The Kansas Department of Transportation can go ahead and finish the South Lawrence Trafficway along a route through the Baker Wetlands, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said Thursday.

Col. Donald R. Curtis Jr., the corps’ district engineer in Kansas City, Kan., issued a permit Thursday that gives the state permission to run a four-lane highway along a 32nd Street alignment.

“This is it,” said Robert Smith, the corps’ trafficway project manager, who released the permit Thursday afternoon. “This is KDOT’s authorization to construct the bypass.”

But the permit, as the final regulatory hurdle for the project, also sets up a legal showdown.

The 32nd Street route remains fiercely opposed by a coalition of environmentalists, American Indian tribes and others who maintain that if the highway must be finished it should be routed to a 42nd Street alignment, running south of the Wakarusa River and away from the wetlands.

Four American Indian tribes in Kansas — Potawatomie, Sac and Fox, Kickapoo and Iowa — already have agreed to join forces with the Sierra Club and others to challenge the corps’ decision in federal court. They say the corps failed to give adequate proper review to options for building the trafficway south of the river.

Jackie Mitchell, a councilperson for the Mayetta-based Prairie Band Potawatomi Nation, expects the case to be filed within a couple months.

“We’re still planning on fighting, and we plan on winning,” Mitchell said. “I was hoping against hope that the corps wouldn’t do it, but I think we all have seen the writing on the wall that this is where they were heading all along.”

The corps’ permit outlines dozens of requirements and conditions that must be met for the state to build the highway, including the relocation of Louisiana Street to the west and Haskell Avenue to the east. Those moves would make way for creation of 304 acres of new wetlands, to replace the 53 acres that would be destroyed by the new highway.

Also required: relocate 31st Street, between Louisiana and Haskell, to the northern edge of the trafficway and return the vacated 31st Street area to the control of Haskell Indian Nations University.

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“The relocation of three roads, and the creation of 300 acres of wetlands, we feel, is a substantial asset to the Baker Wetlands and will significantly reduce the long-term impact on the environment,” Smith said.

But don’t expect state officials to start moving dirt anytime soon.

Sally Howard, KDOT’s chief counsel, said the state was holding firm to its commitment that no work would begin on the highway until opponents had been given a chance to have their complaints heard in court, and that she “firmly believes” the corps’ decision would be upheld.

Howard expects the process to take at least two years.

“We want to deal in good faith with the opponents,” Howard said. “We would not just go out under the cover of darkness and just start doing things in the wetlands. That’s not going to happen.”

The permit’s issuance comes a decade after area officials conducted a ground-breaking ceremony for the trafficway, and more than seven years after the project’s western section opened to traffic.