Citizens advocate for Old Wheatland Road paving

By Katie Northcott

Fourteen concerned citizens commented on the state of Loudoun County’s rural roads at the Board of Supervisors Public Hearing on Oct. 9. Most of the meeting’s discussion centered around Old Wheatland Road (OWR).

Pam Austrich, who lives two doors down from OWR, read a statement on behalf of her 92-year-old neighbor, Betty Hutchinson, an Old Wheatland resident. Hutchinson couldn’t attend the meeting due to an injury she sustained about six years ago in an accident on OWR. According to Austrich, Hutchinson was in her car at her daughter’s driveway when a car came over the crest on the wrong side of the road, slamming into Hutchinson’s car door. Hutchinson’s car was totaled, and the incident left Hutchinson in a leg brace.

“I asked Betty, ‘When will you get out of the leg brace?’” Austrich said. “She said, ‘When I’m in the casket.’”

Austrich told the board that she thought paving the road would encourage drivers to stay on the right side of the road.

At the meeting, Susan Glass presented the staff report which laid out a plan to pave OWR as part of a larger six-year budget for funds from VDOT’s Rural Rustic Road program. The Board would allocate $917,032 of FY 2025 funding to hard surface the eastern portion of OWR. This would be added to $682,986 already set aside for the road. This amount comes from the $612,000 allocated by the developer of Old Wheatland Estates to paving OWR. The sum has accrued interest since its contribution in 2010.

Old Wheatland Road currently has two sections of paved road, at opposite ends of the road. Multiple current residents report being told that the road would be paved in the near future before they decided to buy property on OWR.

“The BOS has wasted money year after year on this maintenance folly and sat on the escrow funds. Your inaction meets the county’s own definition of waste.” OWR resident William Clark said. “The daily users, the residents have spoken time and time again. The percentage of people who want this keeps growing. The ratio is now almost three to one.”

Under the Board’s direction in 2023, 158 ballots were mailed to “the residents and owners of property adjacent to or served by OWR.” Of the 111 responses, 82 indicated that they support paving Old Wheatland Road while 29 indicated they do not support the paving.

While most of the commenters spoke in favor of paving OWR, a few expressed concerns about the future of the paving process if paving is allowed to move forward.

“Is this the way we want to make decisions about public assets in the future? What if I lived on a paved road, decided I didn’t like it, and gave you money to rip it up?” Rural Roads Committee member Emily Houston said. “Do we want to have this type of public hearing again in which ‘the road wars,’ as Supervisor Kershner called them, play out in the board room?”

The Board previously decided to work on a more data-driven system to decide which Loudoun gravel roads are the highest priority for paving. Those opposed to paving said that arbitrarily pushing OWR to the top of the priority list undermines the system board members are trying to create. On the other hand, those in favor of paving argued that the developer’s 2010 cash contribution sets OWR apart.

According to the staff report, three of the five crashes reported on OWR between 2017 and 2023 were on the paved portion of the road. Commenters opposed to paving highlighted that more crashes have been reported on the paved part of the road. One said she believed that gravel roads reduce car speeds, making the area safer for recreation. She asked board members to install speed mitigation measures should they choose to pave the road.

Those in favor of paving OWR reported family members being sideswiped and run off the road. They raised the safety concern of dust particle inhalation for their children. One father reported taking his kids to school himself instead of letting them inhale dust waiting at the bus stop.

A couple speakers said that the board could “have its cake and eat it, too” by choosing to build better gravel roads. This approach may be more economically feasible than paving all of Loudoun’s gravel roads.

“There are better ways, better methods for building and maintaining gravel roads,” said Scenic Loudoun Legal Defense representative Tom Donahue. “This approach involves gravel that does not turn immediately into dust, drainage that avoids road erosion, deep reclamation of defective roadbeds, and proper installation and maintenance that ensures enduring road quality. The district grant allows us an opportunity to shift from maintaining wrong to building right.”

In the end, the Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to forward the issue to its Nov. 7 business meeting. Speaking on his motion, Supervisor Caleb Kershner (R-Catoctin) said that he supports the measure to pave OWR because he believes the situation is unique. However, he does not plan to support any more rural road paving until a new system for determining which roads to pave is in place.

“It’s really a delicate balance, in my opinion, of what we’re trying to do in western Loudoun, that is really preserve what the west is and what it looks like and what people appreciate about it, and obviously we have ongoing growth and developments that pop up and roads that are getting a lot heavier traffic,” Kershner said. “We are getting to solutions, but it’s obvious the process is broken.”

Update: This article has been updated to reflect the correct spelling of Pam Austrich.