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Courtesy of The Connection, July 12, 2007
© 2007 The Connection
Keep It Cool and Unpaved
Letter to the Editor
To the Editor:
Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry Connolly’s (D-At-large) inspiring speech at the Cooling the Commonwealth town hall meeting on June 13 at George Mason University was welcomed by conservationists like us. Chairman Connolly is trying to combat rising air and water temperatures by reducing greenhouse gases. He is also pledging to save 10 percent of all land in Fairfax County as parkland. We also support this positive goal. However, just because land is saved as parkland does not mean it is protected from development. As we write this, plans are in progress to pave many miles parkland (sections of the Cross-County Trail) with asphalt, located on some of the most undeveloped, pristine and environmentally sensitive lands left in Fairfax County. The once-peaceful trail will become a road for service vehicles. This move is contradictory to the goals of cooling the county and improving water quality that Connolly espouses. We believe the existing trail should be graded and maintained as a natural surface. Paving will cover many acres that will become heat-absorbing and impervious to rainfall. It will exacerbate the urban heat island effect, another way that cities become hotter than undeveloped land (asphalt absorbs more heat than soil and releases it at night, when the air should be cooler). Asphalt will also degrade the water quality in the streams that run adjacent to the trail and increase the water temperature when rainfall runs off the hot pavement and into the stream. This harms aquatic life.
The Fairfax County Park Authority’s arguments that they are paving the trail for recreation and conservation are weak, incomplete, and do not stand up to science or logic. We believe the paving of acres of parkland is unnecessary and destructive. Chairman Connolly, you are on the right trail. Please don’t let that trail be paved! We challenge you to help the Park Authority find a better solution.
Susan Jewell
Springfield Civic Association
Springfield
Duane Murphy
Friends of Accotink Creek
Burke