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

DATE: SATURDAY, March 4, 1995                   TAG: 9503060006
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

THE CHANGING COUNTRYSIDE

"The contrast is that everyone wants to become Charlotte or Raleigh-Durham or Richmond. Well, Lord have mercy, we'll never become that and there's a good reason - the mountains. We're not going to get any bigger."

- Bob Johnson, Roanoke County supervisor\

"The only problem is, everyone who likes the rural environment moves here. If they keep moving here, pretty soon there's not going be a rural area anymore."

- Debbie Kendall, Bedford County planner

\ "We're basically an island unto ourselves. We're completely surrounded by some type of growth, be it houses or industrial.

"And I guess two or three of the biggest changes that I see that I'm nostalgic about is, one, the increase of traffic. I remember the time if you saw someone go by [and] you didn't know who it was, you wondered what in the world they were doing out there. ... The other thing is the fact we don't know all our neighbors. It's kind of a disappointment not to really be familiar and then sort of lose that sense of community."

- Mike Beahm, Cloverdale farmer\ "I think the sprawl is an inevitable disaster. And the farther out you get, the longer those trips get. ... Automobile pollution is, of course, one of the greater hazards you've got going, plus the runoff, plus the loss of wildlife and that sort of thing. Sprawl is an inefficient way to function."

- David Hunt, Roanoke anesthesiologist

\ "We've had a lot of growth in the Catawba area. You know, if we had one new house in a hundred years, that was growth over there. But we've been discovered and we have a lot more growth over there now. Development is upon us."

- Louise Garman, Catawba farmer

by CNB