John R. Powers is a longtime Alexandria resident.
Can the loss of the beautiful hardwoods along the George Washington Parkway be arrested?
Probably not.
The neglect on the part of the National Park Service might be much too great, but we can hope. In 2021, the NPS budget was $2.8 billion, but not a penny was spent on the maintenance of the trees along the parkway.
The vines killing trees became apparent in 2006. At that time, the trees along the section from the Belle Haven Marina Road to Mile Marker 7 were close to the edge of the Mount Vernon trail, the bike path that follows the parkway, but the vines were already pushing into the tops of these trees. A parkway maintenance supervisor gave me an estimate of $1 million to arrest the problem from Old Town Alexandria to the Mansion.
Just think of the huge savings had the Park Service spent the $1 million then instead of many times it would cost today if it finally agrees to address the problem. The worst case, however, is that by doing nothing, the parkway will eventually lose its beautiful woodlands.
This is not just a budgeting problem; it is also a management problem. In 2011, the parkway environmentalist was spending money on a pet research project in the backwoods of Turkey Run Park. I tried then to get funds redirected to the parkway, to no avail.
Today, the denuded areas along this section extend almost 75 yards into the former woods toward the Dyke Marsh Wildlife Preserve trail. I can see cars on the parkway from that trail; the losses are that extensive. The damage, however, is not limited to just this section; it is just the most noticeable there. If you are driving down the parkway, look at the aggressive vine growth on both sides of the road. There are sections where the damage can still be arrested, but the vines in the above section need to be removed before it becomes an open meadow. Thousands of runners, walkers and bikers use the park daily in season. In July and August, the impact of these lost trees becomes apparent to those running along the bike path. Where there was once shade at 7 a.m. and 8 a.m., there is now full sun. When the temperatures hit the high 70s, that can be nasty.
Relief for runners, however, is not the real reason to fix these problems. Congress authorized the Mount Vernon Memorial Highway in 1928. By the time it opened in 1932, it was renamed the George Washington Parkway. By the 1940s, it was truly a work of art. My parents brought the family to picnic along the banks of the Potomac River. Visionaries of their time gave us this marvel. So why is the Park Service letting it go to ruin?
Look at the meadow from the mile 7.5 parking lots to the river. In the past several years, six grand hardwood shade trees have died without replacement, and several more are on their last legs. In addition, depressions in the grass area act as rain catchments, killing the grass. That’s nice for the ducks but otherwise is ugly.
What is to be done? The parkway must become a priority — with appropriate funding — for the National Park Service. For a while, parkway management supported volunteer “weed whackers,” but we soon realized that the problems were several orders of magnitude too great for a small band of volunteers to address. The first step, therefore, should be for the Park Service to survey the whole of the parkway and submit a report that will enable it to assess the total cost of restoration, which would include:
This will not help my generation, but it will be a gift to future generations, just as the parkway was a gift to us.
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