Politics & Government

Boathouse Eyed for Potomac River Virginia Shoreline

The National Park Service is seeking public input on the placement of a potential boathouse along the Potomac River—including one site in Alexandria.

The National Park Service, ., is now setting its sites on Arlington or Alexandria, too.

On Tuesday, the Park Service will hold a public scoping meeting on "proposed siting and construction of a public facility for non-motorized boats on the Virginia shoreline of the Potomac River," according to the project website. The meeting will be at from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m.

Congress tasked the Park Service in 1998 with identifying sites in Arlington and in 2002 the agency published a feasibility study for the area.

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"The study examined building a facility, which included indoor storage space and floating docks at four possible locations—two on the waterfront near , one south of the CSX/14th Street Potomac River Bridges, and one on Daingerfield Island, south of Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport" [in Alexandria], according to the project website.

Less than two miles separate the Dangerfield Island site from the in Old Town.

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The Park Service is now re-initiating the Environmental Impact Statement process for the Virginia shoreline that stalled in 2006. The public is invited to comment on locations previously identified for potential boathouse structures.

In December, the Park Service began a new feasibility study for a non-motorized boathouse zone , running from 34th Street to about 1,200 feet upstream of the Key Bridge.

The Park Service first proposed a non-motorized boat zone for the Georgetown side of the Potomac in 1986. Since that time several iterations and stages of the plan have advanced only to later stall.

The new feasability study has not yet been released for Georgetown's Potomac shoreline, though the Park Service timeline estimated a late summer or early fall deadline. The re-initiated EIS process on the Arlington side could possibly fall in line with the EIS process on the D.C. side.


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