ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Saturday, June 15, 1996 TAG: 9606190011
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
DATELINE: ABINGDON
SOURCE: PAUL DELLINGER STAFF WRITER
For Commonwealth Transportation Board member Joe Bert Rhea, support for a new routing of U.S. 58 through Washington, Grayson and Smyth counties Friday came as a sort of vindication.
Rhea, a resident of Damascus in Washington County, has spent the past decade fighting the rerouting of U.S. 58 through environmentally sensitive parts of the Mount Rogers National Recreation Area. His fight for a different route was one of the reasons he wanted to get on the Transportation Board as the Bristol District representative.
The route he has been pushing got the backing Friday of Rep. Rick Boucher, D-Abingdon, and four state legislators: Sen. Madison Marye, D-Shawsville, Sen. Jack Reasor, D-Bluefield, Del. Joseph Johnson Jr., D-Abingdon, and Del. John Tate, D-Marion.
The Transportation Board voted last month to abandon the routing for four-laning U.S. 58 through the recreation area, realizing that it would take at least five years to complete the necessary environmental impact studies - and even after that, the U.S. Forest Service would still probably say no.
The corridor now being recommended between Hillsville and Abingdon follows the existing U.S. 58 from Volney to Green Cove, but then departs from it to avoid going through the recreation area. Instead, it generally follows existing Virginia 726 over Chestnut Mountain near the Virginia-Tennessee line and intersects Virginia 91 near Damascus before picking up the existing U.S. 58 again to Abingdon.
"It has been a long time, and it's a joyful time for me now," Rhea said. "This is a great day for me because it was almost precisely what I asked for 10 years ago. ... I'm glad to be alive now to get to see it." The project is part of four-laning U.S. 58 from Lee County in the western tip of Virginia all the way across the state to Virginia Beach. Much of the four-laning in Lee has been completed, and various four-laning projects are under way on sections of the road east of the recreation area.
The newly recommended route would substitute a wide two-lane section over the mountainous terrain from Damascus to Volney in Washington and Grayson counties, instead of four-laning it with the rest of U.S. 58.
Boucher said the recommendation also includes upgrading Virginia 16 from Volney to Marion and Virginia 622 from near Sugar Grove to Atkins in Smyth County.
He said it is important now for the region to speak "with one voice" on the routing, or risk losing out on improving U.S. 58 in these counties while the rest of it is four-laned.
"Western Grayson County has desperate transportation needs," Tate said, but the planned four-laning through the recreation area "simply was not going to happen. ... So what was happening was nothing.''
"I can see nothing but positive things coming from it. It will be great for economic development," Johnson said of the U.S. 58 improvements.
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