A promise should be a promise

I read in your paper recently about a comment Congressman Shuler made about resolving the North Shore Road issue [“Shuler’s First 100 Days,” April 11].

Swain County has a legal, binding contract with the federal government to build our North Shore Road. You know, until the government fulfills their contract, then and only then will the park become a national park.

Now, concerning the cost of the road, Shuler knows that Mr. Randy Jordan with Phillips & Jordan Construction Co., one of the South’s largest road builders, [told] the Environmental Impact Study [group]—after spending more than a month in the EIS study corridor—that the North Shore Road could be built for [roughly $231 million] in 2005, the same month and year the EIS [report] said the road would cost over $600 million.

Let’s talk about where the road would go in the park. The EIS corridor shows the road would be using old roadbeds that have been there for over 65 years, some of them [belonging to] old N.C. 288—a gravel road that is over 25 feet wide. The road would run alongside Fontana Lake. The EIS study says the road would not harm the integrity of the park. If Shuler would come with me and walk the study area, I would show him that, and then he would know firsthand and not have to take the word of some environmentalist who has never been in the study area.

Shuler also knows that three studies done on the North Shore Road show that, overwhelmingly, most people in Swain County support the road.

Now concerning another cost of the road: If you could ask all the men and women of the North Shore who fought and died in World War II, who helped make our park what it is today, and also ask our citizens who gave up everything they had so we could have our park, then you might understand how the North Shore people feel.

When the paper said “Great Smoky Mountain National Park where Shuler was born and raised,” that is a bit much to say and a slap in the face for all who were born and raised in the area.

— David Monteith
Swain County Commissioner

Editor’s note: The actual quote in the Shuler story was “Great Smoky Mountain National Park in Swain County, where Shuler was born and raised,” accurately indicating Swain County as Shuler’s birthplace.