ustxtxb_obs_2007_07_27_50_00014-00000_000.pdf

eeeehtate THE BIRTHDAY OF JOHN HENRY FAULK AUSTIN S FIRST AMENDMENT HERO AUGUST 2 1 , 8 1 PM ZILKER HILLSIDE THEATER ZILKER PARK, AUSTIN, TX JOHN HENRY FAULK IN HIS OWN WORDS A NEW 55-MINUTE DOCUMENTARY NARRATED BY CACTUS PRYOR PRODUCED AND DIRECTED BY PAM THOMPSON WRITTEN AND EDITED BY STEFAN WRAY FREE PREVIEW SCREENING FOR DETAILS SEE ICONMEDIA.ORG Save Barton Creek .,\\.` Association PACT fa Cultural Arts TIM! Division VARTS fafd*?gra4V 44; Op. , 5omcm Aitutio This project is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division and by a grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts and an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, which believes that a great nation deserves great art. point, the districts would still need route-location studies to pinpoint exactly where the route would go and find funding. It’s not like at the end of the study we’d be throwing down pavement immediately.” She assured the Alpine crowd this spring that the study would have no foregone conclusions. “This is not a done deal,” she says. “A lot of people assume that because there’s a designated corridor, that we’re going through the motions. That’s not what we’re doing, I promise. We’re giving a good, unbiased eye to the corridor and seeing what we find:’ Thurin had never visited the Big Bend before the Entrada study. “It’s beautiful out there;’ she says. “I can appreciate people wanting to protect it. But if you have a lot of trucks that are really coming, it’s better to prepare to address those should that be the case.” But are they coming? Big Bend residents aren’t waiting for solid numbers and traffic forecasts to tell TxDOT what they think of the Entrada corridor. They’ve responded to the study and its call for public comment with zeal. A blog called Stopthetrucks.org is now online. The group Stewards of the Big Bend has organized. Letter-writing campaigns have been carried out. Caf workers wear “Stop La Entrada” Taken piece by piece, the logistics and cost of La Entrada seem nearly insurmountable. shirts. Petitions about La Entrada circulate at Marfa’s weekly farmer’s market. Homemade “Stop La Entrada” signs have popped up. Despite the percolating anti-Entrada vibe in the Big Bend, Perry remains a staunch booster. Commercial traffic, he says, is like waterit will seek the path of least resistance. He believes truckers will look to Presidio to escape the snarled port at El Paso. “Some locals don’t want it,” he says. “I try to tell them, whether this traffic comes is not my decision. Realistically, this route is easier than going through El Paso. We should get ready for what we think is coming in the future and not wait until someone is strangling with traffic. Let’s get the bypasses built first so we don’t disrupt the local communities. A truck is not going to be diverted by a T-shirt or a sign in the yard.” Alternate routes have been floated at area commissioners’ court meetings, though some don’t seem too viable. One follows the Rio Grande through Candelaria and then up to Van Horn. Parts of it are difficult without a high-clearance vehicle, but the trucks would skip Marfa and Alpine entirely that way. Another would send trucks west from Marfa to Jeff Davis County, where they’d be shunted toward Interstate 10 at Kent 14 THE TEXAS OBSERVER JULY 27, 2007