Jeffrey
Thomas Medford
403
Woodland Dr
Summerville,
SC 29485
225-266-2836
Monday, June 11, 2018
U.S.
Army Corps of Engineers
ATTN:
REGULATORY DIVISION
69A
Hagood Avenue
Charleston,
SC 29403
Re: SAC
2015-0807
To Whom It May Concern:
I am writing regarding SAC 2015-0807as a part of the public comment period that ends on
June 14th, 2018.
I respectfully request that a public hearing be held to
consider this application, and that a sufficient notice of at least six weeks
be given from the date the hearing is announced to the date it is held in order to make sure the residents of the Town of
Summerville have sufficient time to become aware that the meeting will take
place and to schedule to attend it.
I have spent the past two weeks immersed in this issue, after
I “accidentally” found out about it from the Mayor during a private meeting
with him regarding another issue. Tonight I attended the Town of Summerville’s monthly
Standing Committees Meeting in order to finalize my information-gathering
process before writing this letter.
In short, I am a fervent opponent of this project,
and I will break down my reasons why this project is definitively NOT in the public interest. The project should not be approved for the
following reasons:
·
The “vision” and design for this roadway was
conceptualized in the 1970’s—over 40 years ago—and has not changed despite
massive changes in the public road infrastructure since that time, most
importantly the four-laning of Bacon’s
Bridge/SC 165, which is a mere 300 yards away from the location of this
proposed 4-lane roadway.
·
The Town of Summerville’s council has rubber-stamped
this project since its inception under the sway of property developers, even
announcing on several occasions the when construction would begin despite the
permitting process not being completed, including at tonight’s meeting
·
The Town of Summerville’s council has apparently
suppressed information about the comment period in order to
avoid any significant degree of public reaction. Indeed, almost nobody in the town knows this
proposed roadway is being pushed by the Council. The link on town’s website in its “Road
Projects” section (http://www.summervillesc.gov/roadprojects)
for this project takes you straight to a satellite image with a line drawn on
it to indicate the location of the “proposed” road. NOWHERE AT ALL ON THE SITE DOES IT INDICATE
THE PRESENCE OF A PUBLIC COMMENT PERIOD WHATSOEVER.
·
In addition, during the town Council meeting on
Monday, the topic of the proposed roadway wasn’t even on the agenda, despite
this being the last week for public comment.
In fact, a number of significantly small
projects with insignificant updates were discussed in the meeting, but this one
didn’t even make it to the agenda. The
only time it was brought up is when I asked about it at the close of the
meeting. After bringing it up, the
person who responded said “We just learned that the Corps will be scheduling a
public hearing about the project.” That new information was not important enough
to make it onto the agenda, yet these things were:
·
The proposed roadway is being incorrectly linked to
the need for flood control work, which has nothing to do whatsoever with
building a highway; flood control efforts are completely and wholly independent
of highway construction
·
The proposed roadway is being upheld as a wise plan
because “the funding is already approved,” as if the famous Bridge To Nowhere wasn’t a sufficient-enough example why funding
does not equal prudence.
·
The public at large has very little “need for” this
additional roadway. Indeed, a 40+
year-old plan that has not been updated to reflect the changes since that time and
the property developers backing various council members who own property along
the proposed roadway and have put it up for sale (34 acres directly to
the north of Newington Plantation) are the only thing driving this process, not
the community itself in any way at all.
·
The notion of an “historic property” as considered by
the State Historic Preservation Office is typically relegated to only half of
what constitutes “real property,” namely buildings. However, the Saw Mill Branch is historic in a
very relevant sense because the land is continuous, undeveloped, and
flows through the heart of the community in a way unrivaled by any other town
in the Lowcountry, and should be considered as a
historical property as such. Indeed, if
preservation can’t protect land and merely protects buildings, then we are only
protecting something temporary, as every building ever built eventually ceases
to exist.
·
The proposed roadway would create two parallel four lane roads within 300 yards of each other in the
heart of Summerville, a situation without equal across all of
the municipalities in the entirety of the Lowcountry
·
The application as posted on the Corps of Engineers
website conspicuously ends mid-sentence at the end of page 13 under the section
“Alternatives Considered but Eliminated”
which indicates an extremely careless clerical error at best, and potentially a
desire to truly avoid looking at or notifying the public about the alternative
of widening the EXISTING 2-lane
roadway of US ALT 17 a mere 300 yards
away—a road that this additional proposed parallel thoroughfare is linking up
with only 3 miles away.
·
A rational analysis of the absence of seriously
considering widening the EXISTING
roadway as opposed to building a completely new one on pristine parkland leaves
one mind boggled. Indeed, the proposal
is akin to the Town of Mount Pleasant proposing to put a 4
lane road down Shem Creek:
Proposed
Berlin G Meyers Phase III
HYPOTHETICAL
Town of Mount Pleasant’s Proposal to replicate Summerville’s plan and destroy a
pristine, undeveloped waterway with an unnecessary road down the middle of Shem
Creek.
·
Furthermore, the backers of the project in the town
council I spoke with all concede that the existing US ALT 17 (reminder: it is located a mere 300 yards away from the
proposed roadway) will be 4-laned at some point in the future based on the
needs of growth. This
would put three parallel 4-lane roads within 600 yards of each other, a
situation unparalleled (pun intended) in the entire state of South Carolina.
·
The proposed roadway would destroy the only continuous
and undeveloped greenspace left in the Town of Summerville and would
significantly affect the exquisitely unique character of 5.5 miles of the
Sawmill Branch Trail, a pristine bike trail in the heart of an urban
environment that is without equal in all of the
Lowcountry.
·
The proposed road completely goes against the modern
developmental trends Smart Growth, which highlight the need to preserve green
space to increase a community’s desirability.
Doing so makes the town more attractive for businesses and their employees,
which will raise property values and the town’s tax base. Summerville already has an underdeveloped
business tax base as it is.
·
The project robs the town of Summerville of an opportunity
to constructively think about how the existing green space could be utilized to
increase quality-of-life and community desirability for new residents who will
value things in ways that reflect the changing attitudes of society. Indeed, properly conceived and planned, the
Saw Mill Branch could become Summerville’s very own version of Central Park in
NYC or the C&O Canal National Historical Park
·
The Town of Summerville is in urgent need of
addressing actual traffic problems on Berlin G Meyer that create a bottleneck
from the section beginning at the end of the overpass at E 3rd St.
and that extend to its connection with N Main St instead of spending money on
construction that will only increase the bottleneck that currently exists.
·
The project is a perfect implementation of the fallacy
contained in the fundamental law of road congestion: NEW roads cause the intensity of traffic to
stay the same instead of alleviating traffic.
In other words, BUILDING NEW ROADS DOESN’T REDUCE TRAFFIC.
The last point is particularly relevant to this project: if ever there were a proposed road that would
do absolutely nothing positive for the traffic situation in a community, but would rather rob the community of a uniquely
precious resource in the process, The Berlin G Meyers Phase 3 is it.
Please allow the public to have a hearing to give their input
to this project. I promise you will be
surprised by the large opposition to this idea that you will witness at the
meeting.
The best way to sum up this letter is quote Joy Riley, the
project manager for this project with SCDOT, in reference to
getting a permit from the Corps of Engineers:
“I don’t know what else I can do to try to get a solid permit
application in that they can’t say no to. The
local politicians in Summerville are very interested in this project”[1]
Please note the glaring absence of any reference to the
public desire for, or indeed—the actual need—for this road.
It is SOLELY about the local politicians.