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THE SUNCOAST NEWS

Published: January 7, 2009

Recently, in commenting on the planned four-laning of Ridge Road from Little Road to Moon Lake Road, we lamented the fact that another year was passing and Pasco County seemed no closer to winning permit approval to extend Ridge Road. It would be pushed east, from its current terminus at its junction with Moon Lake Road, to the Suncoast Parkway and perhaps later to U.S. 41. If it ever gets built the Ridge Road Extension would provide a badly needed third major east-west evacuation route out of West Pasco.

So imagine our glee when we read a Jan. 4 article in The Pasco Tribune in which Mike Nowicki of the regulatory division of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers office in Jacksonville declared that the end of the agency's environmental review of the Ridge Road Extension project is in sight.

But not so fast: On a clear night the Orion Nebula is in sight and it's only 1,270 or so light-years away.

The Florida Department of Transportation says it hasn't submitted its nearly 9-year-old plan for the Ridge Road-Suncoast Parkway interchange to the Corps of Engineers for approval. It has been waiting for the county to go through its part of the review process first. DOT would have to tweak its interchange design before submitting it to the Corps of Engineers.

The Suncoast Parkway opened to traffic in 2001. If by 2011 we're still talking about the Ridge Road Extension in the future tense we won't be all that surprised.

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