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This Project Is Wasteful and Destructive

by Tenn. GOP Sen. Lamar Alexander - 03/30/07 12:21 PM ET

One of our greatest values is we sing and believe in America the Beautiful.

This week 16 members of Congress joined me in sending a letter urging Interior Secretary Dirk Kempthorne to stop work on the $600 million ‘Road to Nowhere’ through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and provide a compensatory cash payment to Swain County, NC.

Considering the significant environmental and economic costs associated with building the “Road to Nowhere

The United States made a commitment to Swain County in 1943, when we flooded a highway for the construction of the Fontana Dam. But there is no obligation to satisfy that commitment to compensation by building another road. A road through the Park would damage the largest and most pristine wilderness area in the eastern United States and cost at least $600 million, more than 75 times the annual roads budget of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

We need to try to keep our country, about which we sing, beautiful.