Posted on 02/04/2002 4:33:40 PM PST by FreedomFriend
For more than 30 years, Ed and Eva Gumbert's 230-acre farm on the Etowah River in north Cherokee County has been their sylvan haven.
It was their weekend retreat from the clamor of the workaday world for the first 20 years. Then, after Ed Gumbert retired from his teaching job at Georgia State University in 1993, they sold their Atlanta home and moved permanently into a world of soaring hawks, majestic hardwood trees and unspoiled blue-ridged vistas.
They cannot bear to think what the construction of the Northern Arc will do to it. The 59-mile, limited-access highway will slam four lanes of 65-mph traffic through the virgin forest that surrounds them, taking most of the two miles of Etowah frontage and splitting their treasure neatly in two.
"We will be able to see it, hear it and smell it," said Ed Gumbert, standing on the deck that may eventually lie within a half mile of the highway and waving his hand over the wooded valley below.
The Gumberts find themselves at the nexus of an increasingly volatile public debate facing the Atlanta region. Already the Northern Arc, accelerated by a massive infusion of cash from Gov. Roy Barnes' statewide transportation program, has triggered a swelling protest movement throughout the metro area against a road that would be moving traffic just four years from now if state transportation officials could have their way.
Eva Gumbert's eyes fill with tears when she points to the section of their farm lying in the road's projected path. That's where they scattered the ashes of their son, Brian, an archaeologist who died in 1997.
"The whole horizon would be filled with the Northern Arc," said Eva Gumbert, gesturing toward the scenic mountain panorama just beyond their deck.
But thousands of area commuters, especially in Atlanta's swelling northern suburbs, believe the Arc is the passport out of the dangerous and frustrating gridlock they must endure each day. Many developers and business owners believe the traffic-moving potential of the Arc is essential to unleashing the full economic potential of the region.
Brandy and Dale Keyt live a short drive down Ga. 20 from the Gumberts. As far as Brandy Keyt, is concerned, the Northern Arc can't be built soon enough. She commutes to her job as a hair stylist in the Town Lake area.
She is weary of fighting bumper-to-bumper traffic on the two-lane artery she must take to get anywhere and fearful of the steady stream of tractor-trailer traffic that rumbles across it at full speed all day.
"The accidents and potential accidents on Highway 20 are unbelievable," Keyt said. "It's scary for your kids to pull out on that highway. It's scary for me to pull out on that road."
Dale Keyt operates a mobile auto reupholstering business that takes him throughout the metro area. Brandy Keyt said her husband has to keep a close eye on his watch when he visits the Jimmy Carter Boulevard area to purchase supplies.
"If he doesn't leave by a specific time of day from that area, it's a three-hour commute," Brandy Keyt said.
To the Keyts, the Northern Arc "would be like our own I-285 to connect us from interstate to interstate," she said.
In public and private, in county courthouses and the General Assembly, in corporate suites and over backyard fences, the benefits and drawbacks of building the Northern Arc are being hotly debated. Although the merits of the road have been under scrutiny for more than a decade, the momentum it has gained from Barnes' enthusiastic support and his $8.6 billion transportation program has heated passions on both sides.
"I think this year is going to be the turning point," said Ed Sensenbrenner, a retired Lockheed engineer who lives in Bartow County. "If we don't kill it this year, we've got it."
Sensenbrenner has been fighting the road for more than a decade, since discovering a projected path that would send it "right through my kitchen." A prolific correspondent with state and county officials as well as area newspapers, Sensenbrenner has a carefully catalogued library of information on the Arc dating to 1988, when it was just part of the Outer Perimeter, a 211-mile highway encircling Atlanta.
The Atlanta Regional Commission, which controls access to federal transportation investments in the region, studied the proposed highway in 1994. By 1999, its board was convinced only the Arc showed any promise for addressing existing traffic demand.
The commission board said it would continue planning the road, but with eight conditions. Those included the limitation of interchanges to "freeways" only, use of tolls to fund its construction, acquisition of large "scenic" buffers on each side of the highway and aggressive land-use planning throughout the corridor.
There will always be wealthy, influential people, and crooked polititions (is that redundant?), and all that can be done without making it worse is to be resiliant.
We bought property that is surrounded on 3 sides by the stanislaus National Forest to have a secluded place, but even that has it's price. There is no electric power, or telephones, and transitmix concrete trucks won't go out that far, so life proceeds slowly there, and with much physical labor.
