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.
Excellent point! Your typical, socialist college professor is an ardent NIMBYite (not-in-my-backyard).
Screw the others who have to leave hours before work to get to work and get home late!
Moon Beam Brown started this process when he bacame governor of California. When he was sworn in, he started his famous Era of Limits! So in California have no new roads, no new power plants, no new dams for water and power, and all of the NIMBY shrill yells of the envirals.
Last but not least, I'm sure that this left wing professor never shed a tear when his enviral nazis used rural cleansing to move loggers from their homes for the spotted owl. He probably cheered last fall when his fellow envirals tried to rurally cleanse the close to 1400 farmers and ranchers in the Klamath Basin.
Zero sympathy for any enviral life long professor. I'm sure that he has donated money to the local/national enviral nazis and cheered when they rurally cleansed people even in Georgia.
Yes, of course. This is a transit authority project and they are funded by a sales tax.
Seems Ed can read the writing on the wall.
If 1400 farm families in Klamath Falls , Oregon can't stop them, this family doesn't stand a chance.
I hate it, but until people wake up, many more of us are going to suffer.
Peace
NIMBYs are nitwits!
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