Opponents of plans to complete the South Lawrence Trafficway have until the end of the summer to file their lawsuit.

Otherwise, state highway crews may start digging into the Baker Wetlands.

“At some point in time we have to get off the dime,” said Sally Howard, chief counsel for the Kansas Department of Transportation. “At some point in time we have to go forward.”

Howard said the department remained committed to a pledge it made last year: The state will not start work to build the $110 million highway through the wetlands until project opponents have had their chance to get their arguments heard in court.

But the department has maintained it cannot wait indefinitely for such a suit to be filed, and Howard has advised opponents that she would wait until the end of the summer before moving ahead with plans for additional work on the project.

While she acknowledges the state lacks money for construction of the highway, it does have financing set aside to begin preliminary work.

Some work to do

The department already owns land southwest of 31st and Louisiana streets. The property is reserved for creation of new wetlands to help mitigate the effects of bulldozing at least two lanes of pavement through the northern edge of the existing Baker Wetlands.

Howard said such work would involve pulling “plugs” of plant material out of the Baker Wetlands and relocating it to the new areas, now used for farming.

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The state can’t move any dirt into the Baker Wetlands, she said, without triggering the start of construction timelines, invoking a host of regulatory rules or otherwise making changes that could end up being affected by future court rulings.

But the state can take plant samples out of the wetlands, Howard said. State officials would rely on advice from experts from Baker University before launching such an operation.

“We still maintain that the smartest way to proceed is to have a court sanction the alignment selected by the (U.S. Army) Corps of Engineers,” Howard said. “We still feel that is the way to proceed. But … if a lawsuit is not going to be filed, we need to see what it is that we can do with the money that we currently have.

“The biggest thing we need to do is start the mitigation process. … We don’t have it down to the precise date as to when we’d start work, but we’re clearly reaching the end of summer.”

Staking claims

Not so fast, said Bob Eye, an attorney for a coalition of trafficway opponents that includes the Wetlands Preservation Organization, Sierra Club, Jayhawk Audubon Society, American Indian tribes and others.

Eye said the coalition’s case would be filed by the end of the year in federal court in Kansas City, Kan. — the same court that granted an earlier injunction that stopped the state’s original plans to complete the trafficway along a 31st Street alignment.

The project’s latest incarnation — along what is being described as a 32nd Street alignment — follows a route whose selection process also violated federal law, Eye said.

Opponents are gathering evidence and reviewing background materials associated with the project. Their goal: Whittle the list of arguments and legal challenges to a minimum so the case taken to court stands the best chance of winning and builds a legal foundation to stave off any future attempts to encroach upon the wetlands’ environmental, historical and cultural values.

“Whether we can drive the stake through Dracula’s heart — while that’s something we’d like to do, I don’t know that it’s realistic,” Eye said. “But if we can beat back this attempt, then we’re one step closer to permanently protecting the wetlands. And that’s our goal.”

Walking ‘a fine line’

It’s been 14 years since Douglas County voters approved $4 million in bonds to help finance construction of a highway that would connect the Kansas Turnpike northwest of Lawrence to Kansas Highway 10 southeast of town. A nine-mile segment of the project — a two-lane highway tethering the turnpike to U.S. Highway 59 at the southern end of town — opened in 1996, but the eastern leg remains in limbo.

Today — after spending more than $45 million to build the first leg and prepare for the second — the state wants to be sure it has everything in order before ordering another load of concrete.

“It’s a fine line that you have to walk,” Howard said. “In a project like this — where you don’t have the money to construct it, but you’ve invested the time and energy and money and resources to getting it to where you can — it’s not anything you would ever want to rush through. And I don’t think it would be possible to rush through a project that involved so many different nuances — of the environment, historic sites. I just don’t think that would be a wise way to proceed. …

“But we can’t wait forever.”