ATLANTA -- A new interstate highway linking coastal Georgia to the Appalachian Mountains would -- depending on how you see it -- provide a critical link in the Southeast's underdeveloped transportation network or plunge a knife in one of the richest wildlife habitats in the eastern United States.

Such is the high stakes battle looming over what could become Interstate 3, a highway project that promises to become one of the nation's biggest rights-of-way battles in decades.

Congressional boosters of the Savannah-to-Knoxville highway, led by Rep. Charlie Norwood (R-Ga.), brought I-3 a step closer to reality this year when they included funding for the project in the six-year transportation reauthorization bill that President Bush signed in August.

A $1.3 million preliminary study is under way, the findings of which could have huge implications for rural east Georgia and the Blue Ridge Mountains that crown the state's northern tier. A second proposed highway, Interstate 14 linking the Georgia cities of Augusta, Macon and Columbus, could do the same for the lower Piedmont region.

But as states like Georgia struggle to balance economic development against greenspace protection, highway projects such as I-3 and I-14 represent colossal building blocks around which either economies are built or natural environments are destroyed. And unlike other types of development projects, which can be designed to minimize harm and even blend in with natural environments, few argue that interstates are so malleable.

Should planners choose the most direct route, builders would have to grade, blast or tunnel their way through roughly 150 linear miles of mountains between Toccoa, Ga., and Knoxville. The highway also would have to skirt around Great Smoky Mountains National Park before linking to I-75 or I-40 on the park's northwest side. Along the way, it would cross three national forests and weave around a dozen federal wilderness areas and state recreation sites.

Yet if those challenges can be met, Georgia would enjoy one of the nation's most modern interstate systems and further cement its reputation as the heart of the Sunbelt, with Atlanta as its capital.

"What we're doing is looking at transportation needs 20 to 25 years out," said John Stone, Norwood's communications director and chief public liaison for the highway proposals. "It's not just about north Georgia. It's about our entire state, and really the bigger Southeast region. It's going to do a lot of things for a lot of different people if we move forward."

Critics counter that the I-3 proposal is a massive federal pork project sought by big box retailers, trucking companies, the Georgia Ports Authority, and even the nuclear power industry. They charge that all manner of bulk and manufactured goods -- from plywood to televisions to chemicals -- would be trucked through the Appalachians, risking both the environment and public safety in the event of accidents and hazardous cargo spills.

"Any way you slice it, just looking at the facts, there is no reason for an interstate highway to go through the north Georgia mountains," said Buzz Williams, president of the Chattooga Conservancy, a north Georgia environmental group.

A more ominous concern expressed by some is that I-3 will become a corridor for nuclear material from the Savannah River Site to be shipped the planned Yucca Mountain waste repository in Nevada or to commercial reactors in the region that burn mixed-oxide (MOX) fuel derived from weapons-grade plutonium.

Stone called such rumors a "ridiculous and total fabrication," adding that the Energy Department, which operates the Savannah River Site, has had no involvement in pushing for the highway.

Reviving local economies

Far from endangering the public, proponents say the highway would stitch together isolated rural communities and second-tier cities along the Georgia-South Carolina border. It would also undo a one-time Georgia marketing slogan that has become an albatross for state transportation planners -- that all roads lead to Atlanta. After five decades of unfettered growth and highway expansion, Atlanta has become one of the most congested cities in the country.

"You look at a lot of other states, like Pennsylvania or South Carolina, and their interstate system is a grid where every major metropolitan area in the state is connected," Stone said. "You look at Georgia and we've got a giant spider web with all the interstates going to Atlanta. That's been wonderful for Atlanta, but it hasn't been so hot for the rest of the state."

Augusta, best known as the home of the Masters golf tournament, has not seen robust economic growth for some time, Stone noted, largely because it lacks the transportation network to attract new businesses. With better connections to the Port of Savannah and to the Tennessee Valley, Augusta believes it could grow its economy measurably.

