Virginia’s planned toll lanes on the Beltway will have a deeper effect on surrounding parks and communities than originally understood, new details show.
The project, Fairfax County officials have learned, will cut into seven parks and force the relocation of a 15,000-foot water main into some neighborhoods near the Beltway.
But even those changes remain uncertain as the specifics of the $1.7 billion road construction are hammered out.
“We seem to keep learning more, and I’m hoping at some point we’re going to have the whole picture before us so we know what to expect,” Providence District Supervisor Linda Smyth said. “But at this point we keep getting new pieces. I wish they were pleasant surprises.”
The Capital Beltway High Occupancy Toll lanes project, a public-private partnership with contractors Fluor Daniels and Transurban USA, will add two new toll lanes in each direction of the highway for 14 miles between Springfield and north of the Dulles Toll Road. Construction is slated to begin this summer and last five years.
Especially troubling to the county’s Park Authority is what the expansion will do to Wakefield Park in Annandale, which they believe will be most affected.
The expansion of the Beltway will hurt some trails, “and obviously we have concerns about natural and cultural resources being protected,” Park Authority spokeswoman Judy Pedersen said.
“We’re talking about perhaps 5 to 10 acres of actual land loss, but the impact could be much greater than that,” she said.
Smyth’s office only recently heard of the water main relocation, which is scheduled for a Planning Commission public hearing May 1 and is expected to run through the communities of Tysons Executive Village and Holmes Run Acres in Falls Church.
At Holmes Run Acres, residents have heard that a new main will be coming through but have not been told exactly where, said Norm Atkins, a member of the community’s civic association board of directors. He called it a “minor inconvenience.”
“We realize that progress cannot be stopped,” he said. “They try and keep us alerted, but in reality, it’s going to happen.”
