To the editor:

Several recent letters have downplayed the importance of the Haskell/Baker Wetlands as a justification for destroying them to build the South Lawrence Trafficway. These letters’ authors were completely wrong in their views of the wetlands. More interesting, they failed to give any positive reasons why we should build this highway in the first place.

There were some vague references to 23rd Street, but the Kansas Department of Transportation admitted long ago that the SLT would do nothing to ease congestion on that overdeveloped street. So why build the road? It will add little to the regional road network connecting Kansas City, Topeka and Wichita.

Locally, it will create more traffic problems than it solves. Bypasses always spur development that increases traffic, necessitating more bypasses. The rings of highways around Kansas City, St. Louis and other cities prove this. Development encouraged by the SLT will quickly clog the road with traffic, generating calls for a more Southern Lawrence Trafficway.

Our cash-strapped state government cannot maintain the highways it already has, is underfunding schools and foster care, cannot afford adequate staff for the Kansas Bureau of Investigation and Highway Patrol and is denying needed medical help to disabled and homebound citizens. Why would we even consider spending tens of millions of dollars on a road that accomplishes nothing?

Michael Campbell,

Eudora