Accokeek Creek Latest Site of Sewer Line Break and Raw Sewage Spill
THE FXBG ADVANCE TUESDAY 7/29/26 MORNING READ
By Jesse Adams, ADVANCE CONTRIBUTOR
On the afternoon of June 7, I took my 8-year-old-daughter to the Stafford Civil War Park to enjoy nature on on a short stroll through the woods. As we neared Accokeek Creek, she complained about a foul odor. I smelled it too. The water didn’t appear abnormally colored so I labeled it as potentially just being the breakdown of organic material and/or sediment from runoff following our first significant rain in quite some time and didn’t think anything more of it.
Fast forward to July 21, when I had a stressful couple of days interviewing for a new job, and I went back to the Stafford Civil War Park by myself to clear my head. When I approached Accokeek Creek this time I smelled a much stronger foul odor, and saw that the water was a very cloudy gray. My stomach immediately sank and I knew something wasn’t right. A big thunderstorm aggressively approached and I got back to my car right before the all-out downpour.
The next day, I decided to investigate further. After pulling up various maps, I was shocked to find that there was a sewer pump station just upstream from where I’d noticed the stinky gray water, and found it hard to believe that this was just a coincidence.
I immediately notified Stafford County Utilities who requested that I send in the photos, which I did. Due to the fact that the area bordered the Falmouth and Aquia districts, I also notified Supervisor Kecia Evans and Vice-Chairwoman Maya Guy. Evans responded right away, and I told her I was going to try to find the source. I also called Sarah Balon, who serves as the Water Quality Monitoring Lead at an environmental organization I founded, Waterway Cleanups. She agreed to meet me at the Stafford Civil War Park immediately. I went home to grab a cooler bag, some ice packs, and a couple R-Cards for testing for e-coli and coliform bacteria. Upon arriving. I noticed a Stafford County van in the parking lot, and we saw two staff members in the woods. They seemed to avoid us, and we weren’t able to talk to them.
I immediately took a sample of the water, applied it to the R-Card, let it set, and put it back into the cooler bag in a clean ziploc baggy. This sample would eventually clock in at 700 colony-forming units/100 ml of E. Coli, which is almost three times the acceptable Total Maximum Daily Load of 235 CFU/100 ml. The water appeared to look slightly better, but the foul smell was clearly still present. Our plan was to systematically check various points upstream to attempt to locate the source.
Ironically, shortly after taking the sample, I got an email from Stafford County Department of Utilities: Thank you for reporting your concerns. Staff from Field Operations and our Environmental team both went to the site. They saw (and smelled) no evidence of a sewage spill. We did take a coliform sample but it will take several days to get the results back from the lab. We have sampled in the area before and have a good idea of what the baseline is for the creek, so if there is an issue we will be able to tell. Best, Jon C. Brindle
This was disappointing, as the smell was certainly obvious. Sarah and I pushed on, slowly working our way upstream and checking three more sites before the smell was gone. We then noticed a fork in the creek with two parallel channels. We checked a site on both channels and the smell was not there either. After looking further at a map, we noticed a feeder stream that ran in parallel to the side of the sewer facility and fed into the creek. We doubled back to locate where it joined up with the main creek, and lo and behold, there was the smell! We decided to hop back into the car and drive to the neighborhood just above the sewer facility to look for the source.
We parked in the neighborhood as close as we could to the creek and bushwhacked into two more sites. The smell was overwhelming. We knew we were getting closer. We also noticed a lot of sewer warning signs and manhole access covers, which meant we were clearly along a main sewer line. We couldn’t figure out the next place to check that wasn’t going to be too difficult to bushwhack through, but were finally able to find an access road. Thankfully I was in my Jeep, and we decided to drive in as far as we could and then walk the rest of the way. I’m glad we did because as we walked along the access road, after searching for several hours, we stumbled on a horrific scene.
I immediately called Supervisor Evans and told her that we had found a sewer leak, the source of the problem—and the awful smell. I sent the exact GPS coordinates and photos/video of the sewage leaking out of the sewer main to Evans and to John Brindle, the Department of Utilities contact who had previously told me they hadn’t been able to find anything. After taking several more photos, we decided to call it for the day and start walking back to the car.
That was when things got even worse. What had been just a trickle of sewage before turned into a complete flooding of raw sewage out of the pipe. The pump had clearly kicked on and sent a massive, fresh batch of sewage down the side of the hill and into the creek. This flowed for several minutes and was still flowing when we finally had to leave.
A repair crew was dispatched not long after, and this time they were easily able to find the source that we reported. I was told they worked through the night and into the morning to repair a 18” crack in the pipe. That same next morning, I decided to take a water sample at our usual sample site at the Crow’s Nest Canoe Launch, which is a short way downstream from the Civil War Park. While this sample showed typical amounts of coliform bacteria, no E. Coli was detected, meaning the wetlands had successfully filtered out the harmful bacteria that could have posed significant health risks to residents who recreate in lower Accokeek Creek every day.
This is why so many Stafford County residents are angry and resistant to all of the irresponsible industrial scale development occurring within Stafford County. Our beautiful county is home to a large swath of biodiverse lands, including both tidal and non-tidal wetlands, swamps, marshes, creeks, and streams. We are one of the many critical buffers protecting the Chesapeake Bay Watershed. When data center developments like Stafford Technology Campus are allowed to clear cut almost 500 acres of mature growth forest, significantly disturb the hydrology of the land with grading and dubious “Best Management Practices,” install large areas of impervious surfaces such as buildings and concrete, and bulldoze over 2.2 acres of wetlands and 4,733 linear feet of stream channel, it is certainly not acceptable.
While this may not sound like a lot to some, when it happens over and over, it adds up to large scale harm to the very ecosystem that prevents our wells from running dry and acts as the filters of chemicals, bad bacteria, and a plethora of other pollutants—including raw sewage escaping undetected for who knows how long from an 18” rupture in a pipeline upstream.
Jesse Adams is an environmental steward and conservationist who lives in Stafford County, Virginia with his wife and two young kids. He is an aspiring, self-taught wetlands and soil citizen scientist and has been protecting waterways for more than a decade. He is the Founder and President of Waterway Cleanups, a 501c3 non-profit organization in Stafford County with a mission to protect our local waterways, and he serves as the chairman of the Agricultural and Land Conservation Committee for Stafford County. He recently launched an online publication platform for Northern Virginia residents called Cultivate NoVA.
You did a great job and it took a lot of determination and sweat. Thank you.
Counties are required to maintain master water and sewer plan(s), with accurate and up to date map(s) of the entire system(s). They may be available on-line but, in any case, they should be available to any citizen upon request per state FOI regs.
If the county workers put some of your determination and sweat to the task (their previous investigation), those maps could have led them to the cracked line. I suspect they’ll do a better job next time, and there will be a next time because all pipes fail eventually. Your determined effort, compared to their lacking stab at finding the source, should provide incentive going forward to raise their game.
Outstanding work. Thank you and Sarah for your vigilance and dedication. And thanks for the Fredericksburg Advance for creating the venue to share this important news.