Special-interest push for South Carolina interstate hits roadblock

Business leaders in Myrtle Beach, S.C., tried every tactic they could to win $1.3 billion in funding for Interstate 73, a six-lane gateway to their seaside getaway.

They coaxed dozens of members of Congress to tour the area, including five who’ve chaired key committees, escorting some of them aboard helicopters for aerial views of clogged traffic in one of the country’s most popular resort communities.

The highway’s backers commissioned economic studies that showed the road would generate jobs,Basics, technical terms and advantages and disadvantages of Laser engraver. industry and development. They bought TV ads. They hired former congressmen and a onetime chairman of the Democratic National Committee to lobby in Washington.

Myrtle Beach-area businessmen, road builders and their family members poured nearly $1.4 million into the campaign coffers of South Carolina Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham and Jim DeMint, three home-state congressmen, state legislators and political parties.

“I-73 is the largest economic development project in South Carolina history,” Graham has said repeatedly.

Environmentalists hit back with studies that said upgrades to existing highways could deliver almost as much economic benefit at a tenth of the cost. But they found themselves outmatched by the deep-pocketed, well-connected alliance pushing the new road.

Beginning in 2005, I-73 boosters secured more than $125 million from Congress and the state Department of Transportation for a 5.7-mile stretch of asphalt that would give them the beachhead they sought: an exit from I-95, the busiest travel corridor along the Eastern Seaboard.

But for all the money the highway’s supporters spent, the lobbyists they hired and the positive reports they printed, they have yet to get it built.

And for all their warnings of environmental destruction and runaway development, opponents couldn’t stop it, either.

In a testament to the condition of the nation’s highway finances, South Carolina ran out of money before it could put the first shovel in the ground.

With the country short at least $14 billion a year in federal funding to maintain bridges and highways, other states are putting the brakes on new projects,Like most of you, I'd seen the broken buy mosaic decorated pieces. including many for which their members of Congress secured priority status and federal funding.

A deeper look at the still-unfinished saga of I-73 and Myrtle Beach offers a glimpse of how private interests may influence decisions over highway spending and put projects on a fast track.

“There’s no appropriate strategy for introducing Congress and the state legislature to our transportation issues in this region of South Carolina that we have not taken full advantage of,” said Republican state Rep. Alan Clemmons, who leads a six-state coalition that’s seeking funds for I-73.

In the absence of clear national goals for federal transportation funding, projects such as I-73 have turned into a tug of war between highway promoters and environmentalists.

Both sides commissioned studies that came to opposite conclusions.

The environmentalists say that upgrading existing roads would be cheaper without destroying forests and wetlands. The highway backers say the new interstate would generate thousands of jobs and save thousands of lives by creating a hurricane evacuation route.

Without a truly independent analysis, it’s hard to know whether the road is worth building.

“I-73 would have the largest environmental impact of any infrastructure project in this state in a generation,” said Nancy Cave, who directs the Coastal Conservation League’s operations along South Carolina’s northern coast.

A study that Cave’s group paid for concluded that upgrading U.S. 501, a parallel four-lane highway, for about $150 million would avert any environmental damage and achieve much of the desired economic growth.

The backers of I-73 countered with their own study. They paid Parsons Brinckerhoff, an engineering firm that designs highways, for an analysis that showed an upgraded U.S. 501 couldn’t compare with the economic boon of a six-lane interstate.

Brad Dean, the president of the Myrtle Beach Area Chamber of Commerce, told McClatchy that the study and others financed by I-73 backers had found that the interstate would create more than 29,000 jobs, boost tourism and industry, and provide a fast hurricane-evacuation route that would “save 40,000-plus lives.”

For more than a decade, I-73 has been the Myrtle Beach chamber’s top priority, Dean said. The chamber joined forces with the larger six-state coalition in the 1990s to galvanize support for I-73 and a second interstate, I-74, that would connect the Midwest with the Carolinas.

The chamber’s strategy wasn’t, however, about creating new freeways to the Midwest. It was to lock in money for the road it wanted, starting with what I-73 supporters dubbed the “interchange of hope,” an exit from I-95 that would take vacationers straight to Myrtle Beach.

“I think it’s an established principle that as soon as you lay your first foot of asphalt, you’ve now taken the project from concept to reality,” Clemmons said.

In 2000, members of South Carolina’s congressional delegation had secured the first of tens of millions of dollars in congressional earmarks for a bypass near the town of Conway, 20 miles northwest of Myrtle Beach. That $386 million project, completed with state and county funds, eventually would link with I-73.

Next the I-73 forces set their sights on the 2005 federal transportation bill, which contained 6,300 earmarks for projects around the country. The road’s lobbyists, including two former South Carolina congressmen and former Democratic National Committee Chairman Don Fowler, roamed the hallways of Congress.

I-73 was a big winner, getting the first of nearly $100 million in earmarks. It was designated a “Project of Regional and National Significance.”

Chamber President Dean credited Graham,Which Air purifier is right for you? Republican then -Rep. Henry Brown, who was on the House highways subcommittee, and Republican Sen. James Inhofe of Oklahoma, then the chairman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, as instrumental in getting the designation,Are you looking for Optical frame, glasses and eye exams? which sounded important but was in reality a way for members of Congress to protect funding for pet projects.

In 2007, Graham invited then-U.S. Transportation Secretary Mary Peters, a former federal highway administrator, to visit the area.

Graham has received at least $78,619 in campaign donations from the businesses that back the interstate and another $158,951 from state road builders and highway engineers in the past 15 years.

The South Carolina Transportation Commission, whose members are appointed by state politicians and must approve spending by the state DOT, voted in March 2007 to pass a resolution naming I-73 the state’s top transportation priority.Buy discount Mens Sports glasses online.

Two months later, the state legislature passed a law that required Transportation Department engineers to evaluate a host of criteria – including traffic projections, financial viability, environmental impact and economic development benefits – in considering interstate highway projects.