
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, July 13, 1993                   TAG: 9307130073
SECTION: CURRENT                    PAGE: NRV-2   EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY 
SOURCE: Greg Edwards
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS BUY GOOD CHANGE

During last year's presidential election campaign, one candidate - today's well-coiffed free-world leader - stumbled on the concept of "change" as a sales gimmick. He offered it to the American people as some sparkly, fancy thing that they could buy with a vote.

But we know that change is not new, but an age-old process we all learn to be comfortable with, if we expect to lead happy lives.

One thing that's constant is change. Things change. People change. And, as I was reminded recently, places change.

My current job assignment for this newspaper is to cover Montgomery County government and local and regional politics. Occasionally, however, as an expatriate of the Southwest Virginia coalfields, I am called on to report on the happenings of the state's wobbly coal industry.

So last week, I was back in my hometown of Norton for the final meeting of a governor's task force overseeing the investigation of a December mine explosion that killed eight men.

The little city, which grew up around a Norfolk Southern rail yard between two mountain ridges, has changed a lot since I left it 10 years ago. And the change there rolls steadily on like the loaded coal cars that leave Norton each day for Bluefield, Roanoke and points beyond.

Along the length of the city's southern perimeter, a deep, brown gash marks the green mountainside where I spent many days exploring and playing when I was a kid. The Virginia Department of Transportation has begun construction of a Norton bypass that will complete the four-laning of U.S. 23 through the state's western tip from Kentucky to the Tennessee border.

The 1.25-mile bypass with its four bridges will cost $15.3 million. Roads are expensive to build in the mountains. Another 1.05-mile section of four-laned U.S. 23 south of Norton that was opened not many years ago cost an amazing $33 million.

The good roads have made travel in the coalfield counties much easier. The days are gone when leaving Norton in any direction you found yourself behind a slow-moving coal truck and making good time was four miles in 15 minutes.

The road improvements, which were begun with the War on Poverty in the 1960s, were designed to open up the coalfield counties to economic development.

But one unintended effect of the opening of the coalfields has been to make it easier for residents (and I'm one) to leave for opportunities elsewhere.

Between 1980 and 1990, the population of Norton and surrounding Wise County dropped 9.9 percent. The current jobless rate is over 10 percent.

To be fair, it should be mentioned that shopping centers with big national chains such as Wal-Mart and Kmart have sprung up on strip-mined land along four-laned U.S. 23 and U.S. 58A in and near Norton. They provide some new retail jobs. And elsewhere in the coalfield counties, development efforts have yielded some results with the location of small manufacturing plants.

But it's apparent that roads alone are not enough to bring economic prosperity to a region. Other things like a good quality of life and available industrial sites also are important. But you don't have to go to Wise County to see evidence of that.

Greg Edwards is a New River Valley bureau reporter.

by CNB