A steady stream of dump trucks going to and from the construction operation at the intersection of River and Piney Meetinghouse roads, is part of preparing the former Marwood Estate for development.
The project will make way for a development called Potomac View which will put 46 single family homes on one-acre lots. The trucks are a result of the history of what had been known as the Marwood property. While the Marwood Mansion further back overlooking the Potomac River is a historic landmark, the construction crew on site now has a different perspective.
“It was an old rubble dump,” said John Owen, chief estimator for AccuBid Excavation, the company overseeing the excavation of the ground.
A decade or so ago, a steady stream of dump trucks trucked dirt and debris into Marwood.
“The fill was very deep – up to 50 feet in parts,” said Callum Murray, Potomac team leader for Park and Planning. Part of the subdivision approval for the property, granted Feb. 6, 1992, addressed the problem of deep fill, which could would have made the land too unstable for building.
“The problem would have been the potential for foundation failure,” said Richard Weaver of Park and Planning’s Development Review disivion.
The ground might have been unable to support the weight of a house as a result of the fill, Weaver said.
The builder, Toll Brothers, had applied to be allowed to use a process called dynamic compaction on the site, Murray said. Toll Brothers did not return the Almanac’s calls for comment by press time.
Under the process of dynamic compaction, a large, heavy object is dropped onto the ground repeatedly in order to compress the rubble underlying the ground.
The process is typically very loud and residents opposed the approval of the system; the Planning Board said the developer would have to use other methods.
Owen explained that his company is excavating the old material, mostly concrete, out of the ground.
“If it’s the old rubble, we’re running it through screens,” Owen said. He explained that the concrete is then cleaned, crushed and replaced.
The trucks driving on River Road are bring new, fresh fill to the property in order to level it more effectively.
“The construction will be very stable because there won’t be any voids,” Murray said.
Owen hopes to have his company’s part of the project finished by the end of the year. “It’s quite an operation,” he said.