Take Action: NoVA Needs Clean Water, not Bad Bridges!


WHAT’s HAPPENING? This Thursday, October 12th the Northern Virginia Transportation Authority (NVTA) will be voting to update a long range transportation plan that will include funding for future projects.

WHY DO I CARE? Bridges, roads, rails and transit – what do all of these have in common in VA? According to the American Society of Civil Engineers report card our Commonwealth scores C, D and C- in all these categories. Not only is our central mode of transit congested, frustrating and time consuming, it’s also becoming a major safety hazard.

UNFORTUNATELY for VA residents, instead of focusing on the necessary repairs of our roads and bridges NVTA wants to include possible funding for yet ANOTHER bridge. Not only will this misdirect the critical funding needed for the American Legion Bridge and other crumbling infrastructure, a third bridge threatens the clean drinking water supply for all of Northern Virginia and the nation’s capital.

We cannot afford to have millions of residents without access to safe drinking water. We need NVTA to stop looking at the new costly shiny red object and FOCUS on fixing our existing infrastructure without poisoning the Potomac.

WHAT CAN I DO? Use the form below to EMAIL your elected officials and tell them to REMOVE the proposed outer and eastern Potomac Bridges from the Transaction Plan because:

The demand and need is at the American Legion Bridge. The proposed new bridges would induce new demand while failing to address the priority need at American Legion.

  • The bridges offer no significant performance advantage to the Transaction Plan
  • The bridges would lead to new sprawl development that our region can’t support, overdeveloping our rural countryside and destroying wildlife habitat and sending more pollution towards the Potomac
  • Extensive new connecting facilities would be required from/to both the Virginia and Maryland landings of either bridge and Maryland is solidly opposed
  • The proposed bridge sites are DIRECTLY above our drinking water supply intake sites. Any accident on the bridge or during construction could cause a spill that closes down drinking water plants for the nation’s capital region. We cannot afford the risk to poisoning drinking water for MILLIONS for Virginia, DC and Maryland residents.

About Eliza Cava

Eliza Cava is the Nature Forward Director of Conservation, where she supervises our policy, advocacy, watershed community science, and conservation outreach work, and supports Woodend restoration as a demonstration landscape for the region.
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