Linda Musselman joked that she didn’t think she’d ever see the day Stafford’s new reservoir would begin operations.
She was on the Board of Supervisors when the massive Rocky Pen Run Reservoir got the OK, but when she left in 2002, work was far from done. “After 22 years when the project started and all that’s happened, I wondered sometimes,” Musselman said on a frigid Tuesday morning. “I was hopeful.”
Musselman did the honors to ceremonially flip the switch that pumped water from the frozen Rappahannock River into the cleared land in Hartwood that’ll become the reservoir.
With an estimated cost of $139 million, it’s Stafford’s largest and costliest public works project. And it’s been a long time coming. Months will pass before the 500-acre reservoir—also a recreational lake—will be full, and the water treatment plant should open later this year.
Stafford officials held a brief ceremony on this frigid morning. The county posted a video here of the water starting to flow. Of course, it’ll be turned off today, for the county isn’t ready to flood Rocky Run Road just yet. That won’t happen til after the road closes on Feb. 3.
