noise and equipment traffic during construction. To limit these impacts, the county decided to create separate temporary construction entrances to the main stem of Gulf Branch — from Broyhill Forest Park and Military Road — according to DES spokeswoman Katie O’Brien.
DES says it also heard from several people concerned about runoff closer to the stream’s source. In response, it proposed four “green street” rain garden projects in the watershed, downstream of Military Road.
The locations are as follows:
- The N. Piedmont Street cul-de-sac
- The corner of 36th Road N. and N. Nelson Street
- The corner of N. Nelson Street and N. Oakland Street
- 36th Road N. near the stairs to the Gulf Branch trail
The county began meeting with people neighboring the proposed green street projects in the fall of 2022 and has since continued that engagement as well as design work.
Construction on the green street projects is expected to begin in mid-2024.
Arlington County will be stabilizing part of the Donaldson Run stream to prevent erosion.
On Saturday, the Arlington County Board approved without discussion a more than $888,200 contract with Sagres Construction Corporation to complete the work.
The project could provide relief to nearby property owners who have been trying for years to get the county to make improvements to the stream, but were stymied by land access issues, per a county report.
Two storm drain outfalls — openings that empty water into the stream — were in poor condition and discharged water onto private property, causing “significant erosion” downstream and possibly damaging private retaining walls and trees.
The county could not fix these outfalls, however, because they were left off “properly recorded” easements. And that was not the only problem.
“Since the stream meanders across multiple different properties, no one landowner could initiate a private project to stabilize the erosion,” the report said. “Residents were fearful due to large trees that had fallen on homes and private infrastructure, such as retaining walls and decks, and had been requesting assistance with the severe erosion for many years.”
The report credits county leadership for rallying multiple landowners within the Analostan Homes Association — a small townhouse community near a county-owned water tower — to provide temporary and permanent construction easements to make the project happen.
Impacted residents are “generally supportive of the project,” the report adds.
The project begins at the stream’s headwaters at the 24th Street N. storm sewer outfall and extends about 650 feet downstream to a previously restored portion of Donaldson Run.
For this project, 28 trees will be removed and Sagres will reforest the area with 630 trees and 188 shrubs, per a project webpage. The company will use rocks and plants to stabilize the stream banks from 24th Street N. to the place where previous work ended.
Sagres will replace a failing retaining wall at the end of a stormwater pipe, called an endwall, add back soil to the stream valley and install some rock, wood or earth structures that hold that dirt down, preventing more erosion, which the county calls grade control measures.
An informational meeting about the project will be held on Tuesday, March 28, according to the project webpage. Some tree removal has already begun on the site, the site notes.
Tree removal has been a significant concern among some residents during previous restoration projects including, recently, restoration work on Donaldson Run farther downstream.
Construction is expected to begin in April or May and take about nine months. Sagres will access the construction site from 25th Street N. and the 11-acre hilltop property called Missionhurst.
(Updated at 4:30 p.m.) Arlington County is moving forward with a project to restore Donaldson Run Tributary B despite some vocal public opposition.
On Tuesday, the County Board voted 4-1 to award a $1.5 million contract to restore a segment of the stream beginning at N. Upton Street and extending about 1,400 feet downstream to where it meets with Donaldson Run Tributary A in Zachary Taylor Park. Takis Karantonis cast the dissenting vote.
The vote came after a handful of locals criticized the proposed project for sacrificing trees, as well as allegedly misusing taxpayer dollars and ignoring changing scientific opinions.
With the vote, the county will use an approach similar to the one taken in 2006 to restore Donaldson Run Tributary A.
The project will address “critical infrastructure, public safety and environmental threats,” the county said. It “will stabilize the stream’s eroding banks to protect existing stream valley infrastructure, including the threatened water main and sanitary sewer, which crosses the stream and runs parallel to it.”
Staff said 83 trees will be axed as part of the project, which has been in the works since 2004.
