 | The Cavalier daily Tuesday, April 10, 1973 |  |
Holton Gives Go-Ahead
On Green Springs Prison
By MARGARET ALFORD
State officials will proceed
immediately with plans to
construct a prison facility in
the historic Green Springs area
of Louisa County, Gov.
Linwood Holton announced
March 30.
But opponents of the
project represented by Historic
Green Springs, Inc., will still
"do everything humanly
possible" to block the
three-year old plans,
spokesman Mrs. Hiram B. Ely
said last night.
She noted that Green
Springs has been listed as a
National Historic Landmark
and that no other community
in the nation could claim as
many acres of easement for
historic value.
Calling Mr. Holton's
decision "the biggest
double-cross and flagrant breach
of decency we've ever seen,"
Mrs. Ely said that residents
would pursue the matter in
"whatever courts are necessary
to prevent such desecration."
The state acquired a
200-acre tract in the area in
May 1970, after the
Department of Welfare and
Institutions announced plans
to phase out the old state
penitentiary in Richmond by
replacing it with smaller
units scattered around the
state.
After long controversy, Mr.
Holton announced in October
that he would order the facility
built in some other area if the
state received positive
assurance, through historic
easements negotiated with area
property owners, that the
historically critical area of
Green Springs would be
preserved.
But he said March 30 that
the Historic Landmarks
Commission had declared that
the 7,000 acres of easements
granted by property owners in
the 10,000 to 14,000-acre
Green Springs area were
inadequate to ensure the
preservation of the area.
He added that a member of
his staff and the attorney
general's office did not believe
that the form of easements
presented satisfactory
assurance of the preservation
of the properties on which they
have been granted.
However, Mrs. Ely said last
night that she had talked to
officials in the attorney
general's office and "they
denied that there was anything
wrong with the easements."
"Gov. Holton obviously
made that statement up," she
said. "I think that he never
intended to back down."
| The Cavalier daily Tuesday, April 10, 1973 | |