Blown Away

It gets pretty windy on Grandfather Mountain but no one expected the record-breaking winds that occurred on January 25th. The 5,280-foot peak received winds at speeds over 200 mph, breaking the previous 195.5 mph wind record for Grandfather set in 1997. The wind gusts broke three steel-wire-reinforced windows and lifted a 300-pound boulder in the visitor’s center parking lot. Unfortunately, nobody can pinpoint the exact speed of the wind gusts. The anemometer that the Grandfather Mountain weather station uses only measures speeds up to 200 mph though witnesses say the needle on the meter was well beyond the 200 mph mark. The strongest wind ever recorded on U.S. soil was 231 mph on Mount Washington in New Hampshire in 1934.

Dead End for North Shore Road?

The National Park Service has released a new Draft Environmental Impact Statement on the proposed building of the 34-mile road along the North Shore of Fontana Lake in Great Smoky Mountains National Park, and they are accepting public comments on the proposed road until March 20. The NPS estimates the road would cost $604 million-almost 40 percent higher than estimates from a year ago.

Environmentalists and outdoor enthusiasts have long been opposed to the building because of ecological damage to floodplains, wetlands, and rare plant and aquatic species, and a complete destruction of the 28 miles of the recently-opened Benton MacKaye Trail. Now, economic groups are siding with the greens in opposing the road. In January the Washington, D.C.-based watchdog Taxpayers for Common Sense called the road an unnecessary and wasteful use of taxpayer dollars.

The preferred alternative to building the road is a $52 million cash settlement for Swain County, N.C., which lost a road in 1943 when the federal government created Fontana Lake.

“We support the settlement,” says Ben Prater of the Southern Appalachian Biodiversity Project. “We don’t want tax payers to spend another dime pursuing the road.”

Submit your comments electronically at www.northshoreroad.info.

National Forests for Sale

The U.S. Forest Service announced plans last month to sell nearly to sell nearly 300,000 acres of national forest nationwide in order to meet Bush Administration budgetary obligations. The Southeast is particularly hard hit by the proposal: more than 55,862 acres are proposed for sale-more than any other section of the country except California.

“The Forest Service is planning a bake sale with our national forest lands,” said Derb Carter, interim director of the Southern Environmental Law Center’s Carolinas office. “This short-sighted sell-off of national forest lands will harm wildlife, recreation, water quality, and the ability of future generations to enjoy our national forests.”

The move is tied to the Bush Administration’s plans to cut a long-standing, popular program that funds education and community projects in counties with national forests within their boundaries to make up for the reduced tax base. The Forest Service said it will use the expected $800 million earned from the public lands sale to fund the phase-out of the program out over the next five years. Many in Congress are committed to continue funding the payment-to-counties program.

“It’s hard to imagine a worse reason to lose our treasured national forests than for the sake of undermining rural children’s education,” said Carter. “This proposal aims to privatize ownership of public lands while phasing out funding to schools, so in the end, everyone loses.”

Trash Bash

Sadly, there are still rednecks who throw fast food wrappers out of their car windows. That’s why we need things like the Great American Cleanup beginning March 1. For the three months, local groups will pick up litter, scrub graffiti, and improve landscape in parks, playgrounds, riverbanks, and other areas that could use a good once over. Last year 2.4 million volunteers collected 208 million pounds of litter, planted 4,200 million flowers, cleaned 10,250 miles of waterways, and collected 57,500 million pounds of newspapers for recycling. For more information on where to join a cleanup in your area visit www.kab.org.