Local News

Church's view less than heavenly after road project

A church congregation in Sampson County says it feels steamrolled by a road-widening project and is demanding more respect from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

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By
Bryan Mims
, WRAL anchor/reporter
CLINTON, N.C. — A church congregation in Sampson County says it feels steamrolled by a road-widening project and is demanding more respect from the North Carolina Department of Transportation.

The state is widening N.C. Highway 24 from Fayetteville to Interstate 40. The work includes a busy stretch through Clinton, called Sunset Avenue.

There, members of Immanuel Baptist Church say the project has changed the scenery for the worse. Power lines strung across three wooden poles are clustered in front of the church.

Paster Tim Ameen said the church agreed to sell a 50-foot-wide strip of right-of-way for the widening of NC 24 with the understanding that the power lines would be buried.

Had he known the lines would remain above ground, he said, "It would have made a tremendous difference to us. I don't know what the outcome would have been, but we would have opposed it on that basis."

Ameen says the lines went up because it all came down to money.

"It would have been more costly, we're told, to put them underground," he said. "Problem is, I wish I would have known that ahead of time."

Adding to the interrupted view is a power pole thrusting out of newly-laid asphalt. Crews paved right around it when adding a turn lane on Shamrock Drive, the street running beside the church.

The DOT division engineer, Karen Collette, wrote in an email that it was not a money matter: the agency never promised the lines along Highway 24 would be buried, only the wires running diagonally across Immanuel's property.

She says the church would not agree to having the pole placed on its property, so crews left it in place and paved around it. Collette says within the next two months, the DOT plans to extend the curb around the pole so it's no longer in the road.

"We regret any confusion or miscommunication," she said. "We believe we have been very forthcoming with information in this negotiation."

Ameen and his 300 parishioners don't see it that way.

"We feel misled," he said. "We feel somewhere communication broke down. What we were told before is not what happened."

The DOT says, for four years, it wasn't aware of any complaints from the church about construction on Highway 24 -- or about the agreement it made with the church.

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