“Road to Nowhere” is, hopefully…nowhere…
National Park Service endorses cash settlement of the Fontana Agreement
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From the Smoky Mountain Times
The National Park Service will endorse a cash settlement to Swain County in lieu of building a North Shore Road in its Final Environmental Impact Statement to be released this fall.
Great Smoky Mountains National Park Superintendent Dale A. Ditmanson said in an NPS release Friday that the Park Service has begun work on the FEIS which was undertaken to help resolve long-standing issues surrounding the proposed North Shore Road in the Swain County area of the GSMNP.
“Even though the FEIS will not be released for several months, we wanted to be responsive to the intense public interest in the status of this undertaking,” Ditmanson said.
Reaction to the decision was quick.
“The Citizens for the Economic Future of Swain County is delighted that he Great Smoky Mountains National Park, National Park Service, and Department of Interior have endorsed the monetary settlement as the preferred alternative of the 1943 Agreement,” said Citizens Chair Leonard Winchester.
A settlement offers Swain County the opportunity to build a better future. Swain County has been a hard luck story ever since the 1943 Agreement. Every locally funded service has been under-funded for many years.”
The cash settlement “will protect the undisturbed forests and streams of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and save the American taxpayers millions of dollars,” said Congressman Heath Shuler. The first-term Democratic congressman and Bryson City native joined with U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole (R-NC), U.S. Sens. Lamar Alexander and Bob Corker, both Tennessee Republicans, and 13 North Carolina U.S. House members in asking for a monetary settlement earlier this year.
But Linda Hogue, Chariman of the North Shore Road Association, said her group does “not intend to quit fighting for what is right.”
“Members of the North Shore Road Association believe that the government should keep its word and build the road. If the Park Service cannot see its way clear to keep its word, it should consider returning the land.” She said that Shuler “has never met with the people of Swain County to listen to their side of things� he is representing the financial interest of his friends in Eastern Tennessee and the environmental crowd.”
The Park Service “selected its Agency Preferred Alternative, in the draft FEIS, based on an extensive review of the nearly 76,000 public comments received in response to the DEIS and analysis of the impacts of each alternative on the park’s natural, cultural and recreational resources,” Ditmanson said.
Debate over whether a 34-mile road should be constructed dates back to 1943 when an agreement was signed between the U.S. Department of the Interior, State of North Carolina, Swain County and the Tennessee Valley Authority. Under the provisions of the 1943 Agreement, a new road to replace NC 288, which was flooded during construction of TVA’s Fontana Dam, would be built when and if Congress appropriated funds.
In the 1960s, the NPS constructed approximately six miles of the road before stopping work, citing environmental and engineering problems. There was no additional funding for the road until 2001 when $16 million was appropriated for the environmental impact studies.
