Invasive Plant Prompts Call to Dredge Quantico Bay

By Uriah Kiser

Dumfries, Va. — An invasive weed from India, in part, is choking efforts to develop Dumfries’ waterfront area, officials said.

Hydrilla, a submerged freshwater weed that often gets tangled in boat motors, is a thorn in the side of development here, said Dumfries Town Councilman Gerald  Foreman. He’s called for the bay to be dredged.

“We’ve been advertising for quite a while we want a Port of Dumfries… But there is no port if there is no dredging,” said Foreman, who is seeking to be elected Town Mayor on May 1.

The Quantico Creek flows from west of the town through Prince William Forest Park and then empties into the larger Quantico Bay. A 2003 study prepared for the U.S. Navy found that Hydrilla is the most common underwater plant in the water body.

A Port of Dumfries would sit at Quantico Bay where Quantico Creek meets the Potomac River. The waterfront is part of a larger overall economic development plan for the town that aims to revitalize older neighborhoods, attract new business, and become even better neighbors with nearby Quantico Marine Corps Base.

Dumfries once was a large port town in its colonial heyday, but sediment from tobacco farms filled the water and now it’s now mostly used for fishing by surrounding recreational boaters.

The job of dredging the water body would mostly likely fall on the Army Corps of Engineers, officials say, and finding the funds may not be easy.

“Any federal funds for this are usually prioritized in terms of for channels that are being used for commercial purposes, industrial shipping purposes and things like that. If you’re hitting on how [Quantico Bay] would be used, and if it’s more for recreation then it falls to a lower priority,” said Assistant Prince William County Executive Susan Roltsch.

Hydrilla, a plant native to India, is thought to have entered the U.S. in Florida after aquarium owners in this country dumped the weeds into freshwater streams and lakes.

More than weeds, Foreman also points to trash and sediment that gathers in the creek – trash that, in part, has flowed here from developments outside the town along Van Buren Road. Sediment pours into the Bay from nearby Dewey Creek.

“When the tides out and the sediment is high, we’ve got a trash problem. You can see the tires, you can see debris, and it floats in – so it’s not all coming from Dumfries – it floats in and then we get low tide and it stays,” said Foreman.

An advocacy group, Friends of Quantico Bay, is working to bring attention to the plight of the waterway. In the last three years, the group has given tours of the area to elected officials and, in the process, have learned Hydrilla is also a problem at other water sites Featherstone Shores and Neabsco Creek in Woodbridge, and Potomac Creek in Stafford County.