ATC Celebrates NPS Final Decision for Monetary Settlement to Resolve Proposed North Shore Road

January 2008: The Great Smoky Mountains National Park has announced a monetary settlement for Swain County to resolve the North Shore Road issue.   This is the conclusion to the Environmental Impact Statement process at Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Read more about decision. 

History of North Shore Road 

The North Shore Road is a decades-old controversy for a promised—but only partly built—road that would have sliced through the unbroken mountains north of Fontana Lake in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park and crossed the Appalachian Trail near Fontana Dam.

ATC opposed any construction options, preferring that the federal government settle with Swain County for $52 million, an option the county preferred as well.  This would leave the park, one of the largest roadless areas in the eastern USA, undisturbed.

Park officials did not initially identify a “preferred alternative” in the draft environmental-impact statement (EIS) published January 4, 2006 in the Federal Register. Options under consideration, as well as the threat to the wilderness setting, are profiled in the A.T. Journey’s 2005 September-October issue.  Additional information may be found at the North Shore Road web site.

Read the Smokies/NSR Coalition Analysis of the Draft Environmental Impact Statement (PDF)

Later in 2006, a series of public workshops were held and public comments were submitted during the Impact Analysis phase of the EIS process. 

In March 2007, ATC learned of exciting news regarding the proposed North Shore Road. Seventeen members of Congress wrote Secretary of the Interior Dirk Kempthorne endorsing a $52 million cash settlement to Swain County instead of building the "Road to Nowhere." Read the full letter. (PDF)

The National Park Service published a Notice of Availability of the Final Environmental Impact Statement (FEIS) in the Federal Register which called for a monetary settlement to Swain County.  This is the agency’s preferred alternative based on its extensive review of the nearly 76,000 public comments received and analysis of the impacts of each alternative on the park’s natural, cultural and recreational resources.

The final Record of Decision selecting the monetary settlement with Swain County as the preferred alternative of the EIS was signed by the NPS and announced by Great Smoky Mountains National Park on December 28, 2007.