As leaders and residents representing communities along the S.C.

Highway 41 corridor that will be among the most impacted by the current “road to compromise” design, we felt that it was important to have our voices heard on what has unfortunately turned into a controversial issue.

As more and more specialinterest groups that do not live in our communities have injected themselves into the discussion, many have lost sight of the real problem.

While constructive input is important, too many of these groups have ignored the critical flaws with a major portion of the project and the data underpinning it, and have instead counterproductively cast the design process as a zero-sum game between the Phillips Community and surrounding Highway 41 communities.

We do not view it this way, as it does not need be about winners and losers, but about the best possible solution for everyone.

The purported purpose for the Laurel Hill Parkway, the traffic modeling numbers put forward by Charleston County and the potential environmental impacts of this project do not justify this new road.

A build with four lanes from Highway 17 to Bessemer Road, three lanes through the Phillips Community and four lanes from Dunes West Boulevard to the Wando Bridge has broad public support.

This, along with redesigns of key intersections along Highway 41, should be more than adequate to meet traffic needs for many years to come without constructing the parkway.

Such a design would provide the necessary sidewalks and center turnlane to improve safety for pedestrians and motorists in the Phillips Community.

It could also be constructed within existing rights of way, mitigating the need to take any land from residents of the settlement community and preventing the degradation of Laurel Hill County Park, which is held in a conservation trust.

The two-lane Laurel Hill Parkway would not be a bypass of Highway 41 and the Phillips Community but a bypass of Bessemer Road, which primarily carries traffic for Dunes West and Park West.

This road is not likely to see increased traffic since both neighborhoods are almost fully built out.

Common sense will further tell you that no motorist outside these communities is going to take a 2.5-mile detour when a more direct route is available.

The regional traffic models were mainly based on data collected before COVID-19 changed commuting patterns and are incorrectly inflated, asserting that residents in neighborhoods as far flung as Liberty Hill, Carolina Park and Cainhoy Plantation are likely to use the new parkway on a daily basis.

But Carolina Park has four direct roads to reach Highway 17 South, and these assumptions fail to acknowledge that as new shopping and amenities are built on Clements Ferry Road, the projected increase in traffic volumes from Berkeley County on Highway 41 may never materialize.

The environmental effects of the parkway would be significant, as no less than six endangered species could be impacted by construction of the Laurel Hill Parkway, and 22 acres of pristine forest would be lost forever, including 12 acres of wetlands.

This could have serious and detrimental impacts to drinking water quality and creeks, tributaries and floodplains.

It would also reduce the coastal resiliency of our community and could unleash damaging flooding impacts, as wetlands can store up to 1.5 million gallons of floodwater per acre, and the trees destroyed may account for up to 10 million gallons of water used per year.

What all this means is that Charleston County is, in effect, charging taxpayers an additional $37 million to build an environmentally damaging, irreversible mistake.

We encourage anyone who is concerned by this to contact the Army Corps of Engineers, which can deny the permit to build the project, by emailing Jeremy.M.Kinney@usace. army.mil or visiting Smart- Growth41.org by Monday.

You can also encourage your Charleston County Council members to reconsider their support for the Laurel Hill Parkway.

For too long this discussion has been based on a false choice, and we believe that we can all come together to support a more cost-effective and environmentally sensitive solution that will benefit all communities.

Stopping the proposed Laurel Hill Parkway is the first step toward accomplishing that goal.

State Rep. Kathy Landing serves House District 80, which includes the Highway 41 corridor, and is a resident of Dunes West. Travis Korson is the vice president of the Park West Master Association and chairman of SmartGrowth41.org.