[PCA] EDITORIAL: The Road to Nowhere (fwd)

[Olivia Kwong]

And a related link is 
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-roads23mar23,1,1546690.story?coll=la-headlines-nation 
(LA Times, registration may be required to view the article)

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 22 Mar 2006 14:06:58 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
From: MoonBranch Botanicals <moonbranch at earthlink.net>
Subject: The Road to Nowhere


Editorial
                           The Road to Nowhere

Published: March 20, 2006

It seems insane that the National Park Service would even think of
spending $600 million on a road that few people want and nobody needs —
especially when the service has barely enough money to keep up
appearances. But that could happen unless the Interior Department musters
the courage to resist Representative Charles Taylor of North Carolina.

Mr. Taylor, who says a new road would stimulate the local economy, runs
the subcommittee that controls the Interior Department's budget. For that
reason, neither the park service nor Interior's outgoing secretary, Gale
Norton, has publicly criticized the idea. But there is more at stake here
than pleasing one's paymaster. The road would not only blow a hole in the
department's budget; it would also leave a scar on one of the most
popular national parks.

At issue is a 30-mile road proposed for the north side of Fontana Lake on
the eastern edge of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in North
Carolina. The road was promised to the residents of Swain County in 1943
when the Tennessee Valley Authority built a major hydroelectric dam,
creating the lake and flooding out an existing road. After a fitful start
in the 1960's, the road was abandoned for environmental and budgetary
reasons.

Those reasons still apply. The road, including three big bridges, each
the length of the Brooklyn Bridge, would breach an unbroken tract of
national forest, destroy wildlife habitat and poison hundreds of miles of
streams. Its estimated cost of $604 million — up 40 percent from only a
year ago — is three times the annual roads budget for the entire national
park system, which is already suffering from a big repair backlog.

There is no pressing need for the project. Swain County has other roads.
The road's opponents include Bill Frist, the Senate majority leader, and
Swain County's own commissioners. There is broad agreement that
restitution of some sort is due the residents of the region, and that the
spirit if not the letter of the original agreement should be honored. A
cash settlement of $52 million has been proposed.

As Mr. Taylor has noted, this will not generate the jobs and income that
the road project would. But it's fair, and it won't do lasting damage.
Interior should endorse the settlement. The department's neutrality
serves only to keep alive an idea that makes even less sense now than it
did in 1943.

  Robin Suggs
MoonBranch Botanicals
5294 Yellow Creek Road
Robbinsville, North Carolina 28771 
USA

Telephone: 828.479.2788
moonbranch at earthlink.net
www.moonbranch.com

Member:
American Herbalist Guild
Co-op America 
Green Products Alliance 
National Network of Forest Practitioners
North Carolina Consortium on Natural Medicines 
North Carolina Goodness Grows/NCDA&CS 
North Carolina Natural Products Association
Southwestern North Carolina RC&D Council
United Plant Savers

It is well for people who think to change their minds occasionally 
in order to keep them clean.
For those who do not think, it is best at least to rearrange their 
prejudices once in a while.
-Luther Burbank (1849-1926) born on Mar 7