An agreement was signed this week that settles a long-standing dispute about what to do with the North Shore Road in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.  After many years of debate, Swain County, NC has agree to accept a $52 million payment from the federal government in lieu of completion of the road.

Taxpayers for Common Sense has long supported this settlement because building the road was a ridiculous proposition that would have cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars, while at the same time marring the Great Smoky Mountains National Park (the most popular in the United States) and destroyig one of the largest roadless tracts of forested land in the eastern United States.  At the same time, the federal government did enter into an agreement with Swain County to build the road as part of a 1943 pact that allowed a dam to be built in the area that wiped out a road in the vicinity. 

The current agreement fulfills the federal obligation to the county at a much lower cost to taxpayers than building the road and should be celebrated as a victory for common sense.

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