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Connection Newspapers
U.S. Rep. Jim Moran (D-VA)
Two years ago, Northern Virginia was rocked with news that the Department of Defense -- under Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- was planning to relocate some 20,000 active duty and civilian employees out of the region’s leased office space and onto military bases. For Fort Belvoir, it meant a population increase of 22,000 people, half relocating DoD employees working in leased office space in Northern Virginia and the rest transferees from outside of the region.
Rumsfeld’s proposal was part of the Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) process; established by Congress in 1988, to limit politics in the process of closing excess military installations and realigning others in an effort to save money. After months of debate and vigorous opposition from the Northern Virginia delegation and local leaders, the BRAC Commissioners approved most of Secretary Rumsfeld’s plan.
Fast-forward to 2007 and the implications of the BRAC decision have become clearer. Already one of the most traffic clogged areas in the country, Route 1 and I-95 along Fort Belvoir were predicted to experience devastating traffic congestion due to the influx of new workers. The Army Corps of Engineers predicted that four to five mile backups along I-95 and gridlock in the corridor that would extend far beyond rush hour would become the norm.
For those of us following this issue closely, it was clear legislative action needed to be taken. Coordinating with Supervisors Dana Kauffman and Gerry Hyland, Rep. Tom Davis and I pressed the Army to help come up with a solution to this looming traffic quagmire. One proposal that emerged was for the GSA to transfer their warehouse property located at the Springfield Mall to the Army. Located on a Metro accessible site, such a move would literally take thousands of cars off the roads. Contrasted with the Army’s preferred location -- the more isolated Engineering Proving Grounds (EPG) -- it was unquestionably the right move.
After many long negotiations with the Army and an amendment we put into the recently passed defense bill giving GSA and the Army the authority to carry out such a transfer, a major break-through occurred last week. Under the agreement reached between the Army and GSA, fully 6,500 of the workers scheduled to be relocated to Belvoir will be put somewhere other than the EPG (most likely to the Metro accessible Springfield Mall site). And to top things off, the Army also agreed to oversee construction of the Fairfax County Parkway, the major artery connecting the Ft. Belvoir community to I-95 and points north.
This is a major coup for the area, but not the end of the road. Some $450 million in transportation improvements have been identified as being needed to handle the influx of new workers (according to the DoD’s Environmental Impact Study for Fort Belvoir’s BRAC realignment). By law, BRAC is supposed to be fully implemented by 2011. But there’s no guarantee that these necessary infrastructure improvements will be made by then. In that vein, I successfully attached another amendment to the Defense bill. It states that the military is prohibited from relocating Arlington’s leased space office workers to Belvoir -- regardless of the 2011 deadline -- until these road improvements are substantially completed.
We must keep up pressure on the Defense Department to ensure that our region can handle the crush of new workers they have imposed on us. These BRAC decisions were not necessary and, I would argue, inconsistent with the purpose of saving money as BRAC was designed to do.
I believe it will be difficult for the military to complete BRAC in the time allotted under law. And that’s fine by me. The deadline is essentially meaningless. But to Northern Virginians whose quality of life and economic well-being are directly affected, it is essential that we have our transportation network in place before we drop the equivalent of four major military bases onto an area that is already far too congested.
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