The clock is ticking on the South Lawrence Trafficway.

Twelve years after voters approved the concept of running a highway around Lawrence’s western and southern edges, state highway officials say they’re finally ready to shift into the fast lane and win approval for completion of the road.

An aerial view shows the Kansas Department of Transportation's preferred alignment for the South Lawrence Traffic-way along a 32nd Street alignment through the Baker Wetlands.

They have about 150 days to reach the finish line.

“It’s all or nothing for us, for this administration,” said Mike Rees, chief counsel for the Kansas Department of Transportation.

When his boss, Transportation Secretary Dean Carlson, leaves office Jan. 10 to make way for the administration of a new governor, time is up.

“It seems to me the stakes can’t get much higher for a community,” Rees said. “The state of Kansas is willing to invest more than $100 million. Where else is the community going to get that kind of investment? That’s a lot of money.

“And the problems the whole issue of transportation isn’t going to get any better. This is absolutely critical.”

But Bruce Plenk, attorney for the Wetlands Preservation Organization, opts for a baseball analogy to rate Rees’ chances of winning if not with federal regulators, then at least in the court of public opinion.

The group already has one major victory under its belt convincing a federal judge that a previous trafficway plan to build through the Baker Wetlands deserved further study, which led the Federal Highway Administration to kill the idea before it could take shape.

“Yeah, they have a chance,” Plenk said last week, picking through the trafficway’s latest draft environmental impact statement like a coach would an opponent’s playbook. “There’s a chance that the Cubs will win the World Series, too.”

For years the trafficway has been considered a political, regulatory and community-relations quagmire, serving as a case study for public administration and environmental law students and triggering opposition from environmentalists and American Indian tribes across the country.

But the latest step in the ongoing battle could qualify as a crossroads.

Chance to comment

On Friday, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will start accepting comments about the new draft environmental impact statement. The document recommends choosing between one of two alignments for finishing the trafficway, which now connects the Kansas Turnpike northwest of town with U.S. Highway 59 to the south.

The corps intends to choose between its two “preferred” alternatives for hooking up with Kansas Highway 10 at Noria Road east of the city:

l Along a 32nd Street alignment, through the Baker Wetlands, at a cost of about $105 million. The route is favored by KDOT.

l Along a 42nd Street alignment, running south of the Wakarusa River, at an estimated cost of $128.5 million.

Comments will be accepted through Sept. 30. Corps officials intend to incorporate the suggestions and concerns into a final document, which would recommend a single route subject to a 30-day period for public comment.

After that comment period, the corps would issue its “record of decision” for the project by year’s end, clearing the way for KDOT to secure a permit for filling wetlands and thereby settling an issue that has festered for years.

“We need to move forward and bring this thing to completion,” said Robert Smith, the corps’ project manager for the trafficway.

The last go-round

If it sounds like the story has been told before, that’s because it has only in a slightly different form.

Original plans for the trafficway, backed by the Douglas County Commission and to be financed largely by the Federal Highway Administration, called for building a circumferential traffic loop around Lawrence.

Its eastern leg was to run along the existing 31st Street, through the southern edge of Haskell Indian Junior College, now Haskell Indian Nations University. In 1990, county residents voted 13,679 to 10,815 in support of issuing $4 million in bonds for the trafficway.

The plan failed.

Although the nine-mile western stretch of the road broke ground in 1994 and opened to traffic two years later, the eastern leg remained mired in uncertainty. While an initial environmental impact statement backed the 31st Street route, a draft supplemental study did not support the alignment.

The final version of the study brought on by a lawsuit filed by the Wetlands Preservation Organization and others deemed that not finishing the road was the best alternative.

That prompted Craig Weinaug, Douglas County administrator, to proclaim the trafficway dead more than two years ago.

Back from the grave?

“This is no longer a nail in the coffin,” he said in March 2000 when the final supplemental environmental impact statement was released. “It’s the landscaping on the grave.”

To hear Rees tell it, the project now is on the brink of resurrection.

The latest draft environmental impact statement, issued last week, differs from its much-studied predecessor in that it evaluates more options for finishing the highway, Rees said. Both of the remaining options preferred by the corps had not been evaluated previously.

Rees figures that, this time, the state has left no stone unturned. It intends to build along 32nd Street and to start moving dirt by the end of the year.

“We’re going to win,” he said this week. “They’re just saying that they’ll fight us to the death, and they’ll never lay down. When the lawsuit comes, they’ll have to show we didn’t do something right in the EIS. Otherwise, the court will approve the EIS, and that’s it.

“That’s where the line’s drawn. That’s where the talking stops.”

Rees said Carlson last week authorized spending $15 million to hire engineers and contractors to start work on the trafficway, should it be permitted along the 32nd Street alignment.

If the corps chooses 42nd Street, Rees said, the decision about whether to proceed would be left to the state’s next administration.

“Someone else could build the project, but we’re not going to do it,” he said.

Opposition continues

Anna Wilson, spokesperson for the Wetlands Preservation Organization, said the state’s preferred route even with plans to vacate 31st Street south of the Haskell campus and expand the Baker Wetlands still didn’t meet the organization’s needs.

The 200-member group intends to meet by month’s end and come up with a position on the latest draft environmental impact statement before the Sept. 30 comment deadline. After that, she said, a lawsuit could be filed seeking to stop the state from moving ahead on 32nd Street.

“Right now, we don’t want a road through a wetlands area,” said Wilson, a Haskell graduate. “That’s it.”