ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1997, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 2, 1997 TAG: 9703030064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: CHRISTINA NUCKOLS STAFF WRITER
SOME OF VDOT'S old foes are girding for battle again. After winning the fight to keep the widening of U.S. 221 to its existing path, they learned that an exception would divert the road across Back Creek to straighten a dangerous curve.
The maps strewn across the carpet in Lou Feldvary's living room showed a familiar tangle of multicolored lines that looked a bit like a DNA model.
Feldvary and four other men and women traced the lines with their fingers and gesticulated as they relived their 1995 battles with the Virginia Department of Transportation over proposals to reroute U.S. 221 in the Back Creek area of Roanoke County. They weren't just telling old war stories. They're getting ready for a new round of confrontations.
"If they thought they had problems last time, that was nothing," Feldvary said. "We'll take it all the way to Richmond if we have to."
Feldvary and Grant Clatterbuck - two of the original members of PAC 221, the most outspoken group opposing VDOT's 1995 proposal for rerouting U.S. 221 south of Back Creek - are starting to regroup and fire fresh salvos at their old nemesis.
Two years ago this month, nine county residents formed PAC 221 because they felt the Back Creek community needed more information about the U.S. 221 project. They took petitions door to door, printed fliers and helped draw hundreds of people to public hearings.
When news reports and VDOT newsletters indicated that the Commonwealth Transportation Board had voted in December 1995 to widen U.S. 221 to four lanes along its existing path, they threw their maps and voluminous files away or shoved them to the backs of closets.
But when a contract was approved two months ago with Wiley & Wilson of Lynchburg to design the road improvements, Feldvary and Clatterbuck realized that the Commonwealth Transportation Board had allowed an exception.
The new road would in fact dip south of Back Creek for a short stretch in order to eliminate an S curve before returning to the existing roadway near the intersection with Cotton Hill Road.
The two men say any exception is unacceptable. The small group they've convened doesn't include even a majority of the original nine PAC 221 members. Instead, they represent one wing of the group that was the most antagonistic toward VDOT and the most adamantly opposed to straying from the existing roadway.
The members fear VDOT will use its plan to straighten the S-curve as a foot in the door for staying on the south side of the creek and continuing with its original proposal. That southern route, they said, would create a surge of commercial development in an area already strained by new subdivisions.
"If they go one step, the logical conclusion is they'll go all the way," said member Bob Horner, a neighbor of Feldvary's on Hollyberry Road.
"They're road builders," added Gary Oberlender. "They're left-brained people. They aren't looking at the quality and the flavor of life out here."
VDOT officials said they never intended to mislead anyone. The confusion is apparently the product of slow internal communication and mistaken assumptions.
Construction engineer Pete Sensabaugh, who is based in Salem, said he did not receive drawings showing that the approved route went south of the creek until at least a month after the Commonwealth Transportation Board made its decision. Sensabaugh and other VDOT officials publicized those drawings, but by the time news reports were published in April 1996, many Back Creek residents were no longer following the project closely.
Neither were county officials. County Administrator Elmer Hodge learned about the plans for straightening the S-curve in November 1996, when he bumped into one of the contractors involved in the project at a meeting of the Virginia Association of Counties. He passed that information on to the Board of Supervisors, who had voted in support of keeping improvements in the existing alignment.
"I had fully anticipated [VDOT] would follow the wishes of the Board of Supervisors," Chairman Bob Johnson said.
Lorinda Lionberger, the local representative on the transportation board, said the wording of the board's resolution on the approved route also caused problems.
"The words 'existing alignment' I've had a hard time with all along," she said. "When I look at an S-curve, the words 'existing alignment' have to automatically throw up a red flag."
Lionberger said the board tried to address two concerns it gleaned from a November 1995 public hearing attended by more than 600 Back Creek residents. A majority at that meeting were opposed to the southern route, but still wanted the S-curve fixed.
The S-curve starts on a stretch of U.S. 221 sandwiched between Back Creek and the Harris house, a family homestead being considered for historic designation. Straightening the road will require VDOT to either cut a pathway across the hill behind the Harris house or cross the creek. VDOT engineers say it will be cheaper if they build two bridges and take the road southward.
"Of all that we've heard said out there, people want the S-curves, the Harris curves, eliminated, and that's all we're going to do," said Fred Altizer, the district administrator for VDOT's district office in Salem.
All three VDOT officials stressed that the proposal for the southern route has been scrapped and will not resurface. PAC 221 members said they are still suspicious, and they are demanding the results of VDOT's environmental studies so they can have them analyzed by an independent engineering firm. They'll also get a chance to raise their concerns at public meetings VDOT plans to hold this year, possibly as early as this summer although no date has been set.
The rumblings are just beginning to intrude again on the inner sanctum of the Countryway General Merchandise store on U.S. 221. Just inside the door there's a crude wooden bench where men linger in the mornings to discuss the day's news over steaming cups of coffee and smoldering cigarettes.
While most PAC 221 members have moved to the Back Creek area seeking a taste of rural life, the men who congregate at Countryway are farmers and members of the old families who have lived in this area for generations.
"People coming out here and buying their 5 acres and thinking it's going to stay the way it is are just having a pipe dream," said Roger Vest, a beef farmer. "If people think we can just stand still with a little bitty road feeding continuous growth in new subdivisions, they're wrong. ... The people with PAC 221 are going to be angry with anything except leaving it alone."
Vest also is a volunteer with the Back Creek Fire & Rescue Co., and he said his main concern is seeing that the S-curve is eliminated. Too many people have died in automobile accidents there, including Clarence Hale, one of the regulars at the country store before his death in 1994.
"He was an old gentleman I sat right here and learned a lot from," Vest said.
How the S-curve is fixed is VDOT's business, as far as Vest is concerned. He's not alone in that opinion.
"We just want a safe road," said Genny Henderson, president of the Back Creek Rural Village Civic League. "We need to look to VDOT. They're the ones that have the expertise."
Feldvary respects the old families in Back Creek. He admitted he keeps a close eye on the Harris homestead in the springtime and starts planting as soon as he sees the family out working in the garden. But if he and other PAC 221 members had waited for those families to speak out, he believes, VDOT would have pushed through its preferred southern route for U.S. 221.
It's a battle he chose to join two years ago, and he doesn't plan to let his guard down again until he's sure he's won.
LENGTH: Long : 137 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: ROGER HART STAFF. 1. Opponents say VDOT's plan for thisby CNBS-curve near Back Creek in Roanoke County would be the first step in
resurrecting the proposal they blocked. color. 2. Roger Vest, a
local beef farmer and Back Creek rescue squad member, says he's seen
too many fatal accidents on the curve and wants it fixed. 3. To Lou
Feldvary, a once and future foe of efforts to reroute U.S.221, the
S-curve is an unacceptable exception. Graphic: Map by staff.