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Volkswagen's announcement of a
new Tennessee plant can't speed work on Corridor K 'any
faster than it's going now,' TDOT says
First Automaker says it
will begin assembling 150,000 mid-size sedans annually at a
$1 billon plant near Cleveland, Tenn., in 2011
If ever
completed from Cleveland to Dillsboro, N.C., the Land of Sky
Parkway, a.k.a. Corridor K, would move new VW’s to world
markets across North Carolina, eliminating need to travel
I-75 South and Atlanta’s plodding I-285 beltway
By Tom Bennett
Special to Hiwassee River Watershed Coalition,
Inc.
Murphy, N.C., July 15, 2008 –
Volkswagen Group of America’s announcement today that it
will construct an auto plant near Cleveland and Chattanooga
in east Tennessee, cheered by state leaders, has not sped
the planning for Land of Sky Parkway, a spokesman insisted.
“The Volkswagen announcement couldn’t make it go any
faster than it already is going,” said Wesley Hughen. He is
project manager for the proposed Appalachian Development
Highway System Corridor K, which has been talked about since
John F. Kennedy was in the White House and dressed up by
Tennessee this year with the new name Land of Sky Parkway.
It would somehow embellish existing U.S. 64 to grow to
four lanes through the fragile Ocoee River gorge. Or they
might veer above the gorge and be bridged and paved high up
through the Little Frog Wilderness, which is the steep,
pitched home of the only remaining pristine, wild stretch of
the Hiwassee River.
“We were already in the process of moving on it,”
Hughen told me. “The committee made the selection of the
consultant in May. I haven’t gotten around to putting it on
the (TDOT) web site. I’ll get that fixed right away.
“The consultant is URS Inc. of Mooresville, N.C.,”
Hughen continued. “We’re having meetings with them to answer
questions like, ‘How long will it take? How much will it
cost? The next meeting is Aug. 1.”
The North Carolina Division of San Francisco-based URS
Corp. has the tasks of preparing – get ready, readers, here
comes the alphabet soup! – a Transportation Planning Report
(TPR), Environmental Impact Statement (EIS), and Context
Sensitive Solution/Design (CSS/D) for Corridor K.
An earlier EIS entailing four lanes, four tunnels and 30
bridges through the Ocoee Gorge was shelved and has been
taken off the Internet.
‘OUR TIME
HAS ARRIVED,’ REP. WAMP EXULTS
Tennessee elected officials sparred today for reporters’
attention to praise Volkswagen Group of America and claim
part of the credit for a plant they say will employ 2,000
persons.
“I’m enormously pleased by the announcement from
Volkswagen Group of America and grateful for the company’s
investment in Chattanooga and in the people of Tennessee,”
said Gov. Phil Bredesen.
“I couldn’t be more pleased that the spirit of
partnership between the state of Tennessee, Volkswagen and
the government and business leadership of Chattanooga and
Hamilton County has resulted in this investment in
Enterprise South,” said Matt Kisber, commissioner of the
Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development.
Enterprise South is a 1,350-acre business park 12 miles
northeast of Chattanooga.
“We started with a vision of transforming an idle Army
facility into the source of thousands of family-wage jobs,”
said Hamilton County Mayor Claude Ramsey.
“Volkswagen and Chattanooga have a lot in common,” said
City of Chattanooga Mayor Ron Littlefield. “Both are
serious about environmental sustainability and 21st
Century manufacturing.”
“Volkswagen and Chattanooga are the ideal marriage, one
of the world’s most admired companies and one of America’s
most livable cities,” said U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander.
The Bredesen, Kisber, Ramsey, Littlefield and Alexander
quotes are in Jill Bratina’s article for P.R. Newswire on
the web site of the Tennessee Dept. of Economic and
Community Development.
“It was just a matter of time before a major auto
manufacturer decided to locate at Enterprise South, and our
time has arrived,” said U.S. Rep. Zach Wamp of Chattanooga
on his web site. “This new partnership with Volkswagen
showcases Chattanooga’s position as a manufacturing giant in
the Tennessee Valley Technology Corridor.”
SO FAR,
THIRD TRY AT LURING AN AUTOMAKER IS A SUCCESS
The German automaker chose Tennessee’s over sites in
Alabama and Michigan, the Associated Press reported in the
New York Times.
Volkswagen approved up to $991.4 million to build the
plant, AP reported. Are you beginning to see what is at
stake here?
Chattanooga was spurned earlier by Toyota, which chose
a site near Tupelo, Miss., and also by Kia, which chose a
location in West Point, Ga.
Christian Wolff is the governor of the German state of
Lower Saxony. It owns 20 percent of Volkswagen. “The new
plant, in addition to factories in India and Russia, is part
of the Volkswagen strategy to expand,” Wolff told AP.
