On Sunday, April 27, at the Del Ray Garden Fest, Alexandria resident Bill Hendrickson received the Ellen Pickering Award for Environmental Excellence from the city.
Upon receiving the award, Bill made the following remarks about the city’s environmental plans and policies. Bill provided the remarks to ALXnow for consideration as a Letter to the Editor.
Letter To The Editor
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Remarks by Bill Hendrickson upon receiving the Ellen Pickering Award for Environmental Excellence, April 27, 2025
It’s an honor to receive this award today. Thank you to the members of the committee who selected me, from the Alexandria Environmental Policy Commission, AlexRenew, and the Pickering family. Thank you to my wife Laurie MacNamara for her help, support, and love for many years.
I have been involved in various city activities for about 30 years, and got to know Ellen Pickering very early on. I have a deep appreciation for the many things she did to boost the overall quality of life in our city and the region. Ellen and I served together on the Open Space Steering Committee, whose work led to the significant acquisition of open space by the city.
It’s also an honor to have known and worked with other recipients of this award, including Poul Hertel, Jack Sullivan and Judy Noritake.
I want to thank members of the City Council, city staff, and citizen advocates during the past two decades for their environmental commitment. We have developed some fine forward-looking plans and policies.
I remember Ellen Pickering as being very outspoken. And I think she would likely agree with a few things I want to say.
My basic message is that the city must become much more aggressive in implementing its environmental plans and policies.
I also understand that there are obstacles and challenges to improving our environmental quality of life. There are revenue constraints and more compelling spending priorities. Plans and policies are not translated into specific requirements for developers. It’s difficult, in a pro-property rights state, to push too hard against developers who are only willing to go so far. We are also still dealing with past environmental problems, notably the megaproject in Old Town to prevent sewage from flowing into the Potomac River.
The Old Town project is an impressive engineering feat, but also extremely expensive. As the city’s population increases, we need to focus on smaller scale, less expensive ways to trap, store and reuse stormwater. We need to extensively remove impermeable material from the city’s surface and replace it with alternatives. We are doing some of this now, but our efforts need to be more systematic. The recent proliferation of higher-rise buildings in Old Town North with white, reflective roofs will help reduce energy use, but why did we not insist on green roofs? The recent extension of Potomac Yard Park, with its rain gardens and native plants, is an excellent example of the way forward. We should retrofit the southern part of Potomac Yard Park with similar methods and remove or remediate the mud hole that serves as the past generation’s solution to temporarily storing stormwater.
Finally, I want to talk about the tremendous opportunity we have to advance our environmental goals in the development of North Potomac Yard. I have been involved in Potomac Yard planning since 1997. I served on the city committee that developed the initial master plan for North Potomac Yard in 2010. A key principle of that plan is environmental sustainability. There is a lot in the plan that explains our vision for Potomac Yard’s future. But to achieve it, the city will need to be much more aggressive than it’s ever been before. It will need to push developers to the max. We can’t just accept what developers are willing to give us. We are off to an impressive start with the Metro station, the Virginia Tech building, and the Potomac Yard Park extension.
What happens in Potomac Yard is exceptionally important for the city’s future. Let’s push as hard as we can for a vibrant, multi-use community that incorporates environmental sustainability in all its aspects and produces a high quality of life for future generations. Thank you.
Bill Hendrickson, Alexandria
