Mitigation offers Baker $8.5 million in incentives

The Kansas Department of Transportation wants to build a highway through the Baker Wetlands, and it’s offering $8.5 million in incentives to help drive it through.

Baker University embraces the deal because the money would help make the area bigger, more accessible and open for education and research, said Dan Lambert, university president. Baker has owned and managed the wetlands south of 31st Street between Louisiana Street and Haskell Avenue since 1968.

Giving up about 60 acres for a road, he said, would pay off by allowing more than an additional 300 acres to be planted, nurtured and preserved as natural areas for decades to come.

“The reality is Baker has virtually single-handedly built and supported these wetlands for 32 years,” said Lambert, whose school has worked to reverse earlier efforts to farm the wetlands. “We created them once, and we can clearly create them again.

“With adequate resources this time, it can be an even better environmental area than we’ve ever dreamed of.”

Opponents, meanwhile, say the wetlands shouldn’t be disturbed for construction of a road that would destroy trees, spew pollution, damage historical and cultural resources, cross floodplain, generate noise and otherwise tamper with a system that has survived for hundreds of years.

“There won’t be any acres left to take care of anything,” said Anna Wilson, spokesperson for the Wetlands Preservation Organization, which opposes any construction in the wetlands. “This will be so huge that there’s nothing but a road down there.”

The plan

If federal officials clear the way for KDOT to finish the trafficway along its preferred 32nd Street alignment through the wetlands, the $105 million project would include an $8.5 million mitigation plan calling for:

l Expansion of the wetlands by 317 acres, mostly through acquisition of adjacent fields and seeding them with native plants.

l Removing 31st Street between Louisiana Street and Haskell Avenue, and returning that property to Haskell Indian Nations University, which is adjacent to the road. The street would be rebuilt just south of the Haskell campus to carry local traffic.

l Rebuild Louisiana Street to the west, and Haskell Avenue to the east, south of 31st Street. The shifts would move push traffic to the edges of the expanded wetlands.

l Install new water lines to serve residents of Baldwin and surrounding communities. The lines would replace those that currently cut through the wetlands.

l Build a $1.2 million, 10,000-square-foot cultural and wetlands education center along the south side of East 1250 Road, also known as 35th Street.

l Establish a $2 million endowment for Baker, which would generate $150,000 to $200,000 a year for the university to use to operate the center and otherwise maintain the wetlands. KDOT also would provide about $300,000 for equipment.

l Install a wooden boardwalk system for people walking into the wetlands.

l Pour a concrete path to connect the wetlands center and Mary’s Lake to the northeast.

l Establish a passive camping area along the north side of the Wakarusa River, just east of East 1400 Road.

Officials from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will review details of the mitigation plan as part of their review of trafficway options. The corps’ own draft environmental impact statement lists two “preferred” alignments for the road: either 32nd Street, or along a 42nd Street route that runs south of the Wakarusa River.

While the corps’ draft study prefers the 42nd Street option as it pertains to effects on wetlands, state officials are counting on Baker’s support to help make the difference when a decision is made.

“It’s a huge key for anybody who cares about the wetlands,” said Mike Rees, KDOT’s chief counsel who helped negotiate the mitigation plan. “They’re going to have the money and the equipment to be able to keep things going out there. At some point, for Baker, it becomes a business decision.

“This makes it an easier business decision for them.”