We agree with your suggestion in the Aug. 28 editorial, "I-3 should not be built just to carry nuclear materials," that the nuclear highway proposed from Savannah to Knoxville via Augusta is not worth the costs. Nor does it produce the benefits touted by its proponents.

However, The Times appears to have fallen into an emotional trap when it simultaneously suggested that a much-widened U.S. 441 through Athens and Rabun County on its way to Interstate 20 and thence to Augusta and Savannah might help alleviate traffic congestion in and around Atlanta. Not even the backers of I-3 suggest it should be viewed as a possible solution to Atlanta traffic gridlock.

The people of Rabun County are aghast at your idea of sending nuclear waste in trucks on U.S. 441. First, U.S. 441 south of Clayton is only now being widened to four lanes. It remains an intermediate road not designed for heavy cross-country truck traffic. Widening of the highway from Clayton to the North Carolina line is still in the engineering stage.

Rabun County Elementary, Middle and High schools and Rabun Gap Nacoochee School are in the U.S. 441 corridor. We love our children and do not want nuclear materials being shipped right by our schools.

Secondly, U.S. 441 through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park is closed to commercial truck traffic. From Franklin to I-40, the highways, though four lanes, are torturous, winding mountain roads with numerous runaway truck ramps. These highways are most inappropriate for heavy, cross-country truck traffic.

Thirdly, the obvious answer to transporting nuclear materials is by rail. Railroads are a safer method; the tracks already exist, and with the increasing price of gas, the shipment by rail would be much cheaper.

We do not, as good neighbors, wish any version of I-3 on Gainesville and Hall County or any similar, nuclear superhighway such as a modified Northern Arc or extension of I-985. Please do not, in turn, try to shift such ruinous routes on Rabun, Habersham, Stephens Counties or any other locale in North Georgia, South or North Carolina and east Tennessee that would be harmed by its construction.

Lucy Ezzard Bartlett
Tiger
Joseph Gatins
Satolah
Buzz Williams

Clayton

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Citizens Speak Letters-to-the-Editor and Editorial Opinions from the Regional and National Press and individuals' letters to the Stop I-3 Coalition

Do not shift nuclear transit to other highways

Citizens Speak
Letters-to-the-Editor and Editorial Opinions from the Regional and National Press
and individuals' letters to the Stop I-3 Coalition