POMEROY - Local officials were “shocked” when the Transportation Review Advisory Council acted to remove the Nelsonville Bypass from its list of active highway projects, and are now rallying together to push for the project's restoration.

Meigs County Economic Development Director Perry Varnadoe, County Commissioner Mick Davenport and Judge Steven Story, who was active in campaigning for the Ravenswood Connector, Athens to Darwin project and Lancaster bypass, attended a rally in Nelsonville last week to encourage that the Nelsonville project be placed “back on track.”

Officials in Meigs, Athens, Hocking and Fairfield counties have presented a unified front for years to push for the completion of the U.S. 33 project, and officials in Jackson County, W.Va., have also been active.

“We're appealing to our respective state representatives and to the governor's office,” Varnadoe said. “We're hoping TRAC will re-instate the Nelsonville project when it meets again in May.”

Varnadoe said Friday the project was funded and planned, but might never be completed if it stays off the TRAC's list of projects. TRAC announced late last year that the project would be delayed 10 more years because of a funding shortage for highway projects.

The Nelsonville bypass has been seen as the final stage of completing a Capital Corridor, connecting Charleston, W.Va., with Columbus and providing easier access to Interstate 77. With the two segments of the Ravenswood Connector, the new stretch of U.S. 33 between Darwin and Athens and a new Lancaster bypass now completed, only Nelsonville remains unfinished.

“In terms of access, it's like a cork in a bottle,” Varnadoe said. “It's the one slow-down in the entire corridor, and its completion is necessary to make the new U.S. 33 corridor whole.”

“Why would the state spend hundreds of millions of dollars on both ends of the project and not finish the middle?” he asked.

Varnadoe said a project like the Nelsonville bypass can be permanently threatened when removed from the funding mix.

“When you take it out for a year or two, it often doesn't get finished,” he said.

TRAC assigns points to projects when determining their eligiblity of funding, and Varnadoe said the Nelsonville project had more points than some projects that remained on the TRAC list. He said all pending projects in Franklin County remained on the list of active projects, even those with lower point totals than the Nelsonville project.

“We were all stunned when they pulled the project, because it had enough points,” Varnadoe said.