Look and Listen! Young Tennessean Shares Resons to Oppose I-3!

Elvis Joins Stop I-3!

Wheelspin: The Virtues of Avoiding Interstates

Stopping Interstates for Dummies

Toxic Waste Highways:
Nature's Worst Nightmare

Soldiers, Vet’s Parent Write to STOP I-3

Look and Listen!
Young Tennessean Shares Reasons to Oppose I-3!

Chance Finegan is a high school junior in Cookeville, Tennessee and a member of Cookeville High School SPEAK — Students Promoting Environmental Action and Knowledge. CHS SPEAK was the first organization in TN to support the STOP I-3 Coalition. Last May, they circulated a petition concerning I-3 at CHS, collecting close to 500 signatures and mailing them to the Federal Highway Administration, Gov. Bredeson, TDOT, and their Senators.

Chance plans to become a park ranger or biologist with the National Park Service. Later in life, he hopes to run for political office or go into environmental law. He is a National Park Service VIP and has turned in his paperwork to start volunteering with his local USDA Natural Resources Conservation Service office. Chance created this video as a project for media class.

Founded in 2004 and fifty-members strong, CHS SPEAK is "dedicated to raising awareness in our community about the environment and taking concrete steps to better it." See http://tntrailhead.blogspot.com to see CHS SPEAK's next event and latest plans! (Cookeville is about 90 miles west of Knoxville on I-40, 90 miles east of Nashville and home to Tennesse Tech University).

Elvis Joins Stop I-3!

The Stop I-3 Coalition was in full swing at this years 8th annual Big "E" Festival held in Cornelia, GA on August 3rd and 4th. Our hostess with the mostest Joni Mabe was spectacular as "Queen of the King" and MC of the Elvis competition. Many folks showed up to enjoy the music while munching on some of Elvis' favorite foods like peanut butter and banana sandwiches and moon pies. The Stop I-3 Coalition spoke with many of the people in attendance and distributed buttons, brochures and bumper stickers. Petitions were also signed in an on going effort to keep our officials updated with the large number of folks opposed to the proposed Interstate. As you can see even Elvis is opposed to I-3!

AUTOMOBILES | August 5, 2007

Wheelspin: The Virtues of Avoiding Interstates
By PHIL PATTON

"Many connoisseurs of the highway are championing the use of slow roads — back roads with scenery and history — instead of faceless Interstates." Read more...

Stopping Interstates for Dummies PowerPoint Presentation or Web Presentation Thanks to Jessica Burr for sharing her class project, "Stopping Interstates for Dummies." Jessica is a historical preservation student at Savannah College of Art and Design whose family lives in our mountains.

Note: The ninth grade niece of one of our board members was given an assignment of writing a paper on a controversial subject. Having well established roots in these mountains, she chose to write about I-3, entitled TOXIC WASTE HIGHWAYS; NATURE’S WORST NIGHTMARE. We surely invite other submissions from any old enough to write through high school age.

Toxic Waste Highways:
Nature’s Worst Nightmare

by Hanna Ryberg
St. Joseph, Michigan

Toxic Waste Highways, Outline

I. Introduction and attention getter.
II. Thesis statement
III. History and proposal of I3
IV. Natural destruction due to I3, and who benefits and who loses.
V. Economic turmoil and cost of I3.

Conclusion and wrap up.

PART ONE:

Imagine that you are in your favorite place in the world right now. It could be, a warm beach, a freezing ski hill, a park on a perfect summer day, or, in my case, the southern Appalachian Mountains in Georgia. Now, picture your favorite place being blown to bits, and created into a highway that may be used to transport toxic waste. Well, that nightmare is my reality.

Roads and highways are a big part of southern life- but these forms of transportation, have a tremendous effect on the environment. A toxic waste highway that runs through the Appalachian mountains, will not only kill the wildlife and environment, they will also destroy the tourism and agricultural industries of the south.

In 2005, Congressman Charlie Norwood re-introduced plans for an interstate (originally proposed by Max Burns) that would go through Savannah, Georgia to Knoxville, Tennessee, by way of Augusta. This proposed bill is known as Interstate Three, and is said to link a nuclear weapons complex in Oakridge, Tennessee, to the sight of the Savannah River. (Chattooga Conservatory).

The Federal Highway Administration was given funds for studies being completed on two highway corridors, I-14 and I-3. Interstate three, was originally going to cost $400,000, but has been recently increased to $1.32 million (forest coalition). The total cost in taxpayer dollars for both of the interstates combined is $2.64 million (Burr). The proposed interstate three will cost billions of dollars, and will only benefit road builders and oil companies. The Georgia Legislature believes it will “bring new business”, but the only business the highways will bring, are gas stations and truck stops (Chattooga Conservatory).

Interstate three will also have a major effect on the environment. The original study on I-3, said that the interstate would run through three National Forests, in three different states. Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee are the homes of the Chattahoochee, Nantala and Cherokee National Forests (forest coalition). The great Smokey Mountains National Park, Appalachian Trail, and the Blue Ridge Mountains are also potentially in I-3’s path. Interstate Three will also hurt local and regional water, air, archeological and natural resources (Burr).

As you can see, the preservation of our mountains is very important. After all, we don’t want our age to be known to future historians as the age of the bulldozer and the exterminator; and in many parts of our country, the building of a highway would have about the same result upon vegetation and human structures as the passage of a tornado, or the blast of an atomic bomb (Mumford). The interstate will leave in its wake a destruction of natural beauty, and the industries that depend on tourism will suffer greatly. Interstate three will bring environmental and economic disaster in the mountains of Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee.

WORKS CITED

Burr, Jessica. Stopping Interstates For Dummies. www.stopi-3.org. Date unknown.

Chattooga Conservatory. “Stop Proposed Interstate Three”. www.chattoogariver.org/index.php?req=i3. 2005

Forest Coalition. No title. www.safc.org/campaigns/interstat3.php.2006.

Mumford, Lewis. Quote on Stopping Interstates For dummies. Date unknown.

PART TWO:

My belief on the topic hasn’t altered at all. I still am strongly against the government blowing up nature’s beauty that has been here longer then we have. All people care about these days, is their job and money. No one seems to care about the environment anymore. Even the people in the highest positions in our county, don’t care at all about the environment. First of all George Bush personally liked the idea of interstate three so he obviously doesn’t care about the environment. Second of all, most people in congress care about the revenue generated by a highway; then the wildlife.

Several things in life you can rebuild, but natural beauty, once it is destroyed it is gone forever. Those mountains in Georgia have been a part of my family for generations. We actually own mountain property that was the Cherokee Indians land, and my great-grandparents hand built home still stands on that land. Whenever we go there I feel like home, and if it is destroyed, it will break my heart. My family today also goes hiking in those mountains and we have done that since I was a little girl. It’s a big part of who I am, and I always look forward to hiking when we go there, and if it is not there in a couple years, I wont be able to share those memories with my children.

I have learned that research needs to be done over a period of time, so your reports turn out better. I also learned that there are more ways to find information than google.

My view of research now, is also that it can be easier when you know the resources that are available to you, and how to use them correctly. It makes it faster, and less time consuming.

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