Posted on May 21, 2025
VIRGINIA BEACH — A public works plan to fill a bowl-shaped borrow pit with material dredged from navigational channels and stormwater projects has met resistance from the city’s Planning Commission, neighbors and wildlife groups who are concerned about the environmental impacts.
The City Council is scheduled to vote on modifications to a conditional use permit for the Oceana borrow pit on Tuesday, though a vote could be deferred, according to Councilman Worth Remick, who represents the district.
Excavation of the former sand pit at 560 Oceana Blvd. was completed in 2016, and it has become a lake. The city acquired the 19.5-acre site in 2017, and Department of Public Works wants to fill the lake with silt, clay and sand from dredging operations, specifically from navigation channels in the Lynnhaven River basin and stormwater projects.
This is the second time the city has sought to fill the lake. In 2018, the council requested studies of the groundwater and stormwater runoff, according to L.J. Hansen, director of public works.
“What’ve we learned about it is that it sits isolated from the drinking water system,” Hansen told the City Council last week. “It’s not the same water that people are drawing their drinking waters from.”
The land is zoned light industrial. Three monitoring wells were recently installed and the city is awaiting lab results on the water characteristics, Hansen said. The dredged materials will be tested for contaminants including petroleum and metals.
The city has been using another borrow pit called Whitehurst about 2,000 feet to the north of Oceana site for dredged material since 2012, but it’s reaching capacity. Virginia Beach is required to test water quality and material before disposal at Whitehurst, according to a public notice from the Army Corps of Engineers, Norfolk District.
In April, the Planning Commission unanimously denied the Oceana application with one abstention, citing concerns about contaminants leaching into the soil and the need for a berm to protect surrounding properties from flooding.
The city’s need for a site to dump material has grown over recent years as neighborhood navigational dredging projects are ongoing and citywide stormwater lake and canal dredging ramped up after Hurricane Matthew, Hansen said.
During peak operations 32 trucks per day will service the Oceana site, and it will take 8 to 10 years to fill it.
Private dumping sites could be available, but they would be 20 miles away and will cost more to ship and dispose of material, Hansen said. Hauling the material farther could increase the disposal cost by 180%, City Manager Patrick Duhaney said at the meeting. As a result, the city would likely scale back neighborhood dredging and raise the special service district tax that some residents incur to pay for it, he said.
“This does have a lot of ramifications if we move in a different direction,” Duhaney said.
Earlier this year, Planning Commissioner George Alcaraz met with an adjacent property manager and property owners and heard their concerns about potential flooding if the pit is filled.
The city plans to build an embankment around part of the lake, and water in the lake will drain off over time, James White, coastal administrator for public works, told the Planning Commission. White described the lake as bowl-shaped, and the deepest part is about 20 feet.
Alcaraz said he had several unanswered questions that prompted him to recommend denial of the application.
“Each dump truck will be tested. If it’s bad, then where does it go?” he said.
Hansen told the City Council that water could be filtered and discharged from the pit into area creeks as another measure to prevent it from overflowing onto surrounding properties.
Sean Forsyth, owner of Simply Storage on Birdneck Road, located behind the borrow pit, said his property already floods during significant rain.
“The water just rolls downhill, and it looks like a river sometimes coming through my property,” he said.
Forsyth expects it will only get worse if the city fills the lake.
“It acts as a catch basin even though it wasn’t designed that way,” he said. “If you take any of that capacity, it’s the tipping point.”
Aimee Rhodes, president of Back Bay Guild at Atlantic Wildfowl Heritage Museum and the former chair and a current member of Surfrider Foundation, said both organizations are worried about environmental impacts from dumping material into the borrow pit.
“It’s bad form to look at it as dollar signs rather than the people’s health,” she said.
The local Back Bay Chapter of the Delta Waterfowl Foundation had previously installed wood duck boxes at the site to provide nesting habitats. The group has launched a petition against the city’s application. It had 159 signatures on Monday.
