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Four Mile Run Restoration Project

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1. What is the Four Mile Run Restoration Project?

This project restores 2.3 miles of a highly degraded stream in Northern Virginia. Four Mile Run is a nine-mile long stream located in a highly urbanized area in Northern Virginia.

Its 19.6 square mile watershed covers portions of Arlington and Fairfax Counties and the Cities of Alexandria and Falls Church. The lower portion of Four Mile Run, from I-395 at the upstream end to National Airport at the mouth, is contained in a hardened flood control channel and marks a rough boundary between Arlington County and the City of Alexandria.

The 2.3-mile hardened flood control channel, or levee corridor, is the focus of the project. Federal and local resources are being utilized on this exciting project, including a $1-million grant to study the possibilities for restoration and to construct a demonstration project. The municipalities are working closely with the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) in these endeavors.

2. What is the Vision for the Project?

The Four Mile Run Restoration Project Master Plan envisions making Four Mile Run into a model of urban ecological restoration through the sensitive and sustainable integration of a restored natural stream channel with an active urban environment.

The Four Mile Run corridor will be a place where citizens of Arlington County and the City of Alexandria can gather, recreate, and celebrate a shared waterfront legacy.

3. What are the Guilding Principles for the Project Regarding Flood Protection?

The restoration project will provide flood protection to at least the 100-year event, examine the current extent of the 100-year floodplain, and consider flood protection for areas that are not adequately protected.

4. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding the Environment?

The restoration project will re-create a natural stream channel through design techniques. The natural stream will contain individual pools and riffles that move during storm events, a consistent shape and form, and an improved habitat and ecology that supports native terrestrial and aquatic plant and animal species. Finally, the restoration project will develop upstream strategies to improve water quality in the run and the environmental quality and long-term viability of a restored levee corridor.

5. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding Aesthetics and Design?

The restoration project will improve overall corridor aesthetics and view shed opportunities by encouraging urban design that develops the corridor's aesthetics, incorporating green design principles for all design and development activities within and adjacent to the corridor, and utilizing innovative and creative urban design and watershed solutions.

6. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding Recreation and Urban Life?

The restoration project will enhance existing recreational opportunites by creating new recreational opportunities that afford interaction with Four Mile Run, developing urban life opportunities along the stream corridor, and encouraging the appropriate siting of recreational facilities in the context of the overall project goals.

7. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding Integration and Balance?

The restoration project will connect the project to other efforts underway in the watershed in order to improve the Four Mile Run's water quality. More specifically, the project will integrate the corridor with surrounding communities and proposed adjacent urban development efforts, create a balance between the natural elements of a restored corridor and urban activity areas in order to generate a lively, safe, and well-used public resource, and coordinate with other ongoing planning activities, such as the Four Mile Run TMDL/Implmentation Plan; the local Chesapeake Bay Preservation Act programs; the Potomac Tributary Strategies; affordable housing initiatives; master planning efforts like the Arlandria and Shirlington planning efforts, and other planning and economic development initiatives.

8. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding Access and Connectivity?

The restoration project will create a place for people to reconnect with water and nature in an urban context by increasing pedestrian and bicycle access, ensuring that Four Mile Run is accessible to all who wish to use it, increasing connectivity between the two communities, and enhancing the corridor's effectiveness as a non-motorized and mass transit corridor.

9. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding Education and Interaction?

The restoration project will provide interpretive opportunities that educate and inform the public about the stream corridor. This information will stress the interrelatedness of positive individual, institutional, and political actions and behavioral changes with improved water quality and habitat in the corridor.

10. What are the Guiding Principles for the Project Regarding the Planning Horizon?

This plan strives to create a project that 'thinks big' and that provides the parameters for change over time as opportunities become available. The master plan includes a mix of short-term discreet improvement tasks blended with long-term, large-scale corridor changes.

11. What is a watershed?

A watershed (drainage basin) is an area of land that drains to a common point. For the Four Mile Run Waterhsed, all of the rainwater landing within the 19.6-square mile "watershed" drains to the mouth of Four Mile Run at the Potomac River. The Four Mile Run Watershed is a small part of the 14,679-square mile Potomac River Watershed, which itself is a portion of the 64,000-square mile Chesapeake Bay Watershed. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed includes portions of six states and the District of Columbia. The Four Mile Run Watershed is part of both the Potomac River Watershed and the Chesapeake Bay Watershed.

