Officials, advocates team up, fight Turnpike Commission's plan to cut 'permanent scar' through Allegheny Mountain

Apr. 22—NEW BALTIMORE, Pa. — Atop the eastern face of the Allegheny Mountain ridge, Randy Musser was surrounded by nature — and faced the unsettling thought that it could be disrupted forever.

The Mountain Field and Stream Club, of which Musser is the president, has spent 25 years fighting the Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission's plan to slice a 250-foot-deep gouge through the mountain in eastern Somerset County.

The PTC is planning the "Gray Cut" as part of a project to replace the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel on the Pennsylvania Turnpike just west of New Baltimore — but it would destroy wildlife habitats, endanger waterways and change the mountain landscape permanently, Musser said.

Now, his club is getting plenty of help.

A coalition of Somerset County community leaders, elected officials and environmental groups is launching a marketing and fundraising campaign to oppose the project.

They have formed a 501(c)3 organization under the name "Citizens to Save the Allegheny Mountain."

Through a fund established under the Community Foundation for the Alleghenies, the group will use advertisements, billboards and professional consultants in a bid to convince the PTC to abandon the idea.

"This isn't just a Somerset County issue. It's a Pennsylvania issue," Musser said during a press conference Monday in Somerset.

The cut "would leave a permanent scar. It would deface that beautiful mountain," said Somerset County President Commissioner Brian Fochtman, who was joined by fellow Commissioners Pamela Tokar-Ickes and Irv Kimmel Jr. for the event.

State Rep. Carl Walker Metzgar, R-Somerset, and state Sen. Patrick Stefano, R-Fayette, indicated at the press conference that the group would continue to have their support.

'You wouldn't build tunnels'

The Pennsylvania Turnpike Commission is seeking to replace the 80-plus-year-old Allegheny Mountain Tunnel with a new seven-lane section of the turnpike that would pass through the Gray Cut south of the tunnel, according to its website.

The PTC has said that maintenance and staffing costs $1 million annually to keep the tunnel in operation, and that it's no longer adequate for today's commercial traffic.

Motorists are funneled into the tunnel's pair of "tubes," one for westbound traffic and one eastbound, at a slower and sometimes traffic-congesting speed to maintain safety, PTC officials have often said.

"If you were building a turnpike today, you wouldn't build tunnels," PTC spokesman Carl DeFabo told The Tribune-Democrat in 2023.

The Gray Cut is being designed to improve safety and relieve traffic congestion by cutting through a portion of the wooded mountain, the PTC says.

Similar projects have occurred in Laurel Mountain and on Interstate 68 near Hancock, Maryland — examples that Gray Cut opponents see as unnatural eyesores.

'Has an effect underground'

According to Musser, a significant section of the Gray Cut would be carved through the Mountain Field and Stream Club's 1,400 acres of forest land.

The Berlin community, a couple miles southwest of the Allegheny Mountain Tunnel, relies for its water on natural springs and deep wells that flow from that mountainside.

Tracey Horning, Berlin Borough's executive secretary, said the community's fear is that carving out a chunk of the limestone-rich mountain could divert their water somewhere else — or even pollute or destroy the sources.

"We're being told it won't affect our water," she said, "but as coal miners know, when you're blasting (above ground), it has an effect underground."

Bipartisan opposition

Citizens to Save the Allegheny Mountain is drawing together Democratic and Republican politicians, and conservative outdoor sportsmen's clubs and local representatives from a prominent and progressive environmental group, the Sierra Club.

Tom Schuster, president of the Sierra Club's Pennsylvania chapter, called the Gray Cut "a horrible idea. ... Destroying a mountain so motorists don't have to slow down for 1 1/2 miles."

It's not hard to understand why opposition to the Gray Cut is such a "unifying issue," said Somerset County Chamber of Commerce Executive Director Ron Aldom.

Somerset County's environment is responsible for much of its allure, he said. The county is buoyed by 5 million visitors annually, and the outdoors are a big part of the reason why, with destinations such as the Great Allegheny Passage, several ski resorts and Flight 93 National Memorial.

"And it's like a postcard moment as they travel through Allegheny Mountain ... as they head east to go home," Aldom said. "Those mountains are our identity."

The Sierra Club made the first contribution toward the campaign that has the slogan "Say No to the Gray Cut," donating $19,500 that Musser said will be used to raise awareness of the plan and to propose less impactful alternatives.

The Mountain Field and Stream Club has pushed for the existing tunnels to be rehabilitated and for a second set of tubes to be added so traffic can flow through the mountain without congestion.

"We're standing on top of those tunnels now," Musser said at the site Thursday, "and you can't even tell."

Club members and guests hunt, hike and ride through the area. Photographs showed images of bald eagles and whitetail deer at home in the forest.

The Gray Cut proposal is currently in the preliminary design stage. Musser said there's still plenty of time to make a difference.

He said members of Citizens to Save the Allegheny Mountain plan to take their message to Harrisburg in the months to come.

For centuries, the Allegheny Mountains have challenged travelers, settlers and more recently the PTC, Tokar-Ickes said. It's never been easy — but it's not time to take a shortcut now, she said.

Tokar-Ickes said that a project to complete U.S. Route 219 as a four-lane highway from Somerset County to Interstate 68 in Maryland in 2031 will allow commercial traffic to more easily travel around that section of the turnpike.

That should spark discussions about whether a massive Allegheny Mountain project is even needed anymore, she said, and added that she hopes the sides can find common ground.

Monday was the first day of a long campaign to change minds, Musser said, but the community must be clear that the Gray Cut isn't an option.

"If (PTC members) want a fight, they'll get a fight," Fochtman said.