Lake Accotink donation box stolen

The donation box was by the marina.

The donation box at Lake Accotink Park was stolen at some point during the early morning hours of Oct. 24. Thieves used power tools to cut the steel support post.

The donation box had been installed in April 2014 by Friends of Lake Accotink Park (FLAP) to raise money for items the county was no longer able to pay for due to repeated cuts to the Fairfax County Park Authority budget.

All that's left.

The money deposited in the donation box was collected frequently, so at “most the thieves got maybe $5 or $10,” says FLAP President Meghan Walker.

“It’s not like it’s a gigantic revenue generator,” she said. FLAP used funds from the box for thinks like a grabber to pull trash from the lake. It’s especially dispiriting, as a volunteer recently refurbished and repainted the box.

“We don’t know if we’ll try to replace it,” Walker says. “We don’t want to put another box in the ground and have it stolen. We might have to look at other ways to raise money.”

Meanwhile, the Park Authority has begun the process to rewrite the Master Plan for Lake Accotink Park. That effort is on hold until the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality issues a report on the lake in 2017.