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What it will be is “an open
book” as citizens from three states comment on Corridor K
Nine Tennessee counties rate
this project their top priority
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, Inc
Chattanooga, Tenn., Feb. 8, 2007 – “Corridor” is
the only term now agreed upon by all to describe a
talked-about future path from Tennessee to North Carolina.
Tennesseans want it built. Its state government and
some contractors who allied with the state in this endeavor
held a meeting here tonight. They wanted a lot of public
comment to add to an earlier Draft Environmental Impact
Study. The whole undertaking could change the landscape for
a very long time. Billions of development and road-building
dollars could be at stake. It is something for the
residents in the Hiwassee River basin to know about and
follow as best you can.
If ever this procedure resulted in a road, freeway,
highway, greenbelt, multi-modal transportation path or
whatever, it would move east. Its route could take it
above, below or through the tight Ocoee River gorge. Then
the thing would keep going east through, above, below or
near Murphy and Andrews, North Carolina, and beyond.
There was a draft EIS completed for this corridor in
2004. However, it wasn’t distributed here during this
meeting at the Development Center. All we had to go on was
a study plan map depicting where the undefined construction
might go, including through North Carolina’s Cherokee, Clay,
Swain and Macon Counties.
Twenty-eight persons, including the Executive Director
of the Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition, signed their
names on sheets at the front door, “but there were more than
that who came,” said Beth Jones, who is Director of the
Southeast Tennessee Development District based here. The 28
or more persons may have been few in number, yet they came
from Tennessee, North Carolina, and Georgia. A potential
future freeway is something to cause people to sit up and
take notice.
We broke up into groups and sat around tables talking
for 15 minutes about how environmental and economic
development concerns could be balanced. We wrote our
comments on green sheets. I wrote that the Ocoee River
Gorge already is saturated with traffic. You risk your life
traveling on it dodging big trucks, or at last finding some
pull-off to get out of their way.
I also wrote on my green sheet that three Georgia
counties whose locations are white blanks on this corridor
study plan map are at risk. They ought to be brought into
the planning. If not, Towns and Union County residents could
look up one day and wonder where the bulldozer noise was
coming from. For their commissioners to apparently say,
“Leave us out of it, we don’t want any part of it,” is not
enough protection for the citizens. That’s what I wrote on
my sheet, anyway.
The next day I asked Beth Jones of Southeast Tennessee
Development District, what engineering project is being
contemplated by contractors and the Tennessee Department of
Transportation?
She replied: “The meeting was about trying to put
together economic development plan for a corridor. If
you’re asking if we’re talking about what project is being
engineered, that’s still an open book. This was not to
decide an alignment, or to talk about a strategy for a
corridor development plan. There were a lot of ideas
discussed. It might not be about a road, might be about a
combination of different modes of transport.”
Southeast Tennessee Development District is a regional
planning organization that works on behalf of local
governments and is based here. The other hosts for this
meeting, according to the agenda, were TDOT and Wilbur Smith
Associates.
The latter has offices in many cities, including
Knoxville, and it is based in Columbia, S.C. It is a
company of engineers, planners and economists. It asserts
on its web site: “Nothing is stationary. Not in your
world. Definitely not in ours. For more than 50 years,
moving you forward has been our mission and our passion.
From airports and interstates to toll systems and economics,
we help propel our clients toward performance beyond their
expectations.” Wilbur Smith was “the first state traffic
engineer in South Carolina.”
After we met in little groups and wrote our comments on
green sheets, there was open discussion.
Jeanne Stevens, planning director for TDOT, said: “We are
to come up with a sustainable economic vision.”
Others who rose and spoke weren’t asked to give their
names and affiliations, but here are some of the comments
made, and they surely are going into TDOT planning to check
off how the citizens have been consulted.
“Economic development and the environment cannot be
separated in this region.”
“There needs to be a provision for preserving family
farms.”
“Areas outside an actual roadway – the convenience
stores, the shopping centers – these could become an
environmental concern, too.”
Western North Carolina is isolated and so there need
to be roads bringing economic development here. That’s a
paraphrase I have in my notes of what one of the attendees
said.
“Nine Tennessee counties met last week and they said that
constructing this road is the number one project for their
communities.”
“The Appalachian Regional Commission and TDOT are to take
this and come up with a balance between environmental and
economic concerns.”
“The NEPA, the National Environmental Policy Act,
requires you to identify the environmental consequences” of
a construction project.”
Although no date and time had been established, Melissa
Zeiglar of Wilbur Smith Associates said another meeting like
this will be held in Cherokee, N.C. However, a Clay County,
N.C., resident said, “It needs to be in Murphy or Andrews.
They’re the ones that are going to be most affected by
this.”
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Tom Bennett of the Martins Creek community west
of Murphy is a board member and a volunteer for Hiwassee River
Watershed Coalition.
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