Landowners: Keep rural character

Planners are expecting a surge in visitors once the memorial is in place.
SOMERSET, Pa. (AP) -- Landowners near the crash site of United Flight 93 -- and soon the site of a national memorial -- want to preserve the rural character of the community, a National Park Service official said Friday.
As organizers progress toward building a national memorial for the passengers and crew who died aboard Flight 93, they are listening to the concerns of landowners and other members of the community, Jeff Reinbold, of the National Park Service told a Flight 93 Federal Advisory Commission meeting.
With the surge of visitors and traffic, land adjacent to the national park site could be developed by corporations. Elected officials are in the process of establishing development regulations, Reinbold said. But they're not in place yet.
"There's a concern that if we don't think about what could happen out there, others may shape our future for us," Reinbold said.
Landowners are not only worried about a possible development boom around the future national park site, they're also concerned about traffic after the memorial is built, Reinbold said.
Estimate on visitors
A Penn State University study estimated that up to 250,000 people will visit the memorial annually about a decade after the site is built.
But that number could fluctuate depending on world events, the design of the memorial and how the national park site is promoted, he said.
So far, studies of traffic and roadway conditions "have validated what we've all known. The local roads are not designed or constructed to accommodate the kind of traffic that we're projecting," Reinbold said.
Somerset County residents are also concerned about how the construction of the memorial will affect water supplies. Many of the traffic and water concerns will be solved after the organizers of the memorial conduct an environmental impact statement and other studies, Reinbold said.
Under the oversight of the National Park Service, the advisory commission is the official body that will make a recommendation for the planning, design, construction and management of a Flight 93 national memorial. The recommendation is to be submitted to the Secretary of the Interior by September 2005.
Members of the Flight 93 Memorial Task Force delivered reports to the advisory commission. The task force is made up of victims' family members, residents and others.
The official 9/11 Commission report, released in July, said the hijackers crashed the plane as passengers tried to take control of the cockpit.
Soon after the plane crashed, residents established a temporary memorial on a hilltop overlooking the crash site.
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