Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, May 22, 1995 TAG: 9505230050
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SARAH HUNTLEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
No new highway. No improvements to the existing roadway. No straightening out the S-curves. No nothing.
Her reasoning is simple. "I believe in very, very small growth in the Back Creek area," she said. "We bought our house to live in a rural setting, and you can't take that back after you give it away."
In between working and taking care of her four children, VanDeventer has launched a crusade to get the word out that the Virginia Department of Transportation has left the no-build option on the table.
"A lot of people I've talked to don't realize that, and VDOT hasn't made it very obvious," she said. "To me it was like a multiple-choice test: A, B or C, choose your road. But the multiple-choice test had no option D. There was no `none of the above.'''
About 20 percent of the 137 people who have written letters and filed comments at VDOT's April 27 public information session favor no-build, and VanDeventer has collected 30 letters from other Back Creek residents who share her viewpoint.
VDOT engineers have said they want to improve the road because 221's twists and turns, coupled with its narrowness, make the route unsafe. Increased traffic counts would exacerbate the problems, they say.
But the VanDeventers don't buy it.
"We are on that road all times of the day and night. Where are all the traffic problems they are talking about?" VanDeventer asked.
Nor do they believe a new road or improvements will make people drive safer.
"We are going to have twice as many accidents if truckers make this their primary route," Larry VanDeventer, Veronica's husband, said. "A straight four-lane highway isn't going to make people slow down, and it won't stop them from driving drunk either."
Veronica and Larry VanDeventer relocated from California to Back Creek five years ago. Their white, two-story farmhouse, built in the 1740s, sits on U.S. 221 just past the entrance to the Forest Edge subdivision.
If the Virginia Department of Transportation decides to widen the road, "they might as well put it at our front door," Larry VanDeventer said.
Veronica VanDeventer acknowledges that her involvement is "reactive," but she holds fast to the argument that development in Back Creek would hurt the whole community.
"There's a lot of history here we stand to endanger and lose," she said. "There are a lot of parts of the county that crave development, but we aren't one of them."
by CNB