A Manhattan-based company seeking to build a sand-dredging operation on part of 310 acres north of Lawrence has changed plans for how trucks would access the site.

Instead of turning off U.S. Highway 24-59 near the Midland Junction, trucks would leave the highway farther south, at North 1800 Road, which is Teepee Junction.

“The former proposal got trucks to the highway quicker. This revised proposal gets trucks to the highway in the most often utilized direction of traffic,” said Tim Herndon, an architect for Landplan Engineering, who represents Midwest Concrete Materials on the project.

Midwest Concrete Materials is seeking approval of a conditional-use permit to build a plant to extract sand for construction materials on land it owns northwest of the intersection of East 1400 Road and North 1900 Road.

Neighbors at a public informational meeting in September expressed concerns, including added truck traffic and the loss of agricultural land.

“I’m an advocate for protecting prime farmland, and this would be mining prime farmland,” said Jerry Jost, who lives north of Lawrence.

The company had a revised traffic impact study in October examine the effect of moving the access point to the south and having trucks turn off the highway at Teepee Junction — the intersection of U.S. Highway 24-40 and U.S. Highway 24-59 — instead of near the Midland Junction.

Herndon said the change is a result of working with county and Kansas Department of Transportation staff members on access to the proposed plant.

The study also indicates that a vast majority of customers who would need sand from the facility are to the south and east, meaning more trucks would be traveling to and from Teepee Junction anyway.

The proposed route would mean:

• Trucks would turn west onto North 1800 Road at the junction. The traffic study also says there is ample space between the highway and the railroad tracks when trains move through.

• Trucks would follow North 1800 Road until it turns into East 1400 Road.

• At the intersection of East 1400 Road and North 1900 Road, trucks would turn left, and eventually move into the plant site north of the road. Plans also call for the Midwest Concrete Materials to fund paving of the intersection.

Signs would also be placed to keep trucks from traveling north or east away from the intersection.

The project group hopes the planning commission will have the proposal on its agenda in December. The Douglas County Commission would consider the conditional-use permit later in the process.