Illustration by J. Alex Stamos
Monday, September 24, 2007
In Lawrence, ain’t no issue that puts fire in the bellies of the citizens quite like this one:
Should a highway be built through the wetlands south of town?
Depending on one’s opinion, the South Lawrence Traficway would either desecrate this nature preserve for the sake of convenience. Or the SLT would provide a long overdue route around town, clearing up the grinding traffic on 23rd Street. Perhaps it would do both. The question is... which is more important?
While 22 years have passed since the issue was first seriously brought up, the war of ideas—which has inspired advocacy groups, rallies and protests, slogans and bumper stickers—rages on.
Pitted against each other are societal issues so basic that one can’t help but form an opinion:
Should Haskell Indian Nations University have a say in what happens to the land south of its campus? (The federal government gave away the wetlands in the 1950s—eventually to Baker University—as “surplus” land.)
Photo by Karl Gehring
And underlying this issue, should American Indians in general have a say in what happens to land they consider sacred?
With developers tapping into the unpaved land surrounding Lawrence more each day, should some land—particularly a vibrant wetland habitat—remain?
And is the government’s plan to add several hundred acres of wetlands to the area if the highway is built—actually increasing the amount of protected land—a good deal for environmentalists?
Or is it time to simply throw up one’s hands, shrug off the rest, and say, just get the damn thing built…
South Lawrence Trafficway timeline
1930
Hare and Hare Landscape, of Kansas City, Mo., produces a “Major Thoroughfare Plan” for the Lawrence Planning Commission. The resulting map shows an early concept of a “boulevard” looping south around the city along 20th Street.
1964-74
A study by the State Highway Commission and Federal Highway Administration declares the need for relief for traffic congestion on 23rd and Iowa streets.
1971
The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Indian Affairs grants Douglas County a 24-acre easement on Haskell Indian Nations University land for construction of 31st Street.
Years later, engineers would decide to use the easement for the trafficway.
1985
County Commissioners announce consideration of a $3.5 million bond issue for a southern trafficway connecting Kansas Highway 10 to the east and the Kansas Turnpike to the northwest.
1986
A preliminary environmental impact statement reports the trafficway can be built with minimal harm to the Baker Wetlands and Elkins Prairie.
Agnes T. Frog, created by trafficway opponents to draw attention to wetlands environmental issues, receives almost 30 percent of the vote as a write-in candidate for county commission.
1987-89
Leslie W. Blevins Sr. files suit in district court to prevent release of county trafficway money until a vote on the bond issue. After his plea for an injunction is denied at district and appellate courts, Blevins appeals to the Kansas Supreme Court.
1989
December — The Kansas Supreme Court rules the county commission exceeded its power by issuing $4 million in bonds. City and county officials get the court to reconsider but agree to put the bond issue on a ballot anyway.
1990
July — The high court reverses its ruling, saying the 1985 bond issue was legal.
November — County residents vote 13,679 to 10,815, supporting $4 million in bonds for the trafficway. Three Douglas County residents sue alleging the explanation on the ballot unfairly influenced voters.
The Elkins Prairie, an 80-acre patch of virgin prairie, is plowed by its owner, apparently an attempt to force a decision on a county purchase of the property.
1990-92
Douglas County District Judge Mike Malone dismisses the suit. The decision is appealed in early 1991. The appeals court reverses Malone’s decision in October 1991, and the suit goes to the Kansas Supreme Court, which rules 6-0 on July 10, 1992, in favor of the county.
1992
December — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers sends out public notices for comments about plans to mitigate the 31st Street wetlands in the path of the trafficway. Douglas County fails to include Haskell on the mailing list. Four individuals and a few agencies respond by the Jan. 18 deadline. The Corps approves the permit without further public hearings.
1993
February — A citizens group files suit in U.S. District Court against the Federal Highway Administration and Environmental Protection Agency for approving the trafficway’s environmental impact statement. The plaintiffs allege the statement failed to consider a route south of the Wakarusa River. A federal judge later rules the study sufficiently considered impacts on the wetlands.
1994
April — Pressured by the U.S. Justice Department and other agencies, the Douglas County Commission orders a supplemental environmental impact statement (SEIS).
