A divided Douglas County Commission is poised to approve an $8.5 million wetlands mitigation plan that members hope will drive the project to completion through the Baker Wetlands.

Commissioners tonight will consider signing on to an agreement with Baker University and the Kansas Department of Transportation. The pact outlines proposed public compensation for environmental damage should the trafficway be completed along a 32nd Street alignment, a route backed by KDOT.

¢ 6News video report: Commissioners to consider Wetlands mitigation plan¢ Proposed interlocal agreementAttachments:¢ B¢ C¢ D-1¢ D-2¢ D-3¢ EArchived stories:¢ County to move on SLT next week (09-19-2002)¢ Other SLT stories

Federal officials who control the road’s fate are accepting public comments through Monday about options for the trafficway project, expected to be built either along the 32nd Street alignment, through the wetlands, or along a 42nd Street route, south of the Wakarusa River.

Commissioners Bob Johnson and Jere McElhaney say they want to approve the mitigation agreement before the federal deadline for comments, set by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. That way corps officials will know that the mitigation plan is set in regulatory concrete, not informal quicksand.

The meeting begins at 6:35 p.m. at the County Courthouse, 1100 Mass.

“I hope this will be the last meeting. I really do,” said McElhaney, commission chairman. “We’ve been going through this trafficway battle for 12 or so years now.

“This is, more or less, the final chapter, or the final step, that Douglas County will be going through.”

The project would complete the trafficway by connecting U.S. Highway 59 at the south edge of Lawrence with Kansas Highway 10 at Noria Road, southeast of town. The first section of the highway, connecting U.S. 59 and the Kansas Turnpike northwest of town, cost $45 million and opened to traffic in 1996.

KDOT estimates that building along 32nd Street would cost $105 million, while going along 42nd Street would cost $128.5 million.

No need for rush

Though McElhaney and Johnson support the mitigation plan, Commissioner Charles Jones remains fervently against it. He argues that the agreement shouldn’t even be put up for a vote yet, given the relatively brief amount of time the public has had to digest the details.

Although general components of the plan have been openly discussed for months, Jones didn’t get his final copy of the proposed agreement and support materials until 5 p.m. Tuesday.

“It’s almost always a mistake to rush important documents,” Jones said. “The lack of public input and the lack of an opportunity to be deliberative about the agreement will come back and bite (Johnson and McElhaney).”

Agreement provisions

Among the KDOT-financed provisions in the formal agreement:

31st Street would be removed between Louisiana Street and Haskell Avenue, and then rebuilt off the southern edge of the Haskell Indian Nations University campus. The former site of the road would be given to the university, and the new road would be property of the county.

Louisiana and Haskell, between 31st Street and the Wakarusa River, would be relocated to the edges of the would-be-expanded Baker Wetlands. The roads would be built with two lanes pavement on right of way wide enough to accommodate four lanes.

Baker would receive $5.41 million to build a wetlands education center, buy equipment and hire personnel to care for the wetlands, prepare camping sites, convert farm fields to wetlands and other related costs.

Baker would give KDOT up to 70 acres at the northern end of the wetlands to allow for construction of the trafficway, in exchange for more than 250 acres of farm fields. More would be added with inclusion of several other sites, whose dimensions were not included in the agreement.

Install a new a water line alongside Haskell Avenue to serve Baldwin and Rural Water District No. 4. It would replace a line that cuts through the wetlands.

The agreement could be terminated by any of the three parties involved if corps doesn’t issue a final decision about the road by Dec. 1. The agreement also could be extended by mutual consent; it would be terminated if the corps selected the 42nd Street route.