An urgently needed thoroughfare through Fort Belvoir’s Engineer Proving Ground may be further delayed by the sudden need for a redesign to accommodate thousands of new defense workers — a job further complicated by ongoing environmental issues.
The road — which would bridge a missing two-mile section of the Fairfax County Parkway through the EPG off Interstate 95 — is considered among the most important of the badly needed road projects near the base.
The base is slated to receive 22,000 new military jobs under the Base Realignment And Closure Commission directive.
“This is two or three times the traffic volume than it had been designed for,” said Virginia Del. Vivian Watts, who represents a district in southern Fairfax County.
As a result, the design of the mostly six-lane highway project needs to be seriously re-examined, officials say — a process that could create delays in the face of a swiftly approaching BRAC deadline.
“Unless [the road] gets under construction fairly rapidly, they will not be able to physically deliver it in advance of BRAC,” said Fairfax County Transportation Department Director Kathy Ichter. “We have about another six-month to three-month window of opportunity that it needs to get under construction.”
The proving ground, a former explosives testing site, would be home to 18,000 of those workers under the Army’s preferred plan. A $9.2 million cleanup by the Army Corps of Engineers removed hundreds of undetonated explosives and pieces of debris, but contamination remains on the “Former Aboveground Test Tank Site” in the path of the roadway, according to an Army spokesman.
The Army plans to eventually turn the road over to the Commonwealth of Virginia once the environmental degradation is cleaned up.
