Wells Run MOU on Hyattsville Agenda

After tabling the issue, the City of Hyattsville may vote on the memorandum of understanding proposed for Wells Run Tuesday evening at its city council meeting.

The meeting agenda includes a motion for Hyattsville Mayor William Gardiner to execute an amended MOU establishing the Inter-Municipal Collaborative Committee on Wells Run, which would collaborate about issues surrounding the creek.

Wells Run is a narrow tributary of the Anacostia River starting underground in Hyattsville near Northwestern High School and spilling into the Northeast Branch in Riverdale Park.

The MOU has been discussed at two previous city council meetings and by the Hyattsville Environment Committee. It was not passed previously to allow time for Hyattsville City Attorney Richard Colaresi to review it. Also, Hyattsville City Councilman David Hiles (Ward 2) said at a the Aug. 2 council meeting that the council should hold off on the MOU for six months, until other more pressing matters are addressed.

This latest motion – which is being sponsored by Gardiner, Hyattsville City Councilwoman Nicole Hinds Mofor (Ward 5) and Hyattsville City Councilmen Matthew McKnight and Timothy Hunt (both of Ward 3) – is an amended version of the first, and includes the stipulations:

• clarification of the MOU's purpose and that the committee cannot represent a municipality without that municipality's permission;
• advisements of the committee's actions;
• each municipality must have three members on the committee and one must be a Hyattsville City Council member; and
• establishing a sunset date of five years for the committee.

Riverdale Park Councilman Alan Thompson (Ward 2) told Hyattsville Patch in August that Riverdale Park could not wait six months.

During the last big storm, large chunks of concrete broke from the retaining wall of Wells Run in Riverdale Park, Thompson said in that interview.  A photograph showed that the blocks are larger than some places along the creek and they could get wedged in, preventing water from flowing through to the Northwest Branch.

"If [the concrete] flips, it could wedge and create lots of local flooding," Thompson said.

It will be three or four years before the committee would be able to gather the money needed to form a solution, he said.

While the MOU is only in the discussion stage in Hyattsville, Riverdale Park and University Park will move forward even if Hyattsville does not join them, Thompson said.

Since the issue was discussed in August however, Wells Run has been contaminated twice - once with heating oil that leaked from The Mall of Prince Georges and another time, during a summer storm, dirt and debris from a construction site at The University Town Center was washed into the flooded tributary.

Hyattsville's City Council meeting will begin at 8 p.m.