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Highway ‘input’
THE DISTRICT HEARING held down in Culpeper a couple of weeks ago by the state highwaymen was a faintly disappointing exercise. A man from the State Highway Department in Richmond got up and made a lot of noble sounds about how they want all the “public input” they can get, but it was hard to escape a feeling as the hearing progressed that the men sitting at the head table, representing various departmental functions, really didn’t care all that much about what the public wanted. Oh, they took notes, and smiled and nodded, and once or twice speakers were assured that this or that project was going to be attended to—especially on Route 3, down around Germanna College. But when several speakers raised some questions about a project where there was some really strong feelings—1-66 within the Beltway—“public input” went out the window. The Highway Department wants that road, and so does the Highway Commission, and so does the Governor, and that’s that.
No wonder Virginians have some serious misgivings about the attitude of the Virginia Highway Department toward citizens’ desires, pious departmental protestations to the contrary. No wonder they wonder about the value of “public input” when the department is trying to avoid any further hearings on 1-66, as it traverses from Gainesville to Front Royal.
Such a project in such a nearby county could have a devastating effect on Rappahannock, too, but how many invitations have you heard around here for Rappahannock “input” on continuing superhighway projects?
PERHAPS HIGHWAYMEN everywhere need some “input” themselves, in the form of a reading of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969. The NEPA amounts to a value judgment by the United States Congress that in order to “foster and promote the general welfare,” each generation of Americans must, beginning now, act “as the trustee of the environment for succeeding generations.” The U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has held “that even essential highway construction must yield to the congressionally structured priority.”
Continually slashing superhighways out into the fragile Piedmont countryside might mean that not much would be left to pass on to succeeding generations. □
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