Moves to buy land, draw up plans and compile bid documents for completing the South Lawrence Trafficway are speeding up in an effort to avoid the state’s expanding financial pothole.

The Kansas Department of Transportation is continuing its push to have construction crews ready to start moving dirt for the trafficway’s eastern leg by year’s end, said Mike Rees, the department’s chief counsel.

Rees also hopes to have negotiations closed for buying much of the estimated 200 acres needed to build the trafficway’s interchange at Kansas Highway 10 near Noria Road.

But dire warnings this week about the state’s deepening budget crisis clearly have Rees and others worried. Officials estimate Kansas coffers to be at least $310 million in the red through June, and more than $1 billion behind through fiscal 2004.

“It’s conceivable that the finances get so bad that we end up in a maintenance-only program, and then we don’t build anything,” Rees said. “The Legislature could come in and freeze all expenditures that are not currently under contract. Or the governor could issue an executive order to that effect.”

During a stop last week in Lawrence, Gov. Bill Graves said that any cuts made for the current fiscal year likely would hit state agencies.

“Obviously,” Graves said, “there are some issues involving transportation funding that are probably going to be in play.”

That’s why Rees is keeping an eye on the trafficway project’s $20 million budget for preliminary engineering, environmental planning, property acquisition and other associated work.

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The state already has spent $2 million of that budget to draw up preliminary plans. Another $2 million is going to completion of the project’s environmental impact statement that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will use to select a route for the road, likely by year’s end.

“I think it would frustrate a lot of people, or concern a lot of people, that after this effort and the work that we’ve done that it wouldn’t be built because there was no money,” Rees said. “But that’s government.”

The corps is set to approve one of two options for the four-lane highway: a 32nd street alignment through the Baker Wetlands, at an estimated cost of $105 million; or a 42nd Street route, south of the Wakarusa River, for $128.5 million.

The state will not move forward on several components of the project until the corps chooses which route should be built, Rees said.

Among trafficway efforts that could fall victim to the state’s budget-cutting knife:

• An estimated $1.5 million to $2 million needed to buy land for an interchange near the East Hills Business Park.
• An $8.5 million wetlands mitigation plan, set up to compensate Baker University for damage the road would cause to the wetlands. The plan would finance construction of a wetlands education center, relocate Haskell Avenue and Louisiana Street to the edges of the expanded wetlands and set up an endowment to help Baker manage the wetlands in the future.
• Plans to hire crews to clear a path for the highway between Iowa Street and K-10.

But even if the state’s budget crunch does put the brakes on some of the work, Rees said, it wouldn’t kill the project.

“Some way, somehow, this project will be built because it’s needed,” he said. “Even if it’s maybe a year or two delayed because of the funding, that doesn’t mean it goes away.”