The Great Smoky Mountains National Park leaders appear to have wriggled out of a tight spot, possibly avoiding a requirement to weigh in on whether to build the North Shore Road, a nearly 30-mile road that would traverse the southern edge of the park.

A long-awaited environmental impact study on the road was due out this fall — now expected some time next month — and was going to include a recommendation from the National Park Service on whether to build the road. The National Park Service ran the risk of upsetting conservationists and environmentalists across the country if it supported the road construction through the park, or invoking the bitterness of local residents who still pine for their old homeplaces taken during the creation of the park and Lake Fontana if they decided to build it.

But the park service may not have to weigh in after all. Bob Miller, the public affairs officer for the Smokies, said he does not know if there will be a general recommendation included in the environmental impact statement.

This is a deviation from the norm, according to Mark Kinzer, an environmental protection specialist in the National Park Service regional office in Atlanta.

“Unless there are strong circumstances dictating otherwise, we usually put one in, but there may be reasons we chose not to do so,” Kinzer said. “But we have to get permission before we can do that.”

If the National Park Service wants to absolve itself from recommending to build or not build the road, it has to get a waiver from the federal Council of Environmental Quality, a White House office.

“At this time there is no official waiver,” according to Rich Sussman with the park service planning division in the Atlanta regional office.

Sussman said he could not say whether such a wavier is in the works or has been applied for. Sussman said it will become public when the environmental impact study is released.

Swain County Commissioner David Monteith, an ardent supporter of the road, said the park is smart to bow out of issuing a recommendation if it can.

“There is no need for them to get involved in it. The choice is coming from higher up,” said Monteith.

That higher up happened to be U.S. Rep. Charles Taylor, R-Brevard. Taylor has actively backed the road, securing $16 million from Congress to start road construction and thus triggering the environmental impact study. Taylor controls the budget for the National Park Service in his role as a chairman of the Department of the Interior Appropriations subcommittee.

The park service has been opposed to the road and that hasn’t changed, but these days they can’t say so, according to Frank Hyatt, a former park manager of the maintenance division on the North Carolina side of the park.

“They still have to answer to Washington,” said Hyatt, who lives in Swain County. “The park service was going to study it another year and stretch it out. They were hoping the politics would change in Washington and upset the apple cart.”

Leonard Winchester, a supporter of a $52 million reimbursement from the federal government to Swain County in lieu of building the road, said coming out for the road would have been equally controversial. The Park Service would be violating its mandate to preserve and protect if it supported that type of environmental destruction.

“We would like them to stand on their principals and make a decision, but they are just reacting to the political situation, which in some ways is understandable,” said Winchester. “Charles Taylor is in charge of their purse strings and that’s hard for them to ignore.”

While the park could get out of making a recommendation, it will have to state which option is the most environmentally sound.

“The environmentally preferred alternative would be the one that causes the least environmental damage. It also means the alternative which best protects, preserves and enhances historical, cultural and native processes,” said Kinzer.

The Park doesn’t have to follow the most environmentally sound option, however, as providing for public access and enjoyment of the park are often counter to what is most environmentally sound.