Support and protect your national parks

[netmouse]

Two action items.

One, the Department of Interior are re-writing the policies to be followed by National Park Management Superintendents. You might guess that, under the Bush administration, this would be a bad thing. And you'd be right. Go to the NPCA Action Center before February 18 to add your public comment opposing the proposed re-write.

Two, as murphyw explains over here, in order to spend monies once promised to build a road for people who were impacted when the Fontana Dam and Reservior was put in, there is a proposal to build a totally unnecessary (as in redundant) road through part of Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Hikers and other conservationists support an alternative non-roadbuilding option, which is to spend that money on a cash settlement to members of said community. If you support this third alternative and oppose building more roads in America's most-visited and most-polluted National park, pleased go here and submit your comments.

Comments

[elizilla]

This Fontana Dam road has been much discussed on the motorcycle list I'm on. They oppose it as well. The proposal they talk about is to turn US-129 into a freeway. My friend who is a local says not to worry, it's not going to happen because there's just no way to route it. He says the local congresscritters just like to agitate about it to prove to their constituents that they are trying to bring home the pork, and that it's a bargaining chip that they trade away over and over for other stuff.

They do have a problem with big trucks on US-129, especially coming in from the Tennessee side, where the transition to hairpins is abrupt. So it makes sense that some folks would be calling for this. But it's still not very likely to happen.
Over the last five years motorcycle and sports car tourism has become a huge industry in an area that had been pretty depressed. Replacing US-129 with a freeway would kill the goose that lays the golden eggs down there.