North Shore Road Controversy
The construction of Fontana Dam led to the flooding of most of North Carolina Highway 288, which connected Deals Gap and Bryson City. The National Park Service, after gaining possession of Fontana's north shore tracts, reached an agreement with Swain County to replace the north shore road in the 1940s. By 1972, however, environmental concerns and funding issues had continuously stalled construction, and just 7.2 miles (11.6 km) of the road had been completed (just outside of Bryson City). In the 1970s, environmental concerns completely halted the road's progress, and locals nicknamed the unfinished 7.2-mile (11.6 km) road "The Road to Nowhere". After North Carolina's U.S. Senator Jesse Helms secured funding for the road in 2000, the park service conducted an environmental impact study (released in 2007) and concluded that the road's construction would cause "major, adverse, long-term impacts to topography, geology, and soils" in the area. Proponents of the road argued that the environmental concerns were exaggerated. In 2007, Swain County accepted a $52 million cash settlement from the park service, and agreed to drop its demand for a new road along the North Shore.
Read more about this topic: Fontana Dam
Famous quotes containing the words north, shore, road and/or controversy:
“Civilization does not engross all the virtues of humanity: she has not even her full share of them. They flourish in greater abundance and attain greater strength among many barbarous people. The hospitality of the wild Arab, the courage of the North American Indian, and the faithful friendships of some of the Polynesian nations, far surpass any thing of a similar kind among the polished communities of Europe.”
—Herman Melville (1819–1891)
“The shore is composed of a belt of smooth rounded white stones like paving-stones, excepting one or two short sand beaches, and is so steep that in many places a single leap will carry you into water over your head; and were it not for its remarkable transparency, that would be the last to be seen of its bottom till it rose on the opposite side. Some think it is bottomless.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“As life runs on, the road grows strange
With faces new,—and near the end
The milestones into headstones change,
‘Neath every one a friend.”
—James Russell Lowell (1819–1891)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)