During the summer of 2005, Loudoun Water launched a project to bring much needed water storage to the Dulles South area of Loudoun County. Good water system planning requires a half day's worth of water storage for every connection to the water system. This serves three main purposes: (1) Reliability and consistency of service (2) Emergency supply during major outages, and (3) Fire protection.

We need six million gallons of storage for the communities of South Riding, Stone Ridge and Kirkpatrick Farms, to name a few. Loudoun Water will obtain one 5-acre site to place 2 elevated water storage tanks of 3 million gallons each. A preliminary site plan located the tanks based on the required set backs and buffers around the tanks. Some localized pipes around the tank site will need to be increased to distribute the water from the tanks.

Loudoun Water invited members of the community to serve on an advisory group for this project. The group assisted Loudoun Water with identifying site criteria and the weight of the criteria. To the left is a map of the Stone Ridge area where the sites of interest are identified. Click it to enlarge the image.

Loudoun Water performed several soil borings for each tank to determine soil condition. We also conducted a visual assessment of the selected site using test balloons and used the results to prepare a rendering of the tanks.

The Dulles South Elevated Storage Tank site has been selected and is located off Goshen Road south of Route 50 (see map above). It may take a year to get the tanks through the County's land approval process that is currently underway. We have submitted our second submission of the Dulles South tanks commission permit and special exception applications. If all goes as planned, design will occur in tandem with this process, and we will break ground for the first tank in spring 2008. Ideally, the first tank will be on line in 2009.