ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, October 3, 1996 TAG: 9610030008
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-4 EDITION: METRO
DATELINE: BEDFORD
SOURCE: JOANNE POINDEXTER STAFF WRITER
CENTRAL OIL'S proposal for a propane facility on Virginia 122 has residents concerned about safety.
Donald Ray Cassidy can remember traveling from Bedford to Moneta on Virginia 122 at midnight and not seeing any other vehicles.
Now, with Smith Mountain Lake traffic, vehicles are "coming and going all the time, and at 4:30 in the morning it's zoom, zoom, zoom," Cassidy says.
One night recently when he couldn't sleep, Roger Schneider counted 15 cars passing his rented home off Virginia 122 between 4:30 a.m. and daybreak.
Peggy Johnson has spent most of her 66 years on Virginia 122. When she and her husband built on family property, the route "was a nice farm-to-market road."
Now, she said, "it's Main Street to Smith Mountain Lake."
Johnson, Schneider and Cassidy were among 40 Bedford County residents who spoke out this week during a land-use compatibility hearing for a propane storage facility on Virginia 122. The site would be about two miles north of the Virginia 122 and 24 intersection.
The facility initially would have a 30,000-cubic-foot storage tank and a small office. But Don Thacker, president of Central Oil, couldn't promise residents that the company would not increase its capacity. He did say there would be no retail business on the property.
Thacker said the tank would look like a household propane tank, only larger, and he tried to assure residents that propane is the safest, most efficient fuel on the market.
Although residents had questions about changes in the character of their residential and farming area and concerns about pollution of a creek behind the property, most residents were concerned about traffic and accidents involving fuel trucks.
Thacker said two or three tractor-trailers would deliver fuel weekly to the tank, which would be only 80 percent full. However, he expects three smaller trucks to pick up and deliver fuel daily for residential and commercial use.
Dr. Kathryn Rice said she's seen a steady increase in the number of cars, logging trucks and commercial vehicles on the road in the nine years she's lived on Virginia 122. She travels the road to her clinic in Moneta and said she has seen a couple of accidents.
One business, a boat shop, is in the area. It was grandfathered in when Bedford adopted its Land Use Guidance System in the mid-1980s. The county's zoning ordinance - known by the acronym LUGS - says areas should have mixed land uses and has a process to help developers and residents reach a consensus on those uses.
Central Oil's project scored more than 100 when the county development staff assessed it to see if it were compatible with the comprehensive plan.
Residents, however, wondered about the scoring and whether the business's effect on traffic had been considered.
The Virginia Department of Transportation counted 4,600 vehicles a day traveling south of the Virginia 122 and 24 intersection and 3,700 traveling north of the intersection.
Statistics from the state police office in Bedford show that most of the 62 wrecks on the Bedford leg of Virginia 122 in 1995 involved driver inattention and right-of-way violations. Drivers would pull out of a lot into the path of another vehicle or had to slam on brakes, Virginia State Police Sgt. Bobby Ratliff said.
One wreck was fatal, and 31 resulted in injuries to 40 people. The other 30 involved $256,625 worth of damage to property.
With Virginia 122 the main road to Smith Mountain Lake, "it's a dangerous road," Ratliff said.
Roger Schneider said that although he sees at least one police vehicle each time he travels the road to Moneta or Bedford, "I still find myself going past the speed limit," and he knows there are others like him.
"I don't fear the safety of propane," said Schneider, who used the fuel when he lived in New Jersey. But he said he is concerned about trucks crossing lanes to turn into the business.
Central Oil "picked a rotten street" to place its business, he said.
Central Oil has facilities in Rocky Mount and Moneta, but they are off four-lane roads, where the speed limit is 25 or 35 mph, Thacker said. He said he picked the Virginia 122 site for visibility and to help expand his business in Bedford County.
Jim Campbell, who started a petition drive to oppose the business, said he's concerned about fire hazards and having the necessary equipment in case of an explosion.
"We have to call additional departments now for a house fire," he said.
Several residents said they are afraid that Central Oil eventually would expand its facility, and that Virginia 122 would look like the Montvale area, where gasoline tanks line the landscape.
"I don't want to see the whole area become business," Peggy Johnson said at the hearing. "I feel if you let one business in, others will come."
"All I'm trying to do is to put a business in an area where I already have a lot of customers," Thacker said in a telephone interview. "Traffic is not something I can really address."
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