Trash from Americana Drive cleanup not collected

Nearly 60 volunteers spent hours on Veterans Day last Tuesday picking up trash along Americana Road in Annandale.

Five days later, piles of bright orange trash bags are still there. Some of the bags have opened, with trash spilling out.

Americana Drive resident Amy Gould, one of the organizers of the periodic cleanups along with Philip Latasa of the Friends of Accotink Creek, says VDOT usually picks up the trash bags the day after the event. She plans to follow up on Monday with VDOT and the Braddock District supervisor’s office.

The Nov. 11 cleanup was held in cooperation with the Fairfax County Restoration Project, with support from Team Rubicon, the Wounded Warrior Project, and The Vistas apartments. 

Volunteers from those and other organizations, along with local residents, students, and Braddock District staff, collected 208 bags of trash plus 22 tires, two toilets, two sinks, a backyard slide, two TVs, three mattresses, a three-wheeled motorcycle, lots of construction debris, and much more. The organizers estimate the haul at 2.3 tons.

As the volunteers were finishing up, a neighbor in a pickup truck drove by to retrieve salvageable metal items for sale as scrap, Latasa said. “It was good to know some of what we collected would be put to a better use than being discarded as rubbish.”

“Depressing levels of illegal dumping continue to plague Americana Drive,” he said. “Our appeals to conscience and the example set by our cleanups have had little effect.”

Latasa hopes a forthcoming study commissioned by the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors “will produce imaginative solutions.”

The next Americana Drive cleanup will be on Presidents Day, Feb. 16, 2026.