The Virginia Department of Transportation unexpectedly cut down three acres of trees and vegetation that served as a buffer between a Fairfax County middle school and the Capital Beltway, part of a plan to install new toll lanes along the highway, surprising and angering local officials.
The stretch along Balls Hill Road, across from Cooper Middle School, will be one of four staging grounds for VDOT and its contractors during the five years of construction for the High Occupancy Toll Lanes project. But the location, timing and lack of communication from the agency on last week’s clearing drew charges of arrogance from county supervisors on Monday, the same day VDOT publicly announced its plans to clear the state-owned sites.
Some supervisors at Monday’s board meeting said they wanted more local oversight for the HOT lanes project, the construction of which will also cut into a halfdozen county parks and force the relocation of a major water main into neighborhoods along the Beltway. The project, a public-private partnership with contractors Fluor Daniels and Transurban USA, will add two new toll lanes for 14 miles in each direction of the Beltway, from Springfield to north of the Dulles Toll Road.
“I’m hoping there is some way we can bring them under some semblance of regulatory control,” said Dranesville District Supervisor John Foust, a Democrat whose district encompasses the Balls Hill site. “Because this is a private enterprise, and they’re using VDOT as a shield to evade our regulatory process.”
Doing so, Sully District Supervisor Michael Frey argued, would add at least nine months in delays to badly needed road projects and “have a chilling effect on the private sector to get involved with bidding for public contracts.”
VDOT secured all the needed state and federal approvals for the clearing, but “that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t have been more sensitive to its location,” said VDOT spokesman Steve Titunik, who also apologized for failing to adequately notify local officials of the decision. VDOT will put up a wooden fence and bushes between the Beltway and school, he said, and may turn the acres into a park when the agency is done storing materials there. “I know its an irritant now, but we can really make it into something pretty, within reason,” Titunik said.