12. What is the levee corridor?

The Four Mile Run Watershed is one of the most urbanized watersheds in the country. That development has affected the water quality in the run and the frequency and magnitude of over-bank flooding along the run. Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, the increase in impervious surfaces such as roadways, driveways, rooftops, etc., increased the magnitude of the peak flows in Four Mile Run to a level that often inundated neighboring communities. Newspaper reports describe flood levels exceeding six feet into homes at times.

In an effort to contain the flood waters within the stream corridor, Arlington County, the City of Alexandria and the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) designed and constructed the 2.3-mile long levee corridor in place today. When the channelization project of Four Mile Run was conceived in the 1960s, the sole objective of the project was flood protection and, to that end, the project has been a success; no floods have occurred along its length since the project's completion in 1980. Although successful in flood control, the channelized section of Four Mile Run could be improved with respect to environmental and aesthetic attributes. The maintenance requirements for the channel have meant yearly thinning of vegetation and periodic excavation of sediment deposits on the channel bed. The nearly uniform trapezoidal shape of the channel does not offer the riffles, pools, and shady areas needed to sustain much of the aquatic life once found in Four Mile Run.

13. What Groups and Agencies are Involved with the Project?

The City of Alexandria, Arlington County, Congressman Jim Moran's (VA-D) office, the US Environmental Protection Agency, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Northern Virginia Regional Commission are directly involved in the Four Mile Run Restoration Project.

14. What is the Agency Coordination Group (ACG)?

The ACG consists of staff from Arlington County, the City of Alexandria, the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE), the Northern Virginia Regional Commission, and the two citizen co-chairs from the Joint Task Force (JTF). The ACG oversees the project and, with input from the JTF, is working closely with the USACE to develop the feasibility study for the project.

15. What is the Joint Task Force (JTF)?

The JTF is an 18-member task force comprised of citizens from Arlington County and the City of Alexandria. Most of the citizen representatives are from communities bordering Four Mile Run and sixteen members were selected by the City or County Managers from their respective jurisdictions. Congressman Jim Moran appointed one citizen representative, and the Chief Administrative Officers from Arlington and Alexandria appointed a representative from the Potomac Yards development.

16. What does the Joint Task Force (JTF) focus on?

The JTF focuses on garnering public input and support for the project. The JTF has hosted "listen sessions" and workshops to better understand community values and desires for the project. The JTF provides input to the Agency Coordination Group (ACG). Their recommendations will be included as an addendum to the work product of the ACG.

17. What is the US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) involvement in the project?

The USACE is the Federal agency responsible for ensuring the long-term capability of the levee corridor to prevent flooding in adjacent communities. The USACE performed a reconnaissance study in 2002 and 2003 to determine if there was a Federal interest in pursuing a new project for Four Mile Run. Having determined that there was a federal interest in such a project, the USACE, City of Alexandria, and Arlington County began moving forward with a feasibility study that will examine possible urban and environmental restoration opportunities for Four Mile Run.

18. What is Congressman Jim Moran's involvement in the project?

Congressman Jim Moran (8th Congressional District of Virginia (the district encompassing Four Mile Run)) has supported Federal funding for the Four Mile Run Restoration Project. Congressman Moran was instrumental in allocating nearly $1 million in funds through a non-competitive grant for the localities through the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA). Congressman Moran also has supported budget allocations for the USACE's involvement in the project, as well as allocations for improvements to Four Mile Run's water quality.

19. How is the US Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) involved with the project?

The USEPA dispersed nearly $1 Million in Federal funding to Arlington County and the City of Alexandria for project efforts.

20. How is the Northern Virginia Regional Commission (NVRC) involved in the project?

Since 1977, NVRC has led a watershed management program for the Four Mile Run Watershed jurisdictions. As described in the 1977 Memorandum of Understanding, the watershed management program has focused on flood control since its inception through 1998; congressional project authorizing language required a management plan that ensured that future development would not adversely impact channel capacity. In 1998, water quality protection and stream restoration was added to the program mandate.

