Clearing for a 40-foot-wide corridor necessary to install wiring through Carolina North Forest is scheduled to begin within the next two weeks.
But some residents, who said they felt left out of the planning process, worry about the corridor’s effects on the forest and trails.
The cleared corridor will hold an underground ductbank for electrical cables that will improve power and communications reliability for critical University buildings and eventually serve as the electrical backbone to the planned Carolina North campus.
The ductbank will run near existing trails and intersect the Pumpkin Loop, a forest trail, several times.
“Even if they plant vegetation, it will end up looking like the Bolin Creek trail where there’s still quite a scar,” said Patrick Brandt, who works at the University and is a frequent user of the forest trails.
An alternative route along Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was rejected by the N.C. Department of Transportation.
“It was going to present a significant traffic impact during construction as well as after construction for maintenance,” said Chuck Edwards, district engineer for the department.
Residents question why the ductbank can’t run along existing trails to minimize harm to nature.
“I’m wondering if instead of intersecting in all those areas, if they can just widen the Pumpkin Loop trail, where trees have already been knocked down,” Brandt said. “It’s a 10-foot-wide gravel road that parallels more than two-thirds of the ductbank proposed route.”