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

DATE: FRIDAY, April 22, 1994                   TAG: 9404220212
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: By JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

I-73 FOES TARGET CONGRESS<

And they hope to send an avalanche of letters to members of the House of Representatives asking that they detour around the mountain as Congress considers national highway legislation that includes the proposed Interstate 73.

The second meeting of the Blue Ridge Interstate Impact Network - a group of Bent Mountain residents opposed to the interstate's crossing the mountain - focused on letter writing to representatives Thursday.

Organizers passed out form letters, addresses, writing suggestions and stamped envelopes to the roughly 200 residents who attended. That's about half the number that showed up for the first meeting last month.

I-73 is a proposed Detroit-to-Charleston, S.C., highway that is part of a national highway system Congress is considering. Virginia transportation officials have recommended a route through Virginia that swings out of the way to come to Roanoke.

A preliminary map shows the route crossing rural Bent Mountain, although the state Department of Transportation says the map is just for planning purposes, and further study would be done before any route is chosen.

Bent Mountain residents who oppose that route don't believe it.

"We have to proceed as though this is the chosen route," said Diane Rosolowsky, a network spokeswoman. "Historically, once the corridor is chosen, when they open the process [for public input], it's merely to move it within the corridor."

But Transportation Department spokeswoman Laura Bullock said one of the reasons there is so much confusion over the Bent Mountain corridor is that the public was included much earlier in the process than normal.

"They need to pull away from the idea they've been targeted," she said. "They haven't."

The Transportation Department has not been invited to either network meeting. Members believe the battle must be fought now at the federal level, where a House subcommittee has concluded hearings on the national highway legislation and is set to pass it on to committee. If Congress funds I-73, the state then will begin studying a route. It's normally at that point that the Transportation Department would involve the public, Bullock said.

"We feel the state has run roughshod over us," Rosolowsky said.

Network members are planning fund-raisers, environmental tours of the mountain, historical surveying and scrutiny of the hastily prepared economic-impact studies the state conducted.