Haseltine Shockey has been waiting 60 years for public water and sewer, and it looks like she'll have to wait at least another two months for the service.
But call Shockey, 82, a skeptic. "When I see the first pipe going to our house, I'll believe it," she said this week. "We don't really believe it."
Shockey lives in the 22,813-acre transition policy area of Loudoun County. Residents there have finally won their battle for public utilities. The Board of Supervisors voted last week to extend the "urban growth boundary" to follow the western edge of the transition area to meet the Prince William County line in the south. That means homeowners will be able to pay for connections to central water and sewer lines or communal utilities. A communal utility has a well system supplied by groundwater and a wastewater treatment plant to serve three to 350 houses. Until last week's vote, the transition area served as a buffer between suburban and rural regions of the county.
THE LOUDOUN COUNTY Sanitation Authority and county officials will decide which households would be better served by communal utilities based on surface water drainage patterns, proximity of existing water sources, groundwater availability and underlying bedrock characteristics.
"We will have the ability to use the best service delivery system based on site specific conditions," said Dale Hammas, general manager of the Loudoun County Sanitation Authority. The best service is a connection to the central utility systems, with communal as second and the individual wells and septic system, third.
Opponents of the extension, including three supervisors, complained that extending public utilities was a move to drastically increase development in the transition area. The previous Board of Supervisors opposed the extension.
Sarah Coyle, the Planning Department's division manager for community planning, said the board's decision to extend the utilities did not change any of the existing land use policies governing the transition area.
THE POLICIES ALLOW the transition area to have clustered housing development, generally one house for every three acres. For example, a 90-acre parcel could have 30 houses and 50 percent open space, Coyle said. "That leaves you 45 acres for 30 houses. You cluster them close together, which is a significant benefit for the neighborhood. You have open space, room for recreation."
The rural land beyond the transition area allows one building per 20 acres or one building per 10 acres if the development is clustered, she said.
Two subareas in the transition area, Lower Bull Run and Lower Foley, already have public utilities. Supervisors voted to amend the county's Comprehensive Plan to extend utilities to the Lower Sycolin, Middle Goose Creek, Upper Broad Run and Upper Foley subareas. County officials divided the transition area into subareas, because the large tract of land has unique geography soil and development patterns, Coyle said.
The Planning Department has finalized the board's revisions to the Comprehensive Plan, which is available at the office for inspection, she said.
Hammas and the county staff will be meeting soon to create rules and regulations to govern the extension of utilities to the transition area and to evaluate the cost of those extensions.
He said the rules would deal with the utilities' standard of performance to provide the needed level of service. He estimated it would take about two months to finish the work, which will then be presented to the Board of Supervisors.
The Board of Supervisors, in amending the Comprehensive Plan, also supported extending public utilities to the Woodland Rural Village, which is adjacent to the Middle Goose and Upper Broad Run subareas and partially inside the transition area.
UNDER THE PLAN'S AMENDMENT, the county and the authority will work together to extend public utilities to houses in the suburban area, which already have access to public water and sewer, but have not hooked in. The amendment requires all new developments in the suburban area, the Lower Foley and Lower Bull Run subareas to connect with the public utilities.
The county will consider permitting development on individual well and septic systems if the extension of public utilities is not economically feasible, according to the revised plan. Coyle said it might be too costly for some areas of the transition area, because they are too far away from the central system.
The amendment requires all new development near the landfill to obtain public water and sewer. This is to avoid potential drinking water problems.
Homeowners who fail to connect with public utilities jeopardize their own health, safety and welfare liabilities. "As you drain fields, individual septic fields, there is a potential for them to fail and leach sewage into streams and waterways," she said. The other concern is that the communal wells would draw water from individual property owners' wells and cause them to go dry.