
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994                   TAG: 9406170139
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

BOUCHER RALLIES OPPOSITION TO I-73

Fog sliced the top of Bent Mountain off the horizon Friday night as Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, made his way to the elementary school there to laud residents for their fight against an interstate that could run across their mountain.

The heavy fog is one in a catalog of reasons residents give for why Bent Mountain is a bad place for proposed Interstate 73.

Boucher agrees with them and has proposed his own route for the possible interstate that would go nowhere near the mountain or Roanoke. He credited members of the mountain's Blue Ridge Interstate Impact Network for their part in sapping some of the life out of I-73 in the House of Representatives.

"You clearly have made a difference in terms of the way this issue has been dealt with in Congress," he said, "and I know ... you will continue to make a difference."

Bent Mountain lies in a five-mile corridor that Virginia has recommended to Congress for I-73, which is supposed to run between Detroit and Charleston, S.C. The Roanoke business community lobbied hard to pull the interstate off a direct route from West Virginia to North Carolina and bring it over to the Roanoke Valley, where it might cross Bent Mountain or nearby.

Many residents of Bent Mountain, Blacksburg, Giles County and Montgomery County hold a different opinion from the powers that be, however.

In 20 years of public service, Boucher said, "I have never seen a recommendation for a new road as strongly opposed as was the recommendation" for I-73.

About 150 people in the Bent Mountain Elementary School applauded frequently as Boucher answered questions and pitched his own route for the road: entering the state from North Carolina on existing Interstate 77, using Virginia 100 at Carroll County through Wythe and Pulaski counties to Giles and connecting with U.S. 460 at Pearisburg. That would open those areas to development, improve some of those roads and not create any new roadways.

With U.S. 220 being upgraded and the smart road likely being built regardless of I-73's existence, the interstate would be "redundant," he said. "I'm mystified why the state doesn't see [fit] to reconsider its decision."

The House transportation bill that recently was passed omitted any mention of a Virginia route for I-73 and noted that the routing "generated great controversy in Southwest Virginia."

Rep. Nick Rahall of West Virginia, chairman of a transportation subcommittee considering the bill, had his fax machine jammed by residents of this region, Boucher said.

With the Senate possibly considering the bill this fall, the congressman advised the group to keep up its letter-writing campaign with that body.

"So now you just need to jam a few Senate fax machines, and things ought to go pretty well."

by CNB