Finishing the South Lawrence Trafficway remains little more than a vision on paper, as project opponents, transportation officials and federal regulators brace themselves for another few years of indecision.

“There’s still a lot of fight to be fought,” said Charles Jones, a Douglas County Commissioner who has opposed efforts to finish the highway through the Baker Wetlands.

Officials on both sides of the issue know there should be plenty of time to duke it out, given the latest impasse in a project that has toiled for more than 14 years.

Helping drive the uncertainty are a lack of money from the state, talk of lawsuits from opponents, reviews of environmental studies by federal officials and a promise to hold off investing any money into the project until its ultimate direction is settled.

Add it all up, and county officials expect at least another year of an all-too-familiar refrain of trafficway limbo.

“Douglas County is 20 years behind the curve,” said Jere McElhaney, a county commissioner. “We should be talking about another trafficway farther south by now — a second trafficway south of the Wakarusa River — but special interests have gotten in the way. Peoples’ hard-headedness has gotten in the way. And peoples’ emotions have gotten in the way of good planning here in the community.”

The trafficway project has been in the works for years.

In 1989, the Kansas Legislature included the project in its Comprehensive Highway Program. At the time, the project was envisioned to connect the Kansas Turnpike northwest of Lawrence with Kansas Highway 10 southeast of town at Noria Road, at a cost of $43 million.

Rising costs

In 1996, the first section of the trafficway — connecting the turnpike with U.S. Highway 59 at the southern end of town — opened to traffic. It cost about $60 million.

Today, completing the trafficway is estimated to be a $110.2 million job. It would drive a four-lane highway along what is described as a 32nd Street alignment, running through the northern edge of the wetlands considered sacred by many American Indians and embraced for preservation by environmental and other groups.

The route, designed and proposed by the Kansas Department of Transportation, won tentative approval in January from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the federal agency responsible for regulating wetlands.

Bob Smith, the corps’ trafficway project manager, said he expected the corps to issue its “record of decision” and related rulings sometime this year, clearing the way for a project to be built. Opponents have lobbied corps officials to favor a project that would run the road south of the Wakarusa River.

If the corps sticks to its guns, opponents are prepared to take their battle to court. Bruce Plenk, an attorney for the Wetlands Preservation Organization, said there was a “100 percent certainty” of legal action to stop the project, should the corps clear a regulatory path for construction.

Lawsuits in waiting

“If they’re moving dirt or buying land or cutting a swath through the wetlands to mark a path, we would need to seek an injunction to stop them,” Plenk said. “It’s not unusual for lawsuits, including appeals, to take two, three, four years.”

Deb Miller, who took office in January as the state’s transportation secretary, has promised not to spend any state money to finish the trafficway until all regulatory and legal issues are settled.

“We’ll work off the presumption that lawsuits will be filed and we will await the outcome of that course before we proceed definitely,” Miller said, soon after she started work in the Docking State Office Building in Topeka. “It will give us a chance to decide what to do and when we can do it.”

Financial concerns are driving the judicious approach, Miller said. Legislators have cut into state highway funds to help fill budget holes that continue to grow deeper as the economy lags.

Bob Johnson, chairman of the county commission, doesn’t blame Miller for making the move during such tight financial times for the state. But he’s still counting on the trafficway’s final stretch being routed along the 32nd Street alignment, as he’s advocated for during his two years on the commission.

“This project has been, from day one, a series of little disappointments, but I still believe it’s the right thing to do,” Johnson said. “The need is self-evident, and I believe we’ll get it done.”

Jones agrees with Johnson’s sentiments, but differs with its implementation.

“I think the community continues to struggle with this issue,” Jones said. “I personally think that moving it south of the river will allow it to occur much faster, and accommodate the growth patterns of the city more effectively.”