ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 11, 1996 TAG: 9608120057
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: NEW CASTLE
SOURCE: DAVID REED ASSOCIATED PRESS
BILL DAMON, supervisor of Virginia's national forests, won't back down from protecting the land.
The serene, unspoiled wilds of Virginia's mountainous George Washington and Jefferson National Forests - just the place to avoid stress and human conflict, right?
Bill Damon begs to differ.
The supervisor of the national forests has gone toe to toe, eyeball to eyeball with utility companies, timber companies and highway planners whose projects would slice through the forests.
American Electric Power got mighty sore in June when Damon rejected all of its alternatives for snaking high-voltage transmission lines across 124 miles of the forest. AEP is appealing Damon's decision to his bosses in Washington.
And, of course, there are internal conflicts that arose when the merger of the Washington and Jefferson forests forced the elimination of 80 federal woodland jobs.
But Damon has the support of people who live in the remote mountains and oppose the power line, a proposed gas line in the Alleghany Highlands and a four-lane highway in the Mount Rogers Recreation Area.
``He stood up to be counted when nobody else had the nerve to do that. I think it was courageous,'' resident Jan O'Nale said July 31 at the first of a series of public meetings on Damon's decision to deny AEP a route through the forest.
``The utility people just didn't think somebody would come in and stand for public lands,'' her husband, George O'Nale, said.
Damon said he has loved these mountains and woods since childhood. He grew up in Big Stone Gap, a coalfields town surrounded by national forest in a region where trees and hills have been stripped by logging and mining.
When it came time for a high school science project, Damon chose forest management as the topic and interviewed rangers in the Clinch River District. ``That's what I always wanted to do,'' he said.
Damon said he liked to hunt and fish, but deer were scarce in the 1950s and '60s, and fishing had been ``pretty much decimated by strip mining.'' So he mostly tooled around on logging roads in an old jeep and camped deep in the woods.
He graduated from the U.S. Military Academy and was a tank commander in Vietnam. When his Army hitch was done, he came home and earned a master's degree in forest management.
Utilities and industrial developers have found him a staunch adversary.
AEP executives had expected Damon to recommend one or more routes. They have said they will contest the refusal within the Forest Service and in court, if need be.
``For the Forest Service to simply say, `Build on private land,' after [AEP spent] five years and more than $5 million of our money on environmental studies, is totally absurd,'' project director Ron Poff said after Damon's decision in June. ``The bottom line is, the Forest Service has ducked the issue.''
Damon also sided with critics of the U.S. 58 project. State transportation officials, citing the pressure from the Forest Service and environmental groups, decided in May to improve existing roads in the recreation area rather than build a new four-lane highway.
``The highway would have wiped out one of our most popular campgrounds, would have been within a mile of the Appalachian Trail and would have had a major impact on a natural trout stream,'' Damon said.
But Damon, who was a deputy forest supervisor in Idaho before returning to Virginia, struck a compromise on the pipeline project.
Thornwood Gas Inc. asked permission to build the pipeline near a 10,000-acre preserve. Though the pipeline would not intersect the Laurel Fork preserve, 4.2 miles of it would be in its watershed.
Environmentalists were most concerned about Thornwood's gas and mineral rights to 1,900 acres, a long-held federal lease that pre-empts many restrictions on development. They feared the pipeline would lead to gas exploration and drilling on the land.
Damon said the pipeline, which ranges in diameter from 3 inches to 8 inches, would run under a gravel road along its path beside Laurel Fork and therefore would not damage the environment.
So he approved the project after getting Thornwood to relinquish its oil and gas leases within the preserve. Damon also asked the Forest Service regional supervisor to give the supervisor veto power over any future drilling in the preserve.
``It was the classic case of competing concerns,'' Damon said. ``When I came down here, one of the old hens in the office said if you're not comfortable with conflict and controversy, you wouldn't want this job.''
LENGTH: Medium: 89 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Damon. color.by CNB