Board Chair Matt de Ferranti told public speakers he agreed with many of their points but he is ultimately supporting what county staff recommended.
“We need to work on impervious cover and climate change but we also lost more than 20 trees since 2017 due to some of the washout that has come,” he said.
Critics weren’t convinced.
The restoration of Tributary A “failed miserably,” said Rod Simmons, who said he worked on the project and argued that it actually made flooding and runoff worse. Those recommending a different solution say theirs is cheaper, less intensive, and will save more trees.
“I am heart-sick at the devastation of the Donaldson Run ecosystem that will result from this project but I am even more distressed at the systemic discounting of the importance and integrated nature of the unique ecosystems in Arlington such as Donaldson Run,” said Mary Glass, a local resident. “For more than a decade, concerned citizens have provided valuable information on the adverse impact of this project and constructive alternatives to reach the same results…It’s a shame that despite all of this, no significant modification has occurred.”
Karantonis argued that the area needs restoration but 83 felled trees is too high a price.
“I don’t think we did everything we could to minimize impact,” he said.
But Jason Papacosma, the watershed programs manager for Arlington County, said the method suggested by the advocates is not applicable to the “very high-energy environment” of Donaldson Run.
In the midst of Arlington’s efforts to protect local streams, the county last week released an extensive guide debunking what it says are common stream restoration “myths,” touching on everything from ecology to rain gardens.
The following six “myths” were challenged by the county:
- #1: If Arlington County did proper maintenance on the streams, we wouldn’t need to do stream restoration.
- #2: If Arlington County regulated infill development more, the streams wouldn’t be in such bad shape.
- #3: More rain gardens and trees in the watershed could restore the streams without having to reconstruct the stream channel.
- #4: Stream restoration makes stream habitat and stream ecology worse.
- #5: Streams should never overtop their banks. After stream restoration, stream flow should be significantly less.
- #6: The July 8, 2019 storm showed that stream restoration projects cannot handle intense storms or climate change.
When storms occur and water builds in steams, the resulting erosion can cause health issues for water-based wildlife and create infrastructure challenges. In order to prevent erosion, restoration alters the stream’s direction and adds step-pool structures to slow water flow, the county said.
County officials argue that restored stream sections of Donaldson Run, Windy Run, and Four Mile Run kept the channels from eroding during the summer storm. On the other hand, “unrestored sections of Donaldson Run did not fare well during the July 8 storm, with new erosion undermining the fence and trail.”
Arlington’s stream restoration projects aren’t without its critics, especially when it comes to the touchy subject of tree removal in Myth #3.
In an email sent to ARLnow, Suzanne Sundburg, a local environmental activist and member of the Arlington Tree Action Group, argues the opposite — “planting trees… ABSOLUTELY DOES reduce the stormwater runoff,” she wrote.
“These stream restoration projects, as implemented in Arlington County, use heavy equipment that involves significant tree loss in the very riparian areas that are supposed to be protected from tree loss and development,” said Sundburg.
Sundburg argued that development has damaged local streams.
“Maintenance of our streams and their banks isn’t the issue and thus stream ‘restoration’ is not the solution,” she wrote. “The underlying cause of urban stream syndrome is the increasing volume and speed of runoff coming from the watershed. Unless and until the county begins to correct and reverse the increase in impervious surfaces — now covering 45% of the county’s land surface — stream restoration is impossible.”
Local advocacy groups have previously sounded off against tree removal, namely in 2017 when local residents launched a petition against the removal of 70 trees in Donaldson Run.
Currently, the county is in the design phase of its Gulf Branch Stream Restoration project, which is intended to protect the waterway and the trees along its banks.
A Gulf Branch-specific “Myths and Misconceptions” was presented during a November 6 community meeting on the project. In the presentation, officials addressed the effects of the July 8 storm on the stream, noting the “unrestored stream segmented eroded tons of sediment, degrading and stressing habitat downstream.”
