More to come for Dumfries culvert project

A county road project within the town of Dumfries to address one safety concern — flooding — may have inadvertently created another one: a bridge-like structure without guardrails.

Town and county officials are working to take care of the issue.

Possum Point residents have long worried that regular flooding of the road where Deweys Run meets Quantico Creek could impede emergency vehicles from reaching them. There is no other access road to the Possum Point homes.

“We have a lot of older people who live down here,” said Claudia Smith, a Possum Point resident. “It had gotten to the point that we dreaded every time it would rain.”

After the Prince William County Department of Public Works finished enlarging a culvert that runs under Possum Point Road last month, it was put to the test almost immediately.

“It used to be that every time we would have a 15- or 20-minute downpour, the road would flood,” Smith said. “Even with all the rain we have had lately, we have not had any flooding. That’s a very good thing.”

However, the expanded culvert has also widened the road in the area and now resembles a bridge over Deweys Run.

Since the work was designed as a culvert project, not a bridge, guardrails were not included. Some think they should have been.

Instead, plastic and rubber directional delineators — skinny poles with reflective paint — were placed on either side of the road over the culvert. They are designed to alert drivers if they begin to veer off the roadway, which could quickly land them in the creek.

Some say that is not enough.

“The comments we were getting was that the project didn’t look finished,” said Cathy Holtzlander, Dumfries community services director who also was serving as interim town manager when the project was wrapping up.

“It may be a culvert, but it looks like a bridge,” Holtzlander said. A culvert is a drainage pipe that carries water under a roadway.

Residents raised safety concerns that the delineators would not be enough warning to drivers, especially since that stretch of road is dark at night, Holtzlander said.

Uwe Kirste, environmental services division chief with the Prince William County Department of Public Works, said guardrails were never part of the project plans that were approved by the town.

The county spent $620,000 to enlarge the culvert.

“There were no guardrails there before. We didn’t change anything except enlarge the culvert,” he said. “It’s not a bridge.”

Still, given the safety concerns raised, the county will go back and install guardrails this fall. The county will pay two-thirds of the cost and the town will be responsible for the other third, he said. The exact amount is not yet known.

“This is a collaborative effort between the county and the town to resolve the safety issue,” Holtzlander said.

And town officials and residents remain quick to point out their appreciation to the county for the new culvert.

“I am very grateful to the county. They did a great job. I applaud them,” Smith said.

“We do want people to understand that this is not a fail-safe type of situation,” Kirste said. “The road will flood again, but we have reduced the possible occurrences. This is a lot better than it was before.”

Staff writer Aileen Streng can be reached at 703-878-8010.