A section of contaminated land at Fort Belvoir could delay construction on the final section of the Fairfax County Parkway for up to a year.
The Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) has informed officials at Fort Belvoir that it will not accept the 170-acre piece of land on which it will build the final 1.8-mile piece of the parkway, unless environmental criteria on the entire parcel are met.
This requirement tightens the restrictions previously placed on Fort Belvoir, which is responsible for cleaning up the land in accordance with guidelines set forth by the Environmental Protection Agency.
"The entire right-of-way has to be cleared and signed off on by the EPA before VDOT can accept title of it," said Chris Reed, project manager and Urban Programs Manager for VDOT's Northern Virginia District.
Those requirements were made more strict in a May 4 letter from Malcolm Kerley, chief engineer for program development for VDOT, to Col. Thomas Williams, garrison commander for Fort Belvoir.
In that letter, VDOT informed Fort Belvoir that it would not be willing to solicit bids from any contractors, and allow them to start construction without getting a firm idea of how large the environmental contamination to the area is.
"We're not sure that's the total limits of contamination, and in order to proceed with the project, that's the biggest risk,"
ACCORDING TO Richard Arndt with Fort Belvoir's Office of Public Affairs, the contaminated area is within a section of land on the Engineering Proving Ground (EPG) called M-26, and is the result of a 1960s-era oil spill. The Army has been aware of the spill since that time, said Arndt.
"It's no new information that the spill is there," he said. As recently as February, according to Arndt, an agreement had been in place for VDOT to begin bid solicitation on June 20. The original plan was for VDOT to begin construction at the north end of the EPG, while Fort Belvoir continued cleanup on the M-26 plot, located in the southeast corner of the EPG, near Fullerton Road.
"The idea was to work to where the spill was … and by the time construction reached that area, it would be clean," said Arndt.
Now, local politicians fear construction on the parkway may be delayed needlessly.
"This is a critical road, and it should never be delayed. The Army's been very diligent about cleaning up the rest of that, and they'll clean that up," said Supervisor Elaine McConnell (R-Springfield), whose district contains the northern portion of the parkway project. "It's just a route that needs to be complete."
said Reed.
Officials from both the Fairfax County and Virginia departments of transportation, along with Williams and Supervisors Dana Kauffman (D-Lee), Gerry Hyland (D-Mount Vernon), and McConnell (R-Springfield), met on Wednesday, June 1, to discuss possible steps to be taken to expedite the process of cleanup and ultimately construction. Following the meeting, McConnell said the parties are seeking a meeting with U.S. Sen. John Warner (R-Va.) to speed up the time it would take the EPA to sign off on the Proving Ground once the Army completes cleanup work.
"(It was) very productive," said McConnell, of the meeting. "We agreed that we need to get something moving quickly because we don't want a delay. We want to see if we can get them to move faster."
McConnell said the meeting with Warner would hopefully take place within the next two weeks.
Currently, VDOT is unwilling to begin construction on one end of the parkway due to the way it foresees the project's timing. Reed said the original construction concept calls for building the parkway first, then building the interchange between Fullerton Road and I-95. While that interchange was being built, traffic from the parkway would be re-routed onto surface streets. The problem, according to Reed, is that two of the ramps for that interchange project are impacted by the petroleum spill.
"If we proceed with the original concept of putting the traffic down onto the surface streets, we're looking at 20,000 to 30,000 vehicles a day … and we have no firm date to put in our contract where the contractor could finish up construction," he said.
Arndt said Fort Belvoir is currently working with Conte, a company that specializes in environmental cleanup, on cleaning up the oil.
"We have to clean the area up, and we will clean the area up," he said. "We understand their concern, but at the same time, we understand our environmental cleanup. We know what our responsibility is, and we're going to take care of it."
Arndt said the main problem is not that Fort Belvoir won't get the M-26 area cleaned up, but that VDOT won't accept the entire 170-acre parcel unless it is done soon.
"The M-26 area does not present us with a delay. We were just hoping we could work around that and get construction started," he said.
Arndt predicted a delay of six months to a year, if VDOT doesn't change its requirements.