George Bush Highway is an 8 lane regional highway and was planned as such. FM 2181/Teasley/Swisher which flows from Denton, through Corinth to Hickory Creek was planned as a 4-lane boulevard plus turning lane. TxDot now plans FM 2181’s expansion as 7 lanes of concrete (6 lanes plus a turning lane). In other words, we in Corinth will likely have what amounts to a regional highway literally IN many of our backyards. Or in our swimming pools. You’ve heard the one about the neighbor who got his permit from the City of Corinth after looking at FM 2181 expansion plans only to learn AFTER the pool was built that FM 2181 was going to be a whole lot bigger?

Because of this change in planning and because of TxDot’s refusal to recognize that a 7-lane road is not going to be real friendly to our small community – I don’t define large numbers of non-local residents flying by our houses at 55 m.p.h. as friendly --I’m afraid there’s going to be a largely negative impact on all of us when FM 2181 is completed in 2013 (assuming TxDot doesn’t use the crew that started Denton’s still unfinished Loop 288 back in the Stone Age). Soon, neighborhoods designed for a 4 lane boulevard will lose walls. Homeowners will lose fences and backyards. Thousands of cars, trucks and semis that a large road usually carries will pollute our largely rural neighborhoods with noise and sickening fumes. 7 lanes of concrete will inject massive amounts of rain and storm water into our communities and into local streams which feed into our local watershed, Lake Lewisville.

Will this hurt or help our neighborhood and our property values? What do you think? What are YOU going to do about it? Move in THIS real estate market? Why are many west Corinth residents unaware of the negative impact this road will have on the region? Why are many of us so ignorant of what’s happening in West Corinth? Why don’t most of us know about the road, about what it’s going to BE like for the next 4 years while FM 2181 is under construction?

For most of us, West Corinth doesn’t have a “regional identity.” It’s just where we live. Until very recently we didn’t have a way to find out what was really happening in our neck of the woods. We now have a community newspaper – The Corinth Times – but these days, most of us don’t read the newspaper. Some neighborhoods are slightly organized and have homeowners associations (HOA), some don’t. Traditionally, most HOAs are more concerned about the small picture --neighborhood beautification rather than the large picture -- community and regional activitism. Because of this, we’re just a disjointed and largely passive collection of neighborhoods, many lining FM 2181.

Sitting ducks.

This little duckie had figured that asking about sound walls along this highway was a good way to access how responsive TxDot was to an ordinary citizen. --Yes, I know it’s not going to be a highway according to TxDot, but put down 7 lanes of concrete on a base of Texas clay and THAT, folks, is a highway no matter what you call it. –If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s a duck. When I attended a TxDot information session at Lake Dallas High School last year, TxDot failed to make the grade. We didn’t receive the sort of answers one would expect.

Before the TxDot meet-n-inform on November 16, 2006, I’d done a little preliminary research and attended a few meetings (which unfortunately happened to coincide with the times that most people are working and busy parents have to rush out to pick up kids from schools) and found that it’s difficult to estimate how much traffic will flow on this new road by 2013. I figured that it’s likely that the road – which could very well carry larger trucks and hazardous materials – will have plenty of traffic since FM 2181 will eventually cross the new east-west Lake Lewisville bridge to hook up to the Dallas North Tollway. From the south, traffic will flow onto FM 2181 at Barrel Strap Road up along 6-lane FM 2499 (which connects to 121, LBJ and the airport). I figured that since in the last 4 years FM 2181 has gotten rather loud during the rush hours -- making it hard now to hear conversations in my heavily wooded backyard which is 1/8 of a mile from the present road -- it’s gonna get even louder. So, having in mind the nice, big sound walls TxDot has put up here and there to protect communities from Big Roads in Dallas, I asked a TxDot spokesman what would be done about the noise from this new highway.

I was regarded as if I was an alien or an idiot.

I was told sound walls were unnecessary according to prior studies. When I pointed out that the sound studies for noise emissions were projected for a road planned to be 5 lanes of traffic (a 4-lane boulevard plus turning lane) and pointed out that now FM 2181 was going to be larger, I was informed that “there is virtually no difference in sound emissions from a 2-lane to a 6-lane highway.” Hence there was no need for a study.

As my husband would say, “Look, a flying pig!”

As I write this, TxDot is finalizing plans and costs for this new road, plans that do NOT include sound walls. If we want this massive road to have a positive impact on our community and not just bring us massive amounts of traffic, noise, air pollution and water run-off, we need to join together as a community and speak up since one lone duck quacking in the wilderness is only a duck. Concerned neighbors need to find each other, organize ourselves and approach TxDot before it is too late to have “community friendly” measures inserted into FM 2181’s nearly completed construction budget. I’m sure that the more technically savvy of us could go on-line and find an inexpensive noise monitor which could allow many of us to actually measure sound emissions from FM 2181 in a manner which would make TxDot sit up and listen.