It's not a question of what I would suggest, but of what 30,000 people yearning for a more rural atmosphere will do by their sheer presence. - You are not going to stop it, so find a way to take advantage of it.
What do we have to gain by this? Answer: Really nothing. More of the same suburban development that goes from Woodstock to S. Forsyth to Buford. Isn't Atlanta big enough for you?
Hear hear.
Buncha Texans.
The persons who used the ESA didn't care about the snail darter they were sick and tired of an irresponsible and unaccountable government created utility daming up everything that flowed even when it was clear no benefit or need was justified by doing it. Nobody told TVA no. They did as they pleased to whom they wished. That was the case of the Tellico River. The property was comdemned and the farmers ran off for what TVA offered. TVA after a long court battle built the dam. But the insult was yet to begin.
They sold the condemned lake front property after the lake was filled to high dollar developers at cheap prices for homes in the $1m plus range. Not one person forced off their land got a fraction of it. Each and every lake in Tennessee and in the 7 state TVA area except for Reelfoot was built by TVA.
Some of the states most historic and most prime farm land was destroyed for political favors and nothing more. I mentioned I avoided a previous interstate the land was sold and other land bought in an area not shown for growth. Well TVA believe it or not found me though. Yea a 180,000 volt transmission line in my back yard so to speak. Yes I agree electricity is good. I also think that logic dictates to locate a substation as close as possible to those feeder transmission lines.
To avoid taking any land that might remotely be used by developers TVA ran a 3 mile route across the side of a ridge and split my property in half doing so. A more suitable site was avaible and would have required a 500 foot route and one parcel of land. This is our federal dollars at work ripping us off.
In Christiana, Pa. there was a bridge that was closed for many years. It was a small problem as it is a small town of about 1200 people. One day it was decided to remove and rebuild this bridge. The state came in and started telling property owners (all, who by the way were in their late ages) that they had to go. No it, ands or buts. Well, of course this pissed many town folks off and they started to tell the state where to get off. In the mean time, the young (all ladies are young in my book)lady of around 75 years, who had the house right next to the bridge, took ill because of the strain of losing her house, where not only did she live since marriage, but also her husband had died a few years before all this crap from the state started. The next thing was that we had to place her in God's Grace. In light of this the state backed down and all the house's were allowed to stand pat. To this day, I have always wondered how we have gotten so far off the path where a man's home used to be his castle... And the all mighty dollar is greater then morals and what's right.. :-(
I can't argue for or against the Nothern Arc, but I can agree that tranportation projects are not always built to serve the need of the public.
In Houston we are building a 7.5 mile train that will run from our new football stadium to our new baseball stadium. The cost at startup is $40,000,000 a mile. It will have very little value as public transportation.
The commission board said it would continue planning the road, but with eight conditions. Those included the limitation of interchanges to "freeways" only, use of tolls to fund its construction, acquisition of large "scenic" buffers on each side of the highway and aggressive land-use planning throughout the corridor.The only 'buffer' I would approve is an additional ten feet, wherein they place a twenty-foot high sound screen barrier on each side of the road. As someone else said, it would be better for the area to buy out one side of the Route 20 road and expand there, but that impacts more voters and businesses along the route. You also know that their version of aggressive land-use planning has little involvement of the owners of the properties compared with the stakeholders they kowtow to.
I don't know enough about the area other than what is presented here, but I think this project is overkill. Just MHO. Cheers.
I don't think the growth can be stopped. What would traffic be like on the northside without Ga-400? I think the Northern Arc will eventually be built. It's just a matter of time.
I have no problem with the right of ways for the road to remain. However, I believe that the road should only be built if, and when, development in the area allows for it. As it is now, they haven't even widened Georgia 20, and parts of Georgia 20, particularly west of Canton, aren't that bad in the traffic department.
It's easy to assume that a university professor is a liberal. However, that may not be the case, so we can't say that he is getting what he asked for.
I attended Georgia State, and the sociology, anthropology, arts and humanities professors are definitely liberal. In terms of other fields, it depends.
As far as the rest of the road, even with a two lane, the road moves fine during rush hour. It is hard to turn onto during rush hour in the Canton to Cumming segment, I'll agree. However, if that's a problem, four lane it.
---max
So, you're saying that all the congestion is in one lane, while the right-hand lane is empty? You hate Georgians that much?
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