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Seventh District Congressman J. Kenneth Robinson has introduced a bill “that would spell out plainly in federal law that the officially authorized size of Shenandoah National Park is its present boundary area of approximately 194,000 acres” instead of the 521 v000 acres approved when the Park was created in 1926.
According to the Congressman, he took this legislative step in response to concerns of residents living near the Park who fear that their property may be eventually confiscated. Robinson maintains that his bill will help ensure that any future expansion of Shenandoah National Park will be accomplished only by the voluntary consent of private land-owners who are willing to sell or donate their property.
The bill is ill advised. It addresses a problem that doesn't exist, while ignoring a second, very real threat to Park neighbors.
County residents have just finished battling to stop a trade of Rappahannock Park land for private property in an adjoining county.
Superintendent Robert Jacobsen called off the swap after four years of behind-the-scenes negotiations, stating that he’d aborted the exchange in response to citizen opposition—opposition that arose only after the proposal was announced and publicized by the Rappahannock News. Jacobsen maintained that the land trade was legal under state and federal law and defended the Park’s authority to pursue similar trades in the future. Subsequent opinions from legal experts have supported the Superintendent’s position.
It is this existing law allowing trades without notice to the public that needs to be changed.
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