Here we go again. The Base Realignment and Closure Commission’s mandated relocation of thousands of Defense Department employees throughout the Washington region by Sept. 15 has hit another major snag. This time it’s in Bethesda, where a $781 million expansion of the National Naval Medical Center is on hold because nobody bothered to check whether the existing power substation could handle the increased load. Turns out it can’t. The substation, which is located near the National Institutes of Health, is already at peak capacity and Pentagon officials warn that construction cannot be completed until it’s significantly upgraded. That could take up to three years. Then on Aug. 16, the Defense Department sent a letter to Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin, D-Mich., begging for another $36.6 million to pay for the power upgrade. This is in addition to the $29.4 million that will be used to build temporary medical facilities to house patients while the new ones are being built. That’s $66 million in taxpayer dollars that will be wasted due to poor planning alone.
It’s hard to fathom the sheer incompetence of designers who didn’t bother to check the power source while they were designing this multimillion-dollar power-guzzling complex. Of course, there’s also the possibility that the last-minute “discovery” of an inadequate electrical source was simply a ruse to allow unprepared Montgomery County officials more time to prepare for the gridlock that’s coming when patient visits double to more than 1 million annually.
Over in Virginia, the BRAC move to the Mark Center in Alexandria will create a similar traffic Armageddon on Interstate 95/395 as thousands of relocated commuters attempt to cram onto a highway that is already at capacity during rush hour. The fact that neither the city of Alexandria nor the commonwealth of Virginia bothered to lift a finger to build so much as an extra exit ramp to manage the increased traffic flow is inexcusable. So is Fairfax County’s failure to adequately upgrade roads leading to Fort Belvoir.
All the government officials involved, from the Pentagon brass on down to city and county officials, had five years to plan the BRAC move and promised local residents as smooth a transition as humanly possible. It’s to their major discredit that it will likely be anything but. Local residents should remember these broken promises and demand much more accountability from them in the future.
