Plans for replacing wetlands to make way for completion of the South Lawrence Trafficway also could reduce traffic cutting through the edge of the Indian Hills neighborhood, officials said.

And a new proposal to shift the intersection of 31st and Louisiana streets a half mile west of its current location could ease the cut-through traffic even more, they said.

	Members of the Wetlands Preservation Organization have scheduled a march to protest planning for completion of the South Lawrence Trafficway.The march begins at noon Sunday in South Park, south of the Douglas County Courthouse, 1100 Mass., and will proceed south on Massachusetts Street, through Haskell Indian Nations University and past the school’s medicine wheel. The march ends at Broken Arrow Park, northeast of 31st and Louisiana streets.

“It would be closer to Iowa Street and encourage people to go up Iowa as opposed to going up through the neighborhood and past South Junior High (School) and Broken Arrow (School), where things are already congested,” said Bob Johnson, a Douglas County commissioner working closely on the trafficway project. “It seems to make sense to me.”

The relocation of East 1400 Road the extension of Louisiana Street south of 31st Street is included in an $8.5 million wetlands mitigation plan already endorsed by Baker University. The mitigation plan would expand the Baker Wetlands if the trafficway is completed along a route generally following 32nd Street between Iowa Street and Kansas Highway 10.

The intersection of 31st and Louisiana streets would be removed and rebuilt a half mile to the west either in the shape of a “C” or an “L” on the map, depending on the street’s northern connection.

The original plan, shaped like a “C,” would connect East 1400 Road and Louisiana Street by curving around the western edge of the new wetlands.

The other plan, shaped like an “L,” also would curve around the western edge of the new wetlands. But the northern connection the top of the “L” would connect with 31st Street a half mile west of the existing Louisiana Street.

The offset nature of the road likely would encourage drivers to use Iowa Street, instead of cutting through the residential area and schools along Louisiana Street, said Mike Rees, chief counsel for the Kansas Department of Transportation.

East 1400 Road carries about 2,000 vehicles a day south of 31st, officials said, while Louisiana Street carries nearly 10,000 vehicles just north of 31st Street.

“Anything we can do to help that part of the residential area is going to be a plus,” Rees said.

Either plan would require buying out some property owners south of 31st Street. Among them are Carol Meseraull, who has lived for 17 years in a renovated farmhouse at 1365 N. 1250 Road, a site generally staked out for a new wetlands education center.

Meseraull has spent more than a decade wondering if the trafficway ever would go near her house, and she’s ready to move on. If that means Louisiana Street must be rebuilt through her 3-acre home site and fields, so be it.

“I don’t care. I’ll move,” she said. “I’m for progress. I’m sick of hearing about this just build it or forget it. This is ridiculous.”

If completed, the trafficway would connect Kansas Highway 10 east of Lawrence with Interstate 70 northwest of Lawrence. The western 9 miles of the road are finished and open, but the eastern third remains in the planning stage.

The mitigation plan will be part of an environmental impact statement being compiled by the Kansas Department of Transportation, which needs a permit from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to fill portions of the Baker Wetlands for the trafficway. Completing the trafficway would cost up to $100 million, Rees said.

But groups including the Haskell Indian Nations University Board of Regents, Wetlands Preservation Organization, Haskell Student Alumni Assn. and others oppose any trafficway route that runs north of the Wakarusa River.