In a huge victory for The Coalition to Preserve McIntire Park (and a fight that has been going on for decades!), the Army Corps of Engineers has withdrawn their permit for the section of the Meadowcreek Parkway that would have run through the park, at VDOT's request. To clarify, this is McIntire Road Extended, the city portion of the road that would have run through McIntyre Park. The timing seems to reflect VDOT backing down–had the permit not been withdrawn, VDOT might have faced a possible injunction tomorrow in court. The federal court hearing requesting a preliminary injunction scheduled for tomorrow has been cancelled.
I don't have any links to this news yet, and haven't seen any writeups, though I'm sure there will be plenty on the news tonight. This story was broken, to my knowledge, at 4 PM EST by Coy Barefoot on Cville's 1070 WINA, who has since tweeted that he will be replaying the segment at 5:05 PM (link to listen HERE).
VDOT is moving forward and attempting to rewrite the plan for the parkway such that it wouldn't affect the waters of the US: in short, so they wouldn't need to go through the permitting process. I don't see a way for them to do this and still go through McIntyre Park.
Either way, this is a huge victory for environmentalists that many thought could not be accomplished–but, the fight may not be done, proceed with caution.
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