Poll: Is Hunter Mill Road Right Place for Septic Station?

Fairfax County is considering relocating one of its two county septage receiving sites from Colvin Run in Great Falls to the Lake Fairfax Park Maintenance Area 6 on Hunter Mill Road in Reston/Vienna.

There are 21,000 homes in this area of the county, mostly in Great Falls and Oakton, whose septic tanks must be emptied into a sewer line once every five years (or about 6,000 visits to the current site annually). The current location also receives regular deliveries of restaurant grease.

Officials said the current site floods, smells and has a pipe that is too small to receive the sewage. After looking at six area locations, they determined the Lake Fairfax one is the most appropriate place to built a new, secure, odor-controlled facility. That land is on park land, but not in an area of the park accessible to visitors.

However, Hunter Mill-area residents said at a recent meeting that Hunter Mill is the exact wrong place to build the sewage dump. Among the issues: Two-lane Hunter Mill Road, and its one-lane bridge, cannot handle the increased traffic; the Lake Fairfax site is close to trails and streams; and the sewage should stay closer to its customers in Great Falls.

A report prepared by an environmental consulting firm said, among other things, it would cost more than $700,000 less to renovate the Colvin Run site rather than build a new plant at a cost of $3.4 million.

Where do you think the septage site should be?

Photo: Proposed site of new facility on Hunter Mill Road