Beyond economic development, proponents say the new road would also link important military and national defense sites, including three Army installations and two veterans' medical centers. In companion bills passed by the House and Senate early this year, lawmakers wrapped the highway proposal in patriotic terms, saying it would be named the 3rd Infantry Division Highway "in honor of the professionalism, heroism, and sacrifice" of the Army unit stationed at Fort Stewart, Ga.

The honorific is already in use at the Federal Highway Administration, where an agency spokesman made clear no planning documents use the "Interstate 3" moniker. He did not indicate whether early adoption of the 3rd Infantry name improved the highway's prospects for getting built.

As for the study itself, the spokesman said it would not include route alternatives or other details that can be plotted on a map. Rather, he said it will provide a cost estimate for the project "and some overview of the steps needed to designate and construct such a highway."

Routing responsibility ultimately will fall to the Georgia Department of Transportation, which in turn could contract with another agency or consulting firm to complete the work, the FHWA spokesman said. He noted the entire process could take two to five years.

The 'steamroller effect'

In the heart of Georgia's Blue Ridge range, where "I-3" has become a dirty word for many, strong belief holds that the highway is a virtual done deal, and that Washington powerbrokers will steamroll over local public officials and angry constituents to get the road built.

In addition to Norwood, whose hometown of Augusta would benefit from both I-3 and I-14, both of the state's U.S. senators, Saxby Chambliss (R) and Johnny Isakson (R), have signed onto the project. Another key House member, Rep. John Barrow (D), indicated he would support the project as well, carrying forward a legislative priority of his predecessor, former Rep. Max Burns (R).

Burns was the interstate projects' chief proponent during the 108th Congress, and he is running to reclaim his seat in 2006. In the interim, Burns has worked for one of Washington's premier law firms for transportation clients, Thelen Reid & Priest. Calls to his Washington office were not returned by press time.

With the congressional deck seemingly stacked in favor of the projects, opponents of I-3 have relatively few powerful friends to carry their agenda forward. The bulk of that work has fallen to local elected officials and groups like the Chattooga Conservancy, a watershed advocacy group, and the Stop I-3 Coalition, which draws from both long-time residents and newcomers who have adopted the mountains as a weekend respite.

The highest-ranking state official to publicly oppose the project is state Rep. Charles Jenkins, whose 8th District includes most of northeast Georgia. In comments delivered to the General Assembly in September, Jenkins summarized his constituents' view that the federal government "should not come into communities, towns and counties to build interstate highways against the will of a majority of the property owners who live in the respective areas."

Beyond the obvious environmental damage critics say would come with a massive roadbuilding project, opponents argue that routing I-3 through the Georgia mountains would effectively destroy an economy that is quietly thriving, mostly on second-home construction, tourism and recreation, and small businesses that cater to local needs.

Janet McCallen, a leader of the Stop I-3 Coalition from Towns County on the Georgia-North Carolina border, noted that interstate highways tend attract new commercial development around interchanges while hastening the decline of traditional town centers. "Most of the people who live up here, whether they were born and raised here or moved here later in life, deliberately choose to live away from interstates and all that interstates bring," McCallen said. "This is not a place for just passing through. This is a place for slowing down."

Next door in Rabun County, the county commission voted unanimously to oppose the routing and construction of I-3 through the county. Similar sentiments were expressed in letters to Norwood, Saxby and Isakson from neighboring White and Habersham counties.

"We have a beautiful county, and I don't think the addition of a four-lane, limited-access expressway is going to improve our quality of life at all, or even help us economically," said Rabun County Commissioner Pete Cleaveland in an interview this week. "We're not going to become a distribution hub for anybody. It's more likely we'll get a Cracker Barrel or something like that. Frankly, we can do better on our own."

Cleaveland is hardly a card-carrying environmentalist. He is a retired vice president of logistics for Atlanta-based Home Depot, one of several companies expected to benefit from a new I-3. Already thousands of trucks dispatch annually from Home Depot's 600,000-square-foot warehouse at the Port of Savannah, and the interstate corridor would provide easier access to the Tennessee and Ohio valleys.

