This past weekend provided the opportunity to travel both north and south of my residence. Most of the miles were covered on interstate highways and one twelve-mile section was on a state highway. Both directions had construction, neither of which was too constrictive in terms of traffic movement. There was a plethora of orange cones and barrels in sight, due to the powerful American Union of Barrel Putterouters. This union has amazing and powerful clout, enabling its members to place cones and barrels willy-nilly, with no obvious plan to begin construction on any near-future date.
However, I digress.
As we traveled the highways and biways of the Upper Midwest, what was notable and disheartening was the significant number of farmland acres being lost to construction of some kind, whether it be roads or bike paths. Wide swaths of prime, tillable acreage is being gobbled up by bulldozers, earth movers and backhoes all feeding dozens, perhaps hundreds, of dump trucks, busy ferrying rocks, boulders, scrub brush and, sadly, thousands of tree-skeletons. Trees that once were green and verdent are now nothing more than cut-up limbs and shredded bark.
This is progress?
One of the destruction zones is a route I drive on an almost daily basis and it pains me to see mile after mile of rich topsoil being stripped away, exposing the hard-packed earth below it that once supported corn, wheat, and soy bean crops. Over a past number of years, the media has interviewed landowners whose voices have been lost in the hungry quest for more roadways to accommodate more drivers who want to drive to more new subdivisions that demand services such as water, sewer, power, cable.....the thirst for expansion is insatiable and, more importantly, seemingly out of control.
This is progress?
Most of these landowners did not chose to "sell" their land in the name of "progress". They had no choice in the matter. Eminent domain gives governments the option for compulsory purchase of property, which also enables governmental entities to set purchase prices. These owners did not get up one morning and decide it was a good day to bring a new roadway within yards of their buildings, cut off easy access to acres, carve up their acreage "donating" land to local, state or federal projects, and see perhaps generations of family sweat-equity get carted away in dump trucks. This has to be like watching the autopsy of a loved one for these families.
This is not progress. My daily travel route is currently a two-lane highway which does need repair, upgrading - maybe even replacing, and some additional traffic signals - but it does not need to become a four-lane carnivore, destroying farms in its ugly path. We, as a nation, are setting ourselves up for the taste of foreign commodities - once easily, cheaply and safely obtained on our own soil.
This is NOT progress.