August — Lawrence Chamber of Commerce has a groundbreaking for the western 9 miles of the trafficway.
1995
October — A 900-page draft of the SEIS is released.
November — Kansas Natural Resource Council and two Haskell Indian Nations University students sue to force planners to alter the format of a public hearing scheduled on the SEIS. A federal judge denies the request, and the public hearing is attended by 633 people.
1996
November — The western 9 miles of the SLT opens to traffic.
December — The Douglas County Commission endorses the 31st Street alignment. A Federal Highway Administration official makes public his agency’s intent to withdraw, ending most federal environmental oversight and work on the SEIS, if the state and county agree to request no more federal funding for the road.
1997
March-July — American Indians and environmentalists sue to force completion of the SEIS. A U.S. District Judge issues an injunction halting work on the project until the impact statement is complete.
July-December — The Army Corps of Engineers begins the review for a Section 404 permit, focusing largely on noise and visual impacts to Haskell. The Corps suggests it may require additional buffering for the 31st Street area, including trees and a noise wall.
December — Haskell announces it will do its own noise mitigation study.
1998
In response to a lawsuit by American Indians and environmentalists, a federal judge halts work on the project until the impact statement is complete.
1999
February — Douglas County commissioners vote to spend $137,497 from about $10 million still set aside for the trafficway to complete the SEIS.
May — The Haskell board of regents votes to “totally oppose” the trafficway’s construction along 31st Street.
June — A mitigation package valued at $5 million and offered to Haskell to gain university support for the trafficway is made public.
October — Presentations by county, state and federal officials fail to sway Haskell regents, who again vote to oppose the trafficway along 31st Street.
2000
March — The final SEIS is released. The 5-inch-thick document includes the words “No Build” as the preferred alternative. Observers declare the project dead.
2001
April — KDOT Chief Counsel Mike Rees makes public his efforts to win support for a 32nd Street route that would move the project off Haskell property.
October — The Lawrence Douglas County Planning Commission agrees to recommend a 32nd Street route.
Haskell and federal officials issue a letter saying 31st Street should be vacated, the wetlands preserved and the trafficway built south of the Wakarusa River.
2002
January — Baker University and Kansas Department of Transportation officials tentatively agree to an $8.5 million package that would allow the South Lawrence Trafficway to be built through the university’s wetlands.
September — The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers holds a public meeting soliciting input on the SLT route. More than 700 people attend.
2003
August — KDOT officials say the state has no money to complete the SLT.
December — The Corps of Engineers says it prefers 32nd Street for the SLT over the 42nd Street alignment favored by wetlands preservationists. KDOT officials say they won’t rule out beginning wetland mitigation immediately.
2004
January — KDOT announces it stopped buying land for the SLT, in anticipation of a lawsuit.
March — The Corps of Engineers issues a permit for KDOT to complete the SLT along the 32nd Street alignment.
2005
November — Sen. Pat Roberts successfully pushes for a special $1.5 million congressional appropriation to get the SLT moving again.
2006
January — City commissioners agree to start lobbying for a south-of-the-Wakarusa River route for the trafficway.
March — KDOT leaders say despite the city’s lobbying, it is still committed to a 32nd Street route.
—Source: Lawrence Journal-World
Time of decision is nigh
If anything is constant in this struggle, it is inactivity.
While it’s been more than two decades since the Douglas County Commission first discussed connecting K-10 with the Kansas Turnpike northwest of town, the South Lawrence Trafficway remains incomplete.
But things are about to change, and wetlands advocates say a lawsuit is a-comin’ that will lead to the final court decision—and all the protests, name-calling and message-boarding that the issue inspires is likely to peak.
A couple weeks from now, the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) plans to release a report stating whether the route through the wetlands has a “feasible and prudent alternative.”
And here, simply put, is what observers say is likely to happen:
• The FHWA comes out in favor of the original route through the wetlands;
• The agency releases $1.5 million in federal funds that Sen. Pat Roberts earmarked for the project two years ago;
• Opponents file an injunction and the issue goes to the courts to finally be decided.
