Led by a "magnetometer," the engineers at Fort Belvoir have shifted gears in January and begun preparing the land at the Engineer Proving Grounds (EPG) for the Fairfax County Parkway completion. Although they aren't expecting an explosive situation, they're outfitted with explosives of their own to be on the safe side.
"We're clearing a 170-acre plot of land," said U.S. Army spokesperson Don Dees. "The purpose of clearing the land is so we can hand it over to VDOT [Virginia Department of Transportation]."
Last week, the Army began the task of scanning the land with the magnetometer, which detects any metallic objects under the soil. It will also determine the size of the objects, and the larger ones will be cleared by the engineers with explosives, according to Dees. To do this, they surround the objects with sandbags, plant explosives and detonate. Traffic had to be stopped on Rolling Road in some instances.
"We blow them up in place," Dees said.
"They're dragging this thing around and marking the anomalies," Dees added.
While the total acreage for the EPG is about 300 acres, the 170-acre parcel is the avenue that the road will take along the western side of the Accotink Creek. The other 130 acres will have to be cleared before the Army can hand it over to Fairfax County.
Although that portion of Fort Belvoir's land was not used for combat training by the Army in the past, it was used for engineer training, so dummy mines were present. The Army would train engineers what to do if they encountered real mines while building bridges and structures. Some dummy mines may be in the ground. These dummy mines do not have a full explosive device.
"There is a potential for mine training aids, with a fuse that would explode with a puff of smoke," Dees said.
The explosives may be heard by the surrounding communities and passing traffic. The Army was reluctant to put out the message of their intentions. Several Saratoga residents had no idea the operation was taking place.
"I haven't heard anything," said Saratoga resident Tom Evans, a new member of the homeowners association in the community that is just across Rolling Road from the site.
THE ARMY has allocated $2.5 million to clear the 170-acre parcel and will use any leftover money to clear the rest of the 130 acres in the future. The land is split into the Mount Vernon and Lee districts. The portion that the Fairfax County Parkway will traverse is in Mount Vernon, and Supervisor Gerry Hyland (D-Mount Vernon) is happy with the Army's progress.
"The Army has been asked to move the environmental cleanup of that site as soon as possible," Hyland said. "Apparently, they're going to have to use explosives to do that. They may not have known that when they started the cleanup."
The remaining parcel of land is in Lee District and has been eyed by Supervisor Dana Kauffman (D-Lee) for parks, residential and commercial uses. It was also eyed by baseball advocates as a site for a new stadium if Northern Virginia gets a team. Although Kauffman opposed the baseball idea, a decision has not been reached by the Major League to relocate the Montreal Expos, as originally thought.