Nearly five years after what was considered to be an historic moment, Congress is dragging its feet to make good on a $52 million settlement with a North Carolina county that lost a community connection when Fontana Dam was built and its reservoir flooded a section of state highway 288.

At the time the dam was built, the Interior Department agreed in 1943 to construct 34 miles of the "North Shore Road" through Great Smoky Mountains National Park to benefit Swain County residents. However, only about seven miles of the road was built in the 1960s before the National Park Service determined it was not environmentally or economically feasible to complete the road. Since the 1970s, the Park Service provided free transportation by boat across Fontana Lake for residents to visit a cemetery cut off by the reservoir. 

In 2001 there was an effort by then-U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-North Carolina, to have the North Shore Road, by then dubbed the "Road to Nowhere" due to the initial seven-mile stretch, completed. But Park Service studies indicated it would take about $600 million and 15 years to do that. After much debate and deliberation, it was decided the matter would be settled with a $52 million payment, over a 10-year-period, to Swain County.

While an initial $4 million had been paid to the county by the time the settlement was officially approved in February 2010, with another $8.8 million paid within three months of that signing, since then the funding has dried up due to lack of specific congressional action.

There was an effort by former U.S. Rep. Heath Shuler, who grew up in Swain County, during the negotiations over the government's Fiscal Year 2011 budget to insert $4 million towards the outstanding payment. And the president's FY 2012 budget requested that money in the National Park Service's construction program with specific language that the money be paid to Swain County, according to Great Smoky Mountains National Park officials. However, a congressional committee deleted the appropriation as the $4 million was viewed as an earmark.

In 2013, U.S. Rep. Mark Meadows, R-North Carolina, introduced the Great Smoky Mountains National Park Agreement Act to authorize the Park Service to release the $4 million. However, the Park Service's comptroller determined that the agency lacked the congressionally required authority to spend that money on the settlement.

Congressman Shuler, before he left office, had sought an opinion from the Goverment Accountability Office on the question of whether the Park Service could spend the money. It concluded that the Park Service could make the payment...if Congress specifically provided the funds for Swain Country, which it had not done.

Outgoing U.S. Sen. Kay Hagan, D-North Carolina, tried this fall to trigger a $4 million payment, but that effort was unsuccessful, according to park staff, leaving the outstanding balance to Swain County at $39.2 million.