Action Alert—Corridor K Comments Needed

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Public Hearing May 17 in Robbinsville
or Written Comments by June 20

We need reasonable improvements,
not a 4-lane through our mountains

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The North Carolina Department of Transportation has scheduled a public hearing on May 17 at Robbinsville High School regarding Corridor K, and afterwards will accept written comments until June 20 (see details below). We need you to tell NCDOT to build reasonable improvements to the existing roads in Graham County, rather than a new 4-lane highway that would devastate the natural beauty of the area, at exorbitant cost, for little or no benefit.

Corridor K is a proposed new highway running from Stecoah, through Robbinsville, to Andrews. NCDOT is currently studying only Segments “B and C,” between Stecoah and Robbinsville. Consideration of Segment A, which would continue from Robbinsville to Andrews through the Snowbird Mountains and would complete a proposed rerouting of U.S. Highway 74 outside the Nantahala Gorge, has been postponed due to “funding and scheduling considerations.”

In studying Corridor K, NCDOT has refused, despite being ordered to do so, to give adequate consideration to any option other than building a brand-new 4-lane highway through the beautiful and peaceful Stecoah and Sweetwater Valleys. It has consistently shown its bias against more modest improvements to existing roads, even going so far as to say it can’t build these improvements because of their “considerable impacts” to streams and forests, even though its own numbers show that those impacts would be less than half of those of its new highway (9,300 feet of streams compared to 18,800 for the new highway; 136 acres of forest impacts compared to 258 for the new highway).

NCDOT and the highway’s backers claim these environmental and visual impacts, and the disruption of the historic farming community of the Stecoah Valley, are worth it in the service of economic development. But the numbers tell a different story:

• According to a study prepared for NCDOT, the highway won’t provide significant economic benefits unless Segment A is completed; Segments B and C alone won’t even produce enough business to pay for themselves during their useful lifetime.
• Even leaving aside the extraordinary environmental damage Segment A would cause as it cuts through the largely roadless Snowbird Mountains, NCDOT won’t have the money to finish it until at least 2029, even under the most optimistic funding scenario.
• And, the report concludes that any growth that occurs would be strip and sprawl development—the kind of low-quality growth that often does more harm than good.

For more details on these and other problems with NCDOT’s proposed highway and biased analysis, see our Briefing Paper here.

Please come to the May 17 hearing or submit written comments to let NCDOT know that this highway isn’t good for anyone. Not for business, not for the environment, and not for the people of Graham County and North Carolina.

If you will be attending the hearing, please let us know at info@wayssouth.org so we can coordinate. As always, thanks for your support for responsible transportation in the Southern Appalachians.
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Details on the upcoming public comment opportunities:

• Pre-Hearing Open House from 4:30 to 6:30pm at Robbinsville High School, with maps and NCDOT representatives to answer questions and take informal comments.

• Public Hearing at 7:00pm in the Robbinsville High School auditorium, with a formal presentation followed by an open comment period. Sign up to speak during the open house. Comments will be limited to 3 minutes.

• Written comments will be accepted through June 20, 2011. They should be directed to:

Mr. Ed Lewis
NC Department of Transportation
PDEA
1598 Mail Service Center
Raleigh, NC 27699-1598
(919) 707-6078
elewis@ncdot.gov