5/23/2006

Paths of destruction

A tractor-trailer wipes out Port Republic's Civil War monument:
Rev. Stuart Wood, the rector of Grace Memorial who reported the accident to police, said a tractor-trailer had pulled off U.S. 340 and was attempting to turn around in the church parking lot when it struck the 2½-foot-tall memorial. The truck never stopped and had pulled back onto U.S. 340 by the time the pastor made it outside, Wood said.

"I can’t believe he didn’t hear or feel it, when I heard it inside my house," Wood said. Police searched U.S. 340 North and surrounding roads after the incident but were unable to locate the truck
Developer settles for destroying Confederate earthworks:
On July 11, 2001 a National Park Service (NPS) ranger discovered that an employee of Fawn Lake, a real estate development in Fredericksburg, Virginia, damaged approximately a half acre (24,000 sq. ft.) of Confederate earthworks on Longstreet Drive in the Wilderness Battlefield portion of the Fredericksburg and Spotsylvania National Military Park. [...] December 2005, NTS finally agreed to pay a reduced fine of $88,300.

"This is a textbook case of political string-pulling to impede protection of our heritage resources," stated PEER Executive Director Jeff Ruch, noting that the Park Service is still withholding an estimated 40 pages of the most sensitive communications about the case.