‘INCENTIVES TIED TO JOB CREATION AND CAPITAL INVESTMENT’
After auto plants are turning out new vehicles, then
and only then do reporters begin to use open-records
statutes and uncover the gratuitous tax breaks given the
automakers. These tax breaks create revenue shortfalls for
states that typically have statutes requiring annual
balanced budgets. So the millions of dollars in shortfall
is made up by the ordinary citizens from places in the
American South like Soddy Daisy, and not Lower Saxony.
I e-mailed Jill Bratina on the Dept. of Economic and
Community Development and asked, “What incentives did
Volkswagen of America receive from Tennessee Dept. of
Economic and Community Development to build an automotive
production facility at Enterprise South Industrial Park?”
She has not responded, but as soon as I have her reply I’ll
ask for it to be added here.
“Volkswagen of America received an attractive,
comprehensive package of incentives,” states her press
release. “The statutory incentives are tied to job creation
and capital investment. Additional support includes
assistance for public infrastructure and job training.”
THE STATE OF ALABAMA was runner-up to Tennessee in the
Volkswagen sweepstakes. According to News Channel 9 ABC of
Chattanooga, quoting the Mobile Press-Register newspaper,
the following is a quote demonstrating how high are the
stakes in these auto-plant competitions in the Southern
states. The quote is about the race for Volkswagen, and it
is from Gov. Bob Riley of Alabama:
“Alabama offered a package that included $205 million in
cash, plus another $181 million in tax breaks, job training
and other considerations. It was the most the state ever
offered for an auto plant.”
Permanent harm to storied rivers named the Ocoee,
Hiwassee and Nantahala could be the result of an improved
highway that aids exports and thereby buttresses jobs for
2,000 persons. Those 2,000 constitute .000006565 percent of
the U.S. population, according to today’s estimate by the
Census Bureau. This is a swap of natural beauty in the Blue
Ridge for jobs plus political coups for a few elected
officials. Is that an acceptable tradeoff?
THE
ENGINEERING GIANT NOW WEIGHING OUR ENVIRONMENTAL FUTURE
The winner of this latest Tennessee effort to write an
actionable Corridor K impact study is the URS Corp.
headquartered on Montgomery Street in San Francisco. This
giant is the 34th largest federal prime
contractor. It had 2006 revenues of $5.2 billion, according
to washingtontechnology.com.
Its 56,000 employees work in “a network of offices in
major cities in the Americas, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East
and Europe. In the heart of at least an economic slowdown
and maybe a recession, URS Corp. thrives. It was up $1.74
on the New York Stock Exchange today to $42.04 per share.
According to the “key recent developments” click on the
Reuters news site, URS Corp. has received a $153 million
contract to build buildings at Marshall Space Flight Center
in Huntsville, Ala.; a $46.5 million contract to design what
is called the 465-69 Northeast Corridor for the Indiana
Department of Transportation; a $90 million contract to
manage geotechnical evaluations for levees for the
California Department of Water Resources; and a $100 million
contract to perform remedial actions at Navy and Marine
Corps installations in seven states.
THE
‘MISSING LINK’
An existing 1978-79 stretch of Corridor K four-lane
is in place from the Tennessee state line through the town
of Murphy, near my home, and its concrete path reaches to a
point just east of the town of Andrews. There the pavement
narrows to two lanes. Environmental concerns about the
nearby Nantahala Gorge brought work to a halt there in
1979. Symbolically, there is today an open-pit, fill-dirt
quarry by Corridor K there at its current Eastern terminus.
When it rains, red dirt from this pit washes out onto the
road. It’s as if the would-be road contractor still is
getting even for having been stopped cold there at that
point east of Andrews.
WERE NCDOT EVER to complete right-of-way acquisition and
undertake to finish the “missing link,” the giant agency
will surely face as great or greater an array of roadblocks
than those still confronting Tennesseans who now are
toasting each other at parties.
Let’s say all sides could agree, and “missing-link”
construction went forward, maybe in your grandchildren’s
lifetimes. Big transport carriers loaded with Volkswagen
sedans and emitting carbon monoxide into these mountain
heights would travel the “missing link” to Dillsboro. There
they would roll onto the Smoky Mountain Expressway. It is
convenient, it is fast, and it is a blight upon the Blue
Ridge if ever there was one.
That path of pavement and smog would take the loads of
sedans to Asheville where they would lumber onto I-40, North
Carolina’s freeway main street. The transports’ drivers
would smile a bit knowing they had escaped the snail’s pace
of Atlanta’s I-285 and the winding, treacherous
right-lane-only of I-40 west through the Great Smoky
Mountains. Ahead of them via a variety of other Southern
freeways would lay waiting at seaports from Virginia to
Savannah the cargo ships assigned to take the Volkswagens to
foreign countries.
TO CUT and grade all those slopes, fell thousands of
trees, silt up creeks and rivers, and pave hundreds of miles
of asphalt or concrete over mountains and thereby for 24
hours a day have trucks emitting carbon monoxide into the
Blue Ridge… Is the tradeoff of environmental quality for
these jobs and politics worth it?
* * *
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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