Nuckles: I-73 is big, not good, idea

Borrowing a line out of Mitt Romney’s speech book, South Carolina Department of Transportation Board Member Sarah Nuckles told the Florence Chapter of the League of Women Voters Monday night that “a big idea isn’t necessarily a good idea and I-73, in its present form, probably is not a good idea, although it certainly is a big one.”

Nuckles was the featured speaker at a League meeting at Central United Methodist Church. She was an appropriate one, too. Nuckles has been an outspoken critic of the I-73 plan, especially the recent plan to use state road bonds to help pay for a small portion of the proposed interstate through northeastern South Carolina. And, the League, a non-partisan group in most cases, is now a big part of the stop-I-73 movement.

That movement is a loose alliance of various interest groups, all of whom have a sneaking suspicion that that proposed, $2.4 billion I-73 project in South Carolina might just turn into a real boondoggle that would be bad for the environment and the state budget.

Nancy Cave, North Coast Director of the Coastal Conservation League, an environmental protection interest group that has led the fight, called the alliance “broad and all-encompassing” but admitted it is not especially well organized.

But that is changing. LoWV leaders passed out official stop I-73 bumper stickers at Monday night’s meeting and as Nuckles said, “I may be the best known face of the ‘say no to I-73 movement,’ but there are a lot of others out there, all of you included.”

All of you Monday included 35-40 attendees, most of whom were regular League members.

They heard Nuckles’ story of opposition and her increasing well-known litany of gripes with the I-73 plan.

Nuckles isn’t what many I-73 foes expect. She’s an avowed Republican, an accountant and a former auditor and business owner, who was appointed to a local metropolitan planning organization in Rock Hill and then to the seven-member state transportation board.

She did not, she admits, know much about I-73 when she was appointed, but soon began an intensive study of the project. The more she learned, the less she liked.

Especially troubling was the fact that it felt like a back-room deal.

“When I began to question it, I got some real kick back,” Nuckles said. “I was basically told, ‘it’s in your district. You’re supposed to support it.’ That didn’t seem like a very good reason to support it to me.”

Nuckles dislikes the lack of transparency surrounding the project. But she also believes:

It’s a poor use of scarce road-building dollars. South Carolina should spend on maintaining and repairing existing roads before launching into an adventure like I-73.

It won’t do what proponents say it will. The road will not, believes Nuckles, bring very many jobs to the area. It won’t improve travel times (and hence, tourism) to Myrtle Beach by any appreciable amount, and it won’t provide much advantage as a hurricane evacuation route.

It’s a duplication of existing roads, or roads that could be improved for a fraction of the cost of I-73. Among other ideas, Nuckles would like to see a “Grand Strand Parkway” built on Highways 38/501 from I-95 to S.C. 22, the Conway bypass.

“There are just a lot of problems,” Nuckles said. “We could spend this money in a lot better way.”

There are precious few funds committed to I-73. Some state contributions and federal earmarks have built up a pool of between $58 million and $100 million (the amount varies depending upon how certain dollars are counted). The proposed road bond would push an additional $105 million towards the project.

The transportation board approved the bond – with Nuckles and two others voting against it – but the bond still must pass state muster. And the entire project hasn’t been approved by the Environmental Protection Agency.

Proponents hope that money would be enough to build an expensive interchange for the road at I-95, near Latta, which would, in turn, entice more federal dollars.

Nuckles believes that won’t happen and all the state will be left with is a nice interchange.

A Myrtle Beach-based group that’s pushing the project, I-73 for S.C., has held rallies in recent weeks in Bennettsville and Marion County.