Storm’s a-comin’
So this decades-old struggle—which has plowed forward and played dead so many times before—may finally be reaching its climax.
For 22 years, every step has been marked by contention. For 22 years, every claim has had two sets of facts:
• Either the environmental effect will be offset by converting surrounding land to wetlands. Or a route south of the Wakarusa River, bypassing the wetlands, would be better.
• Either the wetlands contain remains of American Indians who died there. Or this is a false claim.
• Either the land was unfairly taken from Haskell. Or it wasn’t, and Haskell has no legal right to say what happens.
Those who stand against the route through the wetlands say that even if there were no graves, even if the land was not a thriving natural habitat but a desolate field and no matter who has the rights to it, the bottom line is that the place is important enough to the history of American Indians that it deserves to remain intact.
Starting in 1884, when Indian children were taken from their tribes and shipped off to Haskell—which started as an off-reservation boarding school—the wetlands served as a place to escape, to practice forbidden rituals, and to meet with visiting tribal members.
“This is where they got away from the gaze of the authorities that were trying to not just suppress, but exterminate their cultures,” says Mike Caron, executive director of Save the Wakarusa Wetlands Inc.
“So this place takes on a lot of significance in terms of the early years of trying to resist that forced acculturation. Really a cultural extermination camp is what it was all about.”
Caron points out that many sites of former American Indian boarding schools have been turned into golf courses or the like. The first off-reservation boarding school, in Carlisle, Pa., is now a shopping mall.
“We need to have one place in this country where that history is preserved in some tangible manner,” he says.
“And this wetland, if it had absolutely nothing in terms of nature, I think would still be well worth fighting for, just in terms of genuinely respecting natives’ right to have something tangible to recall that major chapter in their history.”
Thomasine Ross, a longtime member of the Wetlands Protection Organization and president of Save the Wakarusa Wetlands Inc., sounds somewhat jaded when talking about the fight.
“There are a lot of people still that don’t know how the native people feel about certain areas—spiritual areas,” she says. “I don’t think they ever will get it. I really don’t. I’ve heard so many testimonials from students, from Indian leaders, and people that really have a connection with the land. And I don’t think that people understand that.”
Roger Boyd, who oversees and maintains the Baker Wetlands as the director of natural areas at Baker University, echoes the thoughts of other highway proponents when he says he simply doesn’t think the claims of spiritual ties are enough to stop a needed trafficway.
Boyd was initially against the route but was won over when an agreement was reached to put $8.5 million into wetlands restoration and expansion (a project he would be positioned to oversee).
“I sympathize, but I must admit I cannot understand it completely because I’m not Native American,” he says. “I think I would have to be to completely understand what their issue is. To me, as a scientist, I can deal with the issues, but I’m not a historian and I’m not representing a religious faith. So I guess I would have to say I probably am less sympathetic about that than perhaps people would like me to be.
“I think that, to some extent, the issues that are being brought up are not genuine. Of course, any time you say that then that paints you as either being racist or unsympathetic or not understanding—there are all those terms that come into play. But I think that a lot of this has been basically blown out of proportion.”
Looming injunction
Here’s Caron’s take on the latest in the legal battle.
The $1.5 million in federal funds that Sen. Pat Roberts secured two years ago—hardly a penny to a project that would cost more than $100 million—was simply put into play get the court case going before major funds are directed to the project.
He says that after the FHWA comes out in favor of the wetlands route—a forgone conclusion as he sees it—opposition will be forced to sue if it wants to block federal funding.
“We have no option,” he says.
The FHWA report—which will essentially give the federal green light to the project or not—was initially to be released in June or July, then by the end of August. Now Wendall Meyer, FHWA assistant division administrator in Topeka, says it will be out in mid-October.
Meyer won’t say whether the agency will support the project, but he says the report is going through legal review—an important final step because the document will surely be challenged if and when the legal battle arrives.
If the FHWA decides that a route south of the Wakarusa River is a “feasible and prudent alternative” to the route cutting through the wetlands, or that neither route would work, then federal funds won’t be released and the state will have to fund the project itself.
