The U.S. Army will take on the construction of a key road project through Fort Belvoir under a provision in a defense bill, a decision that appears to end a debate between the military and the commonwealth over the contaminated property.
The 2-mile extension of the Fairfax County Parkway through the base’s 800-acre Engineer Proving Ground is considered among the most urgent of the road improvements needed before about 22,000 new military workers descend on Fort Belvoir by 2011, mandated under Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC).
Army and Virginia officials had been unable to agree on when the state should take over the pathway of the road, which is still bedeviled by lingering environmental cleanup on the former explosives testing site.
The military’s new directive to design and construct the roadway appears to bring about the resolution of that debate. With 18,000 of the workers headed to the Engineer Proving Ground under the Army’s preferred plan, the parkway extension could serve the largest part of Belvoir’s expansion.
But the roadway project still faces troubles associated with the worker influx. It was designed before the announcement of the BRAC relocation, and will need to be redesigned to accommodate the added capacity. That could result in added delays and ballooning costs.
“We’ve been on the cusp of a conclusion for so long now that I’ll only believe it when I smell asphalt in the morning,” said Lee District Supervisor Dana Kauffman.
New funding for the road will be some combination of dollars from federal, state and local sources. And dollars from Fairfax County are far from certain, as it faces lean budget times and is already paying for a large part of the 23-mile extension of Metrorail past Dulles Airport.
“The last time I checked, the cookie jar was empty,” said Kauffman. “Or a mouse named rail to Dulles had eaten it all.”
