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ALEXANDRIA, Va. — The city's Stormwater Utility and Flood Mitigation Advisory Committee received Alexandria's annual Commission of the Year Impact Award at Wednesday night's City Council public hearing, recognition that one member tied directly to her own experience watching sewage flood her home in 2020 and 2021.
"If you had told me when my home flooded with sewage, and I got started on just being loud, that this is where we would be a few years later, I would have just not known what to say or do," said Katherine Waynick, the commission's vice chair, accepting the award at the Del Pepper Community Resource Center. "The amount of communication, the level of just what we are able to do, bringing residents, staff, council together, has been incredible."
Councilman John Taylor Chapman, who presented the award, said the commission was selected from nominations submitted across the city's more than 70 advisory boards and committees — all of which, he noted, are staffed entirely by volunteers. "They do this for the grand salary of $0," Chapman said.
Chapman, who said he was present at the founding of the commission, praised the quality of its engagement with city staff in particular. "The level of conversation has been excellent at the Stormwater Commission because everyone knows what they're there to do and how to try to get this job done together," he said.
The award has been given annually for three years, according to Chapman.
Commission chair John Hill thanked Council for maintaining its commitment to the city's flood action program, which was established in 2021. "Even though we've had many dry summers, you've maintained that commitment," Hill said.
The award came on a day Hill was already at the center of a major Alexandria water milestone. Earlier Wednesday, he emceed the dedication ceremony for RiverRenew — AlexRenew's $500 million underground tunnel and pumping system designed to end combined sewage overflows into the Potomac River, which went operational that week after eight years of construction. Hill chairs AlexRenew's board of directors as well as the stormwater commission. Chapman nodded to the overlap when presenting the award, saying he had seen Hill "earlier today" at the AlexRenew campus. "On the heels of opening up AlexRenew, that is going to be doing some great work," Chapman said.
Dino Drudi, the Federation of Civic Associations' designee on the commission, offered a candid assessment of the work still ahead. "Rectifying it is proving to be a much bigger challenge than I think folks realized at the outset," he said of the city's inland flooding problems. "We have been working diligently to try to get to solutions that are apparently more difficult and perhaps more expensive than we originally thought."
Commission members received individual certificates in addition to the award plaque, which was presented by the city clerk. The group posed for a photo with Chapman before the meeting moved on to its regular public hearing docket.
The Alexandria Brief covered the RiverRenew dedication ceremony earlier Wednesday. Read that story below.
Ryan Belmore
