Letter: Keep our community great for all its residents

Like many of us, this bitterly cold January day, I remain stuck at home, and I am grateful for the many people shoveling us out, helping their neighbors, and keeping us informed. 

As I watch the drifting snow literally bury my car, the old questions of “bigger is better,” and “what is prosperity?” flood my thoughts. Does prosperity mean more than simple economics, and do those economic factors depend on getting bigger? I don’t think anyone has a definitive answer to either of those questions.  And certainly, once you factor in the many serious problems that the planned Mid-States Corridor would generate over the next 30 years, it is impossible to know what the outcome would be.

Is the four minutes of driving time for long-distance truck traffic that is used to justify the Mid-States Corridor worth sacrificing the 15 minutes or so extra travel time it would take for large numbers of local residents to get where they need to go? Or the extra time to get from the well-populated west side of 231 to get to the new route?

Is it worth destroying or negatively impacting a large number of homes and businesses, not to mention a satisfying way of life that continues to work well today? Is it worth paving over some of the best agricultural land and our remaining forests?  Is it worth the higher local taxes residents would pay to maintain the original US 231? Even now INDOT is having a hard time maintaining all of its highways. I see all of these as losses that can’t be justified for what is clearly an empty promise. Can you really equate this with “prosperity”?

Given the wildly unpredictable world in which we are living– environmentally, politically, as well as economically—it seems most unwise to base such an expenditure on a vague and undefined future for this region. Surely it is better to safeguard the many good things that have for generations made rural Southern Indiana truly prosperous.

Let’s stop funding this potentially destructive highway so we can focus on maintaining the roads we have and continue working together one day at a time by focusing on the things we have in common to keep our community great for ALL its diverse residents, now and into the future.

This seems like a much saner way for this region to flourish in the crazy, erratic, and unstable time we live in and to pave the way for a livable future.

Jeanne Melchior
Jasper, Indiana