Cemetery’s Millennium Project Gains Nay-Sayers

In a statement, Preservation Virginia wrote:

As currently designed, the planned 27-acre Millennium Project expansion threatens to disrupt the cemetery’s significant surroundings and destroy a 12-acre  section of Arlington House Woods as well as its old growth hardwood forest and historic boundary wall.

The group writes that they believe there is a better way to reach the Corp's goal in this project of increased burial space on the property and preserve trees and a small stream on the site.

Last month, the Urban Forestry Commission and the Historical Affairs and Landmark Review Board voted to support what they saw as a less intrusive version of the cemetery’s redesign.

The cemetery is not controlled at all by Arlington County, and the project is in the hands of the Army Corp. of Engineers, control granted by Congress.

Last Tuesday, May 7, the  along the same lines. The resolution says that the civic federation:

Requests all members of the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States that represent the Commonwealth of Virginia and its Congressional districts to make their best efforts, including, but not limited to the adoption of Federal legislation, to protect the trees and woodlands in Arlington National Cemetery that the Millennium Project will remove.

The that the county’s leaders are looking to the federal government to intervene, an idea that activist and environmentalist Bernie Berne has been advocating for months.

"We have to get [Sen. Tim] Kaine on it," Berne said at an Urban Forestry Commission in March.