Drivers forgetting to gas up when leaving Newport and the Melville marina area's many summer attractions will now have the first easy on-and-off highway convenience stop to gas up before hitting northbound traffic, if the misplaced and out of scale Seasons Gas Station drive through is bullied through the Tiverton Planning Board.  

Then picture the sprawl and quality of the businesses that neighbor the other local Seasons gas stations, like the intersection of Metacom Avenue and Narrows Avenue in Bristol, or William Canning Boulevard north of the South Coast Plaza, to see the development that follows.

Ask if the river of oily runoff, despite the promised mitigation, running down Schooner Road into the Sakonnet is worth having another gas station within walking distance of an existing one. To me, this seems to be the only benefit in turning the Main Road exit of Route 24 into a truck stop.

As the area around the intersection of Main and Souza roads and in fact more of the northern stretch of Main Road face the pressure of coming development, it's crucial to make sure that development is for the benefit of all the people of Tiverton, and not for the steady stream of outside corporate investors with little stake in the overall welfare of the town.

Lou Viola

Tiverton