Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 17, 1994 TAG: 9404190015
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: D-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By A. SCOTT McDOWELL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
When I was a kid, they took out the woods next door to build a house. When I was a teen-ager, they turned the farm next to our town swimming hole into a cheap town house development. When I was in high school, I discovered that the house where I grew up (we called it the "country") was about to be consumed by the largest housing development in Maryland.
In my 34 years, I have seen the Washington, D.C., area turn from farmland into shopping malls, highways and overpriced housing. When I lived in Dale City in Northern Virginia, they turned the blackberry patch and woods around my house into a gas station and a shopping mall, and sedimented the headwaters of Neabsco Creek to the point where they were nearly lifeless. When I lived in Fairfax, it was the whine of saw blades and the bleeping of bulldozers for the construction of a ritzy housing development and "country" club.
So when I moved to Roanoke and bought my house in the woods down Bradshaw Road, I felt that finally a lifetime of working had paid off - I had found some peace.
But to my dismay, in a period of less than one year I have been faced with the new Smith Gap landfill, a proposed tripling of the size of the power line that crosses Catawba Mountain, and now the proposed route of Interstate 73. Imagine how I felt when I saw that Alternative No. 6 would run directly over my house!
Where does it end?
I can tell you from experience that more highways do not equal a better standard of living. Many people, including myself, have left high-paying jobs in the Washington area to escape the hellish traffic jams, ridiculous cost of living, and chaotic mindset of a nation reeling with more and more money, and yet less and less quality of life.
Let's examine the facts:
A decade of uncontrolled growth has led to $3 trillion in debt and a recession.
The supposed economic growth of the 1980s did not create a healthy economy, only a nation that has at least faced the fact that we must change our approach.
The history of uncontrolled growth is a legacy of traffic jams, crime, environmental degradation and corporate cutbacks.
And who will pay for this debt? I and my generation.
We do not need another highway. I have a huge interstate highway just to the east (over Fort Lewis Mountain), and major highways to the south (U.S. 460) and north (U.S. 311 and 220). If I want to drive to Detroit or Charleston, S.C., I have plenty of options. How are we supposed to swallow the billions of dollars it will cost to build this road, when the governments are in financial straits and cannot maintain the infrastructure that we do have?
Why do we have huge sums to repave highways that don't need it and for outrageous projects like crossing mountains with highways, when we do not have money for education? It seems to this taxpayer that spending our tax dollars to plow through mountain after mountain; ruin a wildlife-management area (Haven's Wildlife Management area on Fort Lewis Mountain); destroy people's property (certainly those whose land will be taken by eminent domain will not benefit from the highway); and annihilate some of the best turkey, black-bear and whitetail habitat in Virginia is financial stupidity at best and pork-barrel thievery at worst.
The people of the Roanoke and New River valleys, and of Virginia, should consider the consequences of allowing the federal government and a few individuals who will profit greatly to determine our future. One can see the future here by experiencing Northern Virginia, Los Angeles or New York. Do we really want Southwest Virginia to resemble these places?
Just two weeks ago, a man murdered two people at a small-town store in Ironto (off Interstate 81), just a few miles from my house. We should realize that along with this brand of economic growth come crime, poverty, environmental degradation and - ironically - low-paying minimum-wage jobs for us, while people who do not live here become rich.
I think that the Roanoke Valley, and America in general, suffer from poor self-esteem. I love Roanoke and America. The mountains and streams and the environment here make life good. I see the valley as a place of awesome beauty with a highly skilled work force and very high standard of living. We should compare ourselves with the rest of the world, not some chart created by the profit-hungry. America is the best country in the world! And Roanoke is one of the best places in America!!
The quiet that I hear at my little house in the woods gives me peace of mind and a place where our kids can grow up without hate. Here are your family values. Where are the family values in huge interstate highways and the gigantic industrial machine and the federal deficit?
I realize that nothing stays the same. I realize that there are those who do not have jobs. But why trade our soul for a job at a convenience mart? The problem with the economy is the imbalance of wealth - the fact that one can work his or her butt off and still be on the brink of poverty. Another highway will only make this problem worse.
It is time that America realize where her real strength lies: not on Wall Street or in a fancy room full of politicians, but right here with the good people of Southwest Virginia. We must stop letting business managers hungry for cash flow tell us that we are irrelevant because we do not have a lot of money. When the real-estate market in D.C. is crashing, the stock market in New York is reeling, and Los Angeles is burning - the people of the mountains will be hunkering in for another winter, and surviving just fine, thank you, as always.
If they decide to demolish my house and my neighbors' houses, and Catawba Mountain and Fort Lewis Mountain, it won't be the end of the world. I'll move on, perhaps to an area with less "economic growth." But I do not want to run. I don't want to give in to the cynicism that has our country in its grip. I don't want to see the peace of the mountains replaced with the grating whine of tractor-trailers on the highway.
A. Scott McDowell is a hydrogeologist for a Roanoke architecture-engineering firm.
by CNB