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A petition has been signed by 63 residents of Nethers and Etlan regarding the proposed new Park Service parking lot at Old Rag.
As I explained in my previous letter to the Rappahannock News, published May 29, 2002, the Park Service proposed to buy 25 acres of land in Nethers, outside the current park boundaries, to establish a new parking lot.
The petition reads as follows:
“The Shenandoah National Park wants to buy 25 acres of land adjoining Old Rag Mountain and to construct a large new parking lot. The cost will be over $1 million, paid by government funds.
When the park was established in 1929, the federal government agreed with the families who had lived on the land that no additional land could ever be acquired by the park, except by donation. It prohibited the use of government funds to buy more land.
Now the park is trying to find a way to get around that law.
Several years ago, many of us signed another petition supporting the park’s efforts to solve the parking problem along Route 600, provided that any new parking facility would be located inside existing park boundaries.
We live along Route 600. We do not want the traffic, noise and pollution that will come with the proposed new lot.
We want the Park Service to comply with the law and not expand the park beyond its existing boundaries with this proposed new parking lot.”
No discussion
Rather than openly discussing these concerns with affected citizens in Nethers and Etlan, the Park Service has been negotiating with a local property owner to acquire the land it wants, contrary to application law, which prohibits it from doing so.
Moreover, although the Park Service has encountered serious environmental, wetland and archaeological (Native American artifacts) problems, it has refused to provide this information to the local residents, preferring to argue that, for some unexplained reason, these facts are not subject to the federal
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