Lake Barcroft History Book

By Year 2001, WID had dredged approximately 400,000 cubic yards of sediment out of Lake Barcroft at a cost of about $2,100,000. (October 1965)
housing developments and new businesses, which was
outpacing the demands for sufficient sewage and causing more
runoff. Consequently, the existing sewer system was
severely overloaded.
The fledgling community association raised the issues of
erosion, soil sedimentation and pollution with Colonel Barger
in 1952. His lack of action prompted the association to form
an Engineering Committee in 1953. The committee issued a
report that outlined the problems and set forth preliminary
recommendations. Barger failed to take the necessary steps to
rectify the situation, so the association took matters into its
own hands.
The first priority was to stop pollution entering the lake from
Tripps Run. The association asked the county’s Board of
Supervisors to accelerate the construction of a new sewer line.
The county board also approved LABARCA’s request to
prohibit use of the old sewer line by any new subdivisions. At
the same time, the state’s Highway Department agreed to seed
roadside banks in an effort to reduce erosion. Despite these
measures, in summer 1954 the bacteria counts increased.
The pollution was partly attributable to the Tripps Run sewer
line but also because of a faulty pump installed by BBI at
Beach 3, which led to installation of standby pumps at all
pumping stations.
15
Dredging
The association coerced Barger into hiring a consulting firm,
Kendricks and Associates of Arlington, to study the entire
watershed area and to recommend solutions to the short-term
problem of sewage pollution and to the long-range problem of
pollution from silt and erosion. The state’s water commission
was contacted to ascertain the state’s authority over the sources
of erosion and drainage. A LABARCA delegation,
accompanied by County Supervisor Anne A. Wilkins,
presented the association’s case to Fairfax County executives.
The upshot of the association’s persistence was a decision
announced by the Commonwealth of Virginia in July 1954:
Fairfax County was assigned to handle the matter. A year of
studies and investigations followed. Dr. Chris Murphy,
chairman of the Health Committee, tracked the bacterial
count at various spots in the lake, and his work with county
health officials proved to be instrumental in improving testing
procedures. Because environmental concerns were not
considered important in those days, there was no
instrumentation to conduct on-site tests. Instead, water
samples were delivered to a laboratory in Richmond for
analysis, thus delaying the process and actually generating
artificially higher counts of contaminants in the samples.