For more than 30 years, politicians with money to burn have tried to sell West Virginians a billion dollar white elephant. Corridor H is a proposed four-lane highway through a few rural, remote eastern panhandle communities that want mostly to be left alone.

Three decades of starting and stopping, assessing and reassessing, locating and relocating, and litigating and relitigating have not taught the West Virginia Department of Highways anything. It still spends millions of dollars a year trying to promote its largest and most unwanted project.

Some of the debate is about local disturbances to the ecological, historical and existing populations of the region. These are all important human concerns. But there’s more to Corridor H than building a road and preserving the directly adjacent physical environment, even if that were possible.

The Potomac Highlands of West Virginia is one of the remaining great greenscapes of the central Appalachian region. Only in this area of the region can one travel all day, through county after county, while enjoying hundreds of exhilarating, yet relaxing, mountain majesties and valley views. Only in this region can one enjoy the tranquility one finds at places like Seneca Rocks, Canaan Valley, Dolly Sods, "The Trough," Smoke Hole and, of course, Blackwater Canyon. Residents and tourists there can still enjoy peaceful, unbustled communities like Harmon, Davis, Thomas, Wardensville, Capon Bridge and Romney.

But Governor Underwood and the West Virginia Department of Highways would have us believe that this area, too, must have 65 or 70 mile per hour highways, accompanied by billboards bigger than houses, fast food restaurants at every intersection and 40 ton trucks speeding through the hills and valleys. Have they no shame!!?? When will enough concrete and blacktop be enough? Is there no end to how much we will pave, just because an out of control, spendaholic Congress lets money flow like water from Washington? Is there to be nowhere left where significant natural areas can be enjoyed in their uncluttered greatness?

Corridor H is about interrupting, degrading and destroying the natural and human environment of the southern and western portions of the eastern panhandle. Opposition to Corridor H is about conserving the remaining peaceful and uncomplicated greenscapes remaining in the region.

For more than 30 years the West Virginia Highlands Conservancy has said that we need natural areas and greenspace for the enjoyment of this and future generations. But Governor Underwood and the West Virginia Department of Highways don’t even want to talk about it. They go on wasting millions of dollars a year to oppose leaving even this one remaining significant natural area alone. Their ecological judgements, their social judgements and their financial judgements are all faulty. That’s three strikes against them. Under the rules, they should be out.