Cleaveland said he has been brainstorming ways to accommodate the highway planners, "because I'm firmly of the belief that if the federal government wants it they're going to do it." But no good alternative has materialized yet. Some have suggested routing the road through Greenville or Anderson, S.C., but the mountains there pose challenges as well, and officials from neighboring states have been less enthusiastic about the project than Georgia's.

A spokeswoman for the Tennessee Department of Transportation told the Knoxville News-Sentinel in July that the agency was concerned about how the project would affect Great Smoky Mountains National Park, which already suffers from overcrowding, traffic congestion and air pollution (Greenwire <http://www.eenews.net/Greenwire/include/print.php?single=06300501> , June 30). Aides to Tennessee Sens. Bill Frist (R) and Lamar Alexander (R) said the lawmakers were taking a wait-and-see position until more is known about the highway's benefits and drawbacks.

Other national groups concerned with the southern Appalachians, including the National Parks Conservation Association and the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, are lobbying lawmakers from all of the affected states to drop the highway proposal. "No amount of mitigation can compensate for the intrusion of an interstate highway" on the Appalachian Trail and surrounding recreation areas, the ATC said in a statement earlier this year.

Countering the critics

Stone, the spokesman for Norwood, said such opposition is premature and based more on rumor than fact. The I-3 corridor will not get built, he said, unless studies show conclusively that the road is economically justified and that it can be routed without excessive disruption to local communities and the natural environment.

Stone said the lawmakers who advocated for the I-3 and I-14 studies are meeting their responsibility to examine transportation issues proactively rather than wait for problems to materialize.

Stone cited several highways in Georgia that have undergone repeated widenings and expansions over the years. Such expansions have in many areas encouraged more traffic and piecemeal development. The result for many communities is an accumulation of roadside strip malls that pose their own environmental, public safety and aesthetic problems.

"If we could turn back the clock 20 years and look at some of the transportation nightmares we have out there now, we might have been able to avoid some of these problems," he said.

Moreover, Stone said new interstate construction may not require significant destruction of green space, particularly in east Georgia where the topography is more amenable to highway expansion. He said the state has a number of four-lane, split-median roads that could be candidates for interstate retrofits. "We could have mighty, mighty cheap interstates down in some of those areas," he said. "But if we wait, those areas are going to fill up with gas stations, car lots and subdivisions."

As for north Georgia, Stone said limited-access interstates could actually help relieve congestion in some areas that cannot accommodate the traffic volumes they are currently seeing. "That's what a lot of the resort communities want," he said. "To free up the congestion."

From his Cupboard Café on U.S. 441 in Dillard, Billy Johnson, who also serves as chairman of the Rabun County Republican Party, acknowledges that traffic congestion is worsening along the main route through the mountains, and he calls portions of the highway a "death trap." But he does not believe a multibillion-dollar interstate project is a wise use of federal money while the country is at war and the economy remains fragile.

Johnson said he is drafting a resolution asking lawmakers to redirect the $1.3 million for the I-3 study to purchase body armor for U.S. soldiers abroad. "I am a conservative, and every penny that is spent must be spent wisely." he said.

While Johnson calls Norwood a longtime friend who he visits with regularly on the congressman's trips home, he remains unconvinced the the interstate proposal is in the best interests of Norwood's district. At a recent town hall meeting hosted by the Cupboard Café, Norwood faced about 60 of those constituents who peppered him with questions about the interstate proposal.

Johnson recalls that the congressman's response to virtually every question was, "Wait for the study."

"I know politically speaking that a study has to be done, and the elected gentlemen will not make up their minds until they get this study," Johnson said. "I would just ask the gentlemen what is the real reason here? If it's economic development, that's hogwash. An interstate isn't going to help our economy one iota."

Reprinted by permission, Greenwire/Environment and Energy Publishing LLC.

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