Nearly 15,000 Department of Defense workers are leaving the region under Base Closure and Realignment Commission orders, a fact that has prompted Fort Belvoir to rethink how it is planning for the federally directed job shift, according to the base’s spokesman.
While 22,000 jobs are arriving at the base by 2011, a net 14,478 are moving out of the National Capital Region as a result of the nationwide shift of military facilities, according to Belvoir spokesman Don Carr. Though some of the 22,000 jobs may mean people moving to Fairfax, some of the 14,478 jobs may result in military and DOD personnel moving out of the Fairfax area.
That net loss could change existing notions of how BRAC will burden government services and infrastructure in Fairfax County. While the addition of a Pentagon-size work force at Belvoir is widely expected to overwhelm the area’s roads and schools, the region’s overall exodus may cushion that blow.
“It is reasonable to expect this [exodus] would reduce estimated population changes associated with the Belvoir BRAC realignment,” Carr said.
For example, a recent Army study estimated that 3,200 students would move to the area around Belvoir as a result of the base realignment, which elicited protest from county school officials who said the system is not yet ready to handle the new students.
Carr argues this number does not show the whole picture because it doesn’t take into account the Fairfax County residents who would be shipping out of the county due to other BRAC moves.
“If one is concerned with how many schoolchildren will come into the region with the 22,000 jobs coming to Belvoir, one must be concerned with how many schoolchildren will leave the region,” he said. “What we now think is that as many as 12,700 school-age children will leave the region,” with 10,125 arriving.
Exactly how many of those new residents would settle in Fairfax County is unknown, as is how many would move out of the county.
Carr said BRAC planners at Belvoir will further analyze the regional population change in a final copy of its environmental impact statement, a broad study of the impacts of the move that is now in draft form.
Fairfax County School Board Chairman Dan Storck, who has served as a liaison with the base for BRAC school planning, could not be reached for comment on Friday.
