New Track

[easye]

Dont know if anybodys seen this yet but check it out, looks pretty crazy.
Website:
www.highrockinternational.com

[Mike]

(fixed the link for you)

Nope, first time I'm seeing/hearing about it. Interesting.

[burns]

We at KWS knew about this for many months. We built the Busa car kit motors for Aurora Motorsports. From what we found out not to long ago. The is a 99% that it will not happen. A couple of weeks ago in a NC paper on the front page it said the track was not going to happen. From what we understand the guy wanting to built it did not have the funds and tons of other stuff fell through.

[CBRjunkie]

I heard about this awhile back too. From what I heard it was the same guy that built Barber that was behind this new project. Would be nice if they built it. That track elevation looks sick. And being close to Charleston never hurts my feeling either.

[ccs273]

damn would that be fun

[Kat_Mac]

And yet another article from Post and Courier on a different track.

RACEWAY BACK ON TRACK
By Bo Petersen
The Post and Courier

HARLEYVILLE - A twisting, turning, 10-year legal race to prevent a stock car track from being built near the Beidler Forest wildlife sanctuary was stopped cold Monday by a circuit court judge who reversed a state environmental board decision.

Judge Markley Dennis said the state Department of Health and Environmental Control board could not send a storm-water permit issued by its Ocean and Coastal Resource Management division back to the division to be reconsidered.

It means developers "are free to start moving the dirt on this project," said Chris Holmes, attorney for the developers. "Anybody can read into this that it's absurd it takes 10 years to get anything permitted in this state."

The decision shook environmentalists, who had fought the permit as far as the S.C. Supreme Court and who fear the ruling could take traction off the state's authority to manage wetlands.

The state's permitting of wetlands has been the proving ground of a number of legal battles between development and environmental interests. The racetrack case has been closely watched and supported on both sides.

Ironically, the ruling came 10 years to the day that the permit was issued. But it, too, can be appealed and could well send the fight into yet another round in court, although opponents and state environmental department attorneys said they would wait for the judge's written ruling before deciding.

"We're going to fight this thing to the death. It's horrible," said Nancy Vinson of the Coastal Conservation League. "The court seems to be trying to strip the DHEC board of its proper role. Let the permit be decided on the merits of the permit."

Developers Mike Brown and Howard Tharpe won a permit in 1995 to build a $1.5 million concrete-oval stock car racetrack off S.C. 27 near I-26 within five miles of the forest, a 13,000-acre National Audubon Society cypress swamp wilderness in Four Holes Swamp.

With recent acquisitions, the project is now within a mile of the forest, said Norman Brunswig, Audubon South Carolina executive director and Beidler Forest sanctuary manager.

The sanctuary holds the heart of what might be the largest remaining virgin cypress-tupelo swamp forest in the world. Owned by the National Audubon Society, it is a nesting ground for threatened songbird species.
The nub of the legal battle hinged on whether the coastal management division had considered the greater environmental impact of the project on the sanctuary before issuing the permit.

"Certainly noise and light will have a significant impact on an internationally significant wildlife area where songbirds come to nest and breed," Vinson said.

The case wended its way through the environmental board, courts and the state administrative law judge to the Supreme Court.

That court ruled in 2002 that state environmental regulators overstepped their authority in denying developers a storm-water permit and sent the case back a lower court to be amended.

In 2003, the DHEC board sent the permit back to coastal resource management to start over.

"That was our point to the judge: They already did this once. It's like getting two bites at the apple," Holmes said.

Brown did not return calls for comment.

[burns]

Isn't that like right down the road?

[mccutch2u]

yeah sounds like it is going to be some bullshitt track for the locals ........not for nascar.....................plus that is our stomping gropunds what the f@#$ do they think they're doing.............trying to take our track.....................

Hey i just read in the paper today that it was going to be up there by dorchester dragstrip off exit 189 on I26... thats cool. Fuck the spotted owl build the track!!!!!