Asheville Citizen-Times du lieu suivant : Asheville, North Carolina • Page 3

NEWS ASHKVU.I.E CITIZEN-TIMES CIT1ZEN-TI ES.COM SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 1, 2009 A3 ROUTE: Politics played big role in choice Continued from Al WEB EXTRA Go to rocksllde for photo'galleries, video and the latest news on the Haywood County rock slide blocking 1-40. INSIDE Some businesses benefit from the rock slide. Also, a timeline of Interstate 40. Page A8. It didn't take long for the first whopper to strike.

A Feb. 12, 1969, Citizen-Times article and photo detailed "a massive landslide" that "blocked traffic on all four lanes of a newly opened stretch of I-40 near the Tennessee State Line." "There was always an issue of rock falls there," said Russell Glass, 69, who was the DOT'S area geologist for years before retiring in 200L Construction methods used to blast the rock varied considerably from today's techniques. Back then, blasters took out as much rock as possible with their shots. Today, they use much more controlled blasting that causes less disturbance to underlying rock. By the late 1970s, engineers knew they had a major problem that had to be addressed, Glass said.

A new round of work, which continued through the mid-1980s, included moving the eastbound lanes to where the westbound lanes were and then adding more room on the Pi geon River side for new westbound lanes. "After that was done, they came back and scaled the slopes, knocked the loose rocks off and did some isolated blasting," Glass said. "Then they spotted places to put in rock bolts and some wire That was finished up in 1985, about the time a massive slide near the tunnel at mile marker 4 closed the highway for half a year. In 1997, a study found 49 places along I-40 near Tennessee that were potential slide problems. "When we went putting in those rock bolts many years ago, we knew we weren't fixing that permanently," said Ron Watson, the division engineer for Division 14 who retired earlier this decade.

"We were trying to fix it so it would last several years, reduce maintenance costs and protect lives. There's only one way to fix it so it won't slide, and that's to just flatten the slope out. And you might have to blast all the way to Tennessee to do that." Gov. Gregg Cherry, a Democrat, who served from 1945-49. "Madison County was really a Republican county and all the counties (from) Haywood west were solidly Democrat.

And Gregg Cherry had put up the money for the surveys," Ponder said. Trouble early on Even before the road opened, engineers knew I-40 through Haywood was going to be a rock slide haven. In an Oct. 6, 1968, Citizen-Times article previewing the dedication of the road later that month, the writer quoted a Tennessee engineer who said, "It seemed like the rock and dirt had been oiled. We would blast it out, level it, ditch it, and then it would slide almost before we could get the machinery out of the way." The reporter added a sentence that proved prescient: "Engineers from both Tennessee and North Carolina said that slides would probably be a major problem along the route for many years." ticality, economic benefits and traffic flow.

For instance, in March 1955, Jackson County commissioners passed a resolution, stating, "Jackson County and all counties of Western North Carolina will benefit more fully from the location of the said road via the proposed Pigeon River route." The roadway plans evolved into interstate proposals when President Dwight D. Eisenhower, elected in 1952, proposed an interstate highway system. The system was formally established in 1956, and Interstate 40 followed the Pigeon River plan. Although a number of factors played into the route's selection, the perception has persisted that politics played an exclusive role in the decision. late Zeno Ponder, a Democratic political kingpin in Madison County for decades, said in 1989 the decision revolved around political allegiances, ticularly those of former Haywood County has ever even suggested" shifting the route of 2570 to the Pigeon River.

"Haywood wants the road it is entitled to have according to the 1921 Act," the leaders wrote. "Madison has had three roads to Tennessee built under this act." One of the letter's authors was Dave Felmet, the former president of the Waynesville Chamber of Commerce. He died in 200L His son, David Felmet said his dad simply wanted to hold the state accountable. "They wanted that road out of Haywood County, from county seat to county seat, that was promised by the state," said Felmet, 73. "Dad was a bit of a bulldog, and he was not going to lean toward that French Broad route but stick to the Pigeon River." Little in the news articles of the time discussed the geology of the prospective routes, trating more on their prac III LICENSED INSURED WRITTEN 1 YR GUARANTEE Honey Do List Custom Upgrades Decks Painting Ceramic Tile Gutter Cleaning BathroomKitchen Remndeline Etc.

BBB. everythingmanbcllsouth.nct A rock slide near the Tennessee line a week ago will keep the interstate closed for at least four months. Contractors working to clear the slide on Saturday were hampered by steady rain, but crews continued hammering boulders at the base of the slide. If the weather cleared, workers planned to continue rappelling the face to remove loose rocks today if the weather clears. Drilling could start Monday, according to transportation officials.

When the slide-prone gorge route was first proposed, leaders from Madison County and the Ashe-ville area had pushed 'for another route, one that would have sent I-40 through the French Broad River Valley in Madison, close to where U.S. 2570 runs now. "Lots of people these days will say highway decisions are all politics well, hell yes, they are," said Jody Kuhne, a state engineering geologist with the N.C. Department of Transportation. "Back at that time, Haywood County had a large paper mill, major railroad access and other industry, and Madison County just didn't have that, except some in Hot Springs.

So, sure, they out-politicked Madison. The road went where the action was." Of course, all of this really is a moot point, and not only because the road's been open for 41 years. As Kuhne puts it, the two routes, geologically speaking, really presented no good choices. The Hot Springs-French Broad River route has "crazy geologic (stuff) you can't even wrap your mind around," he said, explaining that it has "rounded quartz rock." It also has just as much low- to medium-grade metamorphic rock which is more prone to slides as the Pigeon River Gorge. It's just that 2570 doesn't have the traffic.

When that road shuts down, it "doesn't get the same amount of attention," Kuhne said. "But it's an equally troubling geologic situation." More than a year ago, the DOT had to spend $550,000 to fix a "rock creep" area on 2570 near the Hot Springs area. In 1997, when I-40 had the big July slide, Kuhne split time between that site and a widening project on U.S. 2570 near Hot Springs, which had continuing problems with slides. He also was working the new highway, the Interstate 26 job through Madison County.

That rock is a different story: It's a much higher-grade metamorphic variety that formed much deeper in the earth and is less susceptible to slides. "I would say today, if we had no road through Haywood, with the advances in geotechnology, we would never try to build an interstate-type road down there, unless there was just no place else to put it," said retired DOT district engineer Stan Hyatt. "It's just an area that's full of nothing but fractured rock waiting to fall off." Long-running debate In the 1950s and early '60s, residents lobbied for their choice of the two routes, with Haywood County and other western county leaders touting the need for a route from Waynesville, the county seat, to Tennessee. In an open letter published in the June 14, 1951, Citizen-Times, the Haywood leaders cited a 1921 state act that called for the building of roads between county seats, including those in other states in the cases of border counties like Haywood. The leaders noted that the "interregional highway or Super Highway" located on 2570 in Madison County had a right of way of 250 feet, which they said was too narrow.

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