Board of Supervisors Delays Decision on Truck Stop Project

ABINGDON, Va. – In a midnight vote, the Washington County Board of Supervisors unanimously delayed a decision on the truck stop project at Exit 24 in Meadowview until July 14.

Immediately before that vote, a motion to reject the Love’s Travel Center was defeated 4-3 with supervisors Jack McCrady, Tom Taylor and Dulcie Mumpower opposing the project.

“We’ve got a school with 700 students here, and a whole lot of traffic generated by that school,” Taylor said. “We have an obligation to protect those people.”

The other four, Paul Price, Odell Owens, Phil McCall and Kenneth Reynolds rejected the motion to kill the project – indicating that they are likely to vote in favor of the truck stop next month.

The board is required by its bylaws to vote on an affirmative motion before a project can be approved.

“We’re all concerned about children,” Price said. “I really feel ... that we’re a little bit using children. For the three and a half years I’ve been here, I’ve not heard one negative thing about this until a few weeks ago.

“If Sullivan County [Tenn.] gets this, then that $2 million a year [in revenue] goes to Nashville and not to Richmond,” Price said. Then, “that exit will never be improved until there’s something that forces improvement.”

At the end of the five-hour meeting, supervisors said they were delaying the final decision because they want to review an environmental study on the project.

Truck stop opponents said in interviews after the board’s vote that they take issue with the environmental study done by Love’s, to comply with highway requirements.

“An important question is whether or not an environmental impact study allows us to model how this development will change the air quality in and around Meadowview Elementary School,” said opponent Joe Lane.

Mumpower said the truck-stop issue is a two-edged sword.

“It’s hard to determine what the right thing is to do,” Mumpower said. “We’ve got a situation where there’s a need for jobs and there’s some people in the community that are asking that this happen and appears to be that a lot of the people don’t want it to happen.”

Before the votes, the supervisors listened to scores of people expressing those opinions, all of whom signed up to speak at the public hearing the board held on granting the re-zoning and special-exception permit necessary for Love’s to build the travel center at what is now a rural interchange.

The project has generated tremendous controversy because the proposed site is less than a quarter-mile from Meadowview Elementary School, the county’s largest elementary school, which serves a large low-income population.

Both the Washington County Planning Commission and the county’s school board oppose the project.

Among those who spoke Tuesday was Patricia Williams Bradford, who owns the property and spoke out publicly for the first time about her decision to sell her family’s farm to Love’s.

“There are people here who believe I am a disinterested, unconcerned owner of the property that Love’s is offering to buy and wants to place a truck stop on,” Bradford said. “I beg to differ.”

Born in a house in Meadowview but now living in Tennessee, Bradford said the state and federal highway departments slowly chipped away at the farm that belonged to her grandmother, near the school where her mother taught, and where her family lived for almost 100 years.

“When the Interstate was built in the 1960s, many acres were purchased from my farm at an unreasonably low cost,” she said, adding that the widening of Route 80 and the addition of more Interstate ramps took more and more land.

“My family has been at the mercy of the Interstate for three generations,” Bradford said. “As the property owner, I just want to be able to sell the land to a responsible company that has a responsible land-development plan. … Just as the Interstate was good for Meadowview and the county when it came in, Love’s will benefit the community.”

Her son, Roberts J. Bradford Jr., of Gray, Tenn., said he hopes the truck stop development will generate interest in future projects on property he holds on the other side of the Interstate.

A majority of those who spoke Tuesday were opposed to the project, though a substantial number spoke in favor.

Speakers offered petitions: more than 800 signatures of those opposed to the truck stop, said Link Elmore; and more than 200 signatures of those in favor, said Gene Copenhaver, who lives across the road from Meadowview Elementary School.

“My mama taught me there would always be folks coming down the road wanting to use what you’ve got, and they will be using the word Love,” said Barbara Kingsolver, of Meadowview, “but you need not take the first offer that comes along.”

Kingsolver said the truck stop would suddenly mean more strangers than residents in Meadowview.

Charlie Darnell, also of Meadowview, encouraged supervisors to approve the project. People should be able to buy gas and eat at McDonald’s without traveling to another town, he said.

Alan Lee, superintendent of schools in Washington County, reiterated the school board’s concerns: the risk of a hazardous chemical spill at the interchange, the potential health hazard of diesel exhaust, the danger of added traffic in an emergency; and the threat of predators and other undesirable individuals coming to the school.

Those in favor of the project touted the economic benefits it could bring to a community.

“We’re in a small town. We need this,” said Bonnie Wilcox, one of the most outspoken proponents of the project.

“We need to get businesses in this area. Look at all of the people that have no jobs. They have to live on welfare. Some people love it, but a lot of parents don’t. They would rather have a place to work and provide for their own families.”

dmccown@bristolnews.com | (276) 791-0701