The state Department of Transportation is already getting feedback on environmental problems with some routes for the proposed Interstate 73.

As part of its in-house feasibility study for the road that would be Horry County's first interstate highway, the DOT sent three possible paths for the road to state and federal agencies asking for comment, legislators learned Thursday.

Roger Banks of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said that, of the three preliminary study routes, the northernmost is least environmentally damaging but is too circuitous.

That route is roughly parallel to S.C. 9 and about five miles south of it, connecting to Veterans Highway, or S.C. 22, to reach Myrtle Beach.

Those comments are what the DOT is looking for, said John Walsh, a program manager at the agency. The DOT is trying to save time and money by getting guidance sooner on where to consider road layouts, he said.

The agency is looking for any "fatal flaws" and revisions that should be made before releasing a better-defined feasibility study of routes that might be workable, Walsh said.

"We don't want to submit something to the public that has no possibility of being built," he said.

Legislators said they were glad to see that the work is proceeding and that agencies that have to work on the permits are already involved.

What Banks had to say is useful and shows it will probably help to hook the road up with Veterans Highway, said Sen. Luke Rankin, D-Myrtle Beach.

Rep. Alan Clemmons, R-Myrtle Beach, said it was helpful to have the players brought together in one room.

"The more information we can put on the table, the better," he said.

Talk at the meeting showed there is still division about whether I-73 should take a new route or follow existing roads.

A month ago, DOT deputy Director Bob Probst said it would cost twice as much to build the highway along existing roads as to make a new route.

Sen. Dick Elliott, D-North Myrtle Beach, said a new route is "a dream road" and the state should use existing routes. He has worked for years to have S.C. 9 made four lanes from Loris to Interstate 95.

"A lot of communities have depended on this linkage," Elliott said.

I-73 was designated in 1991 as one of a group of new interstates that could be run along existing roads, if they met certain standards. But four years later, Congress changed that and ruled that the roads must meet interstate standards.

DOT Director Betty Mabry said that is why the agency is looking at new routes, because of the expense to convert existing roads to interstates.

Another worry is whether North Carolina will complete the last stretch of I-73 from Rockingham to the S.C. border, said Sen. Hugh Leatherman, R-Florence.

"I really believe that North Carolina does not want a four-lane coming into South Carolina, but rather they want it to go to their beaches, their coast," he said.