ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, August 25, 1996 TAG: 9608260013
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV2 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
COLUMN: New River Journal
DATELINE: NEAR PRICES FORK
SOURCE: ELIZABETH OBENSHAIN
Nestled along Toms Creek is a stretch of bottom land where my family has picnicked since I was a child.
On a perfect summer day last week, we spread our blankets and our picnic fare and settled back to enjoy the view as a lazy thunderhead drifted over the trees.
The mountain scenery was a visual feast around us. On one side, the shaded creek formed a natural boundary for the small valley. Across the pasture with its summer crop of fireweed and daisy fleabane, a cliff thick with oak and evergreen cupped the valley like a huge hand.
These mountains, the farmland, the forests are an essential part of the quality of life we value here in the New River Valley.
On our farm, my father's labor has preserved the land. At 92, he still prowls the slopes and flat land with his pick to root out the thistles and mullein that would take over his pastures from both cattle and more fragile wildflowers.
But protection of our valley's natural resources is a much more touchy and difficult issue.
These past few years, it seems the New River Valley has been the continuous scene of environmental battles over the "smart" road or a high-voltage power line. Or it could be a smaller skirmish over a rezoning for a gas station along a rural stretch of highway. All these public issues, however, are reshaping the face of our valley. With little involvement or thought from most of us, we are seeing our farmlands, our mountainsides growing a different - less natural - crop as our area continues to grow.
In each of these cases, it's usually a small group of environmentalists, sometimes augmented by neighborhood residents - the Not-In-My-Back-Yard group - who show up and argue for a decision that preserves significant natural areas in our valley.
Sometimes their arguments fall on deaf ears. Frequently, they are at odds with the community's yearnings for growth - and with this newspaper's editorial position on projects such as the smart road that have been touted as economic development opportunities.
Whether we agree with their perspective and balance on each individual case, they are a voice of public concern for the impact development has in reshaping this and other communities. They have the commitment at least to show up when our future is being decided. And that's much more than most of us can say. The extent of civic participation for many of us is tuning in for 15 minutes of the Republican National Convention in our own living room.
If we are to manage growth in a way that preserves the very natural beauty that makes this valley such a desirable place to live, we need to wrestle with the issues that the environmentalists are placing before us.
As a community, we must decide how important the natural resources of mountain vistas and fertile farmlands are to us. If we want to preserve this part of our valley's quality of life, we must act to protect it both by policy and by pocketbook as we would act on other public priorities - industrial parks, schools, even swimming pools.
If we don't, this world we see around us today will vanish as surely as the morning mist - as it has in countless other rapidly growing communities that lacked the foresight to plan their future.
We've already gotten a start - we have significant natural areas that are protected - the New River Trail State Park, the national forests, even the ribbon of the Huckleberry Trail winding along U.S. 460. But these are just a start toward protecting this area's natural quality of life. Let's not let these spaces become islands.
If we fail to act, it will be cold comfort to the valley's environmentalists to say, "I told you so."
LENGTH: Medium: 71 linesby CNB