21. Will the jurisdictions, the USACE, and NVRC perform all the work?

Arlington County and the City of Alexandria have utilized a portion of the allocated Federal monies to hire consultants to aid in the restoration project. Rhodeside & Harwell, Inc., CH2M Hill, Inc., BioHabitats, Inc., and Waterscapes have been involved in the restoration project efforts to date (February 2008).

22. What is a Hydraulics and Hydrology (H & H) study?

H&H studies focus on predicting how the watershed and stream system react to rainfall events. H&H studies examine historical rainfall and stream gauge records in order to determine probable storm and flood events that are expected to occur in a watershed. Land use and topographical mapping are used in combination with engineering techniques to determine how much of any given rainfall event will migrate through the watershed and its tributaries into the stream corridor and/or spill over its banks and into neighboring communities. Such a study is fundamental for predicting what effects the restoration project will have, and for ensuring that the restoration work proposed will not have the unintended effect of causing unwanted flooding in those neighboring communities.

23. Who will develop the needed Hydraulics & Hydrology (H&H) studies for this work?

NVRC and the USACE are developing new studies that utilize use current data and current modeling techniques. The H&H workgroup consists of technical representatives from both jurisdictions, USACE, NVRC, and the JTF. The H&H workgroup will oversee the development of the project's H&H studies.

24. How do all of these various groups relate to one another?

This diagram outlines the various interrelations of the project groups. Relational Diagram

25. What are the boundaries for this project?

The project focuses on the levee corridor that runs the border of Arlington County and the City of Alexandria. Several variations of the project's boundaries are described below:

The USEPA grant application defined the project from the Shirlington Road Bridge to the mouth of Four Mile Run.

The USACE levee corridor runs from I-395 to the mouth of the Four Mile Run.

The current USACE project authorization covers the entire 19.6-square mile watershed.

26. How has the ACG defined the project boundaries?

The ACG defines the project boundaries as follows:

The primary focus of the project will be on the levee corridor (Zone A) and near stream environment (Zone B). The upper watershed (Zone C) components also will be considered as part of the project if the installation of such components benefits the levee corridor (Zone A).

Near stream (Zone B) components are those items that are immediately adjacent to the levee corridor (Zone A) but outside of the levee walls. No definitive boundary has been set for this.

The following project delineation offers a general depiction of the project boundaries. Four Mile Run Boundaries

27. What sort of demonstration project is being planned?

A demonstration project is being planned for the Four Mile Run corridor. The project has two components; the first phase involves in-stream habitat restoration between Mt. Vernon Avenue and Route 1 (Jefferson Davis Highway). The second phase will result in the construction of a pedestrian-cyclist bridge connecting South Eads Street in Arlington to Commonwealth Avenue in Alexandria.

28. How can I get involved with the project?

The JTF is tasked with garnering public input for the project. They will accomplish this through various public meetings, charrettes, and workshops. These opportunities will be the main avenue for public involvement.

29. Is there a way that I can be notified of current project efforts and upcoming public meetings?

Send an Email to Laura Grape, requesting that your name be added to the Four Mile Run Restoration Project's Interested Parties email distribution list. You will receive timely notification of upcoming JTF meetings, public meetings, and other informational items regarding the Four Mile Run Restoration project. Laura Grape Email

30. Who should the press contact regarding the project?

Aileen Winquist
Department of Environmental Services Arlington County
(703) 228-3247

Ron Kagawa
Department of Recreation, Parks, and Cultural Activities
City of Alexandria
(703) 838-5041

Neil Sigmon, Co-Chair
Citizen Joint Task Force
Arlington County
(703) 684-8622

Judy Guse-Noritake, Co-Chair
Citizen Joint Task Force
City of Alexandria
(703) 836-3420

Claire O'Neill, Project Manager
US Army Corps of Engineers
(410) 962-0876

Laura Grape, Project Coordinator
Northern Virginia Regional Commission
(703) 642-4625

31. What is Alexandria's schedule for the Four Mile Run Restoration?

See attached chart for Alexandria's schedule. When will it happen?

32. Where is the location of Alexandria's Four Mile Run Restoration?

See attached map for the location. Where will it be?

33. What type of wetland plants will I see when the project is complete?

See attached for pictures of the different plants.