4-Lane Highway Will Cut Into Dover’s White Cliffs; Conservation Groups Angry

Fifty years after Adolf Hitler’s armies threatened to destroy them, England’s famous White Cliffs of Dover are in danger again--from a road.

Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson and Environment Secretary Chris Patten decided a four-lane highway should run along the famous cliffs, at one point just 200 yards from the edge.

The highway is intended to improve access from Dover to the entrance of the Channel Tunnel, linking France and Britain, which is due to open in 1993.

The two ministers turned down plans for an alternate route farther inland because it would have cost an extra $17.6 million.

The chalk-white cliffs on Britain’s southern coast can be seen for miles from the English Channel. The rolling grassy countryside above the cliffs is favored by hikers.

Conservation groups were angered.

“There are times when the national vision must come before short-term financial considerations,” said Dame Jennifer Jenkins, chairwoman of the National Trust, which cares for most of Britain’s historic sites and monuments.

“We are extremely disappointed. The landscape will be totally destroyed, both visually and in terms of its tranquility.”

Angus Stirling, director general of the trust, said: “It is extremely disappointing that the government was not prepared to save a landscape of such great symbolic significance by paying the extra $17.6 million, which would, in a few years’ time, have seemed a trifling sum.”

The money would have gone to build a .75-mile-long tunnel beneath Dover’s Western Heights and to widen a road.

The White Cliffs dispute follows several controversies over road building in Britain. Plans for additional four- and six-lane roads in central London have sparked debate about spending on roads.