But if the FHWA comes out in favor—as is largely anticipated—this would open the door to the $1.5 million to start with and more federal funding down the line.
After that, says Joe Erskine, chief counsel for the Kansas Department of Transportation, a legal challenge of the FHWA document and an Army Corps of Engineers’ report from four years ago that found the route environmentally sound would be the final hurdle to pass.
File photo
“Let’s say the document stands up through judicial review,” Erskine hypothesizes. “Let’s say it’s five years later that we decide to build the project—there’s very little that somebody could do at that point to stop construction. Really the fight, if you will, will be over these environmental and historical impact documents. Because once that is over, then the road is cleared.”
After the case has been decided, the state Legislature would be looking at funding a project the courts have already approved rather than the pending legal mess it would currently be funding.
“If this is in court when the Legislature is trying to make those kinds of decisions,” Caron says, “there are a lot of people that don’t like liberal old Lawrence, and they would love an excuse to say, ‘We’re gonna put our money someplace else.’ And if it’s in litigation, they’ve got their excuse.”
File photo
Beginning of the end
In the next chapter, decisions will be made in court, appeals will be filed and the contentious issue will barrel tediously towards its conclusion.
But today, down in the wetlands, the sun is sinking. Crickets are chirping, mosquitoes are buzzing and a beaver is submerging in the green water near its dam. Nature is proceeding in ignorance of its fate.
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Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on September 27, 2007 at 12:53 p.m. (Suggest removal)
I presume the KHWA report will explain to us why the route south of the Wakarusa River is not a viable alternative?
Frank, what were the explanations you heard in your reporting as to why that route, just a few hundred meters north—ie thru the wetlands—is being so contentiously fought for by KDOT vs just going with the route that seems like an obvious solution—that is, the Wakarusa route?
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Posted by frankt (Frank Tankard) on September 27, 2007 at 2:16 p.m. (Suggest removal)
The clearest answer I've heard is that a southern route would simply be farther away from 23rd Street and wouldn't do as good a job of relieving the traffic congestion there. Joe Erskine, chief counsel for KDOT, told me:
“What is the purpose and need of the South Lawrence Trafficway? It’s to alleviate pressure on existing Lawrence congestion, especially on 23rd Street, and also to provide a regional bypass from the southwest Kansas City metro area going west. And the farther south you push an alignment, the farther away you are from addressing your purpose and need of the project to begin with."
As for the environmental impact, opponents of a southern route have said:
- it would box the wetlands in on all four sides by well-traveled roads: a highway to the south, 31st Street to the north, and Haskell and Louisiana to the east and west.
- it would spur growth south of the Wakarusa River, which could lead to further "boxing in" of the wetlands
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Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on September 27, 2007 at 3:02 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Whatever... those are 3 tiny little red herrings if I've ever seen one.
A) farther away would just acknowledge the fact that this is a long-term solution...as in Lawrence is going to grow much further beyond the S Wak route in, oh, 10 years or less. Esp if the SLT is built. If they build it thru the wetlands, what's next? A SSLT?
B) how does a highway south of the Wak box in the wetlands? The river serves as a NATURAL barrier, thus the reason for building the SLT south of it. Another question: how does one going right thru the wetlands NOT box them in same way? I'm not KDOT environmental-impact expert (ha!), but I call bullshit.
C) if they're so worried about 'spurring growth', just build the highway with fewer exits? The existing SLT only has a few (4?) between Clinton Lake and 23rd/Hwy 59, counting the two at the ends. If you extend that minimal-exit implementation to the rest of the SLT, development between will be relatively minimized. Note the farmland and swampland and rest of the undeveloped lands all the way between the softball complex and the 23rd/Hwy 59 terminus. Even the area around the 31st/Kasold exit is completely undeveloped, a decade (?) after that portion of the SLT was built. Again, I call bullshit.
If there's any truth to my POV, question remains, what are the motives of KDOT et al for pushing so hard for the wetlands route? I can only speculate that it has something to do with the willingness of Baker (Traitor) University to cede their land and expense of buying of an alternate route's land.
I loathe traffic on 23rd like anybody else, but I'd sooner deal with that than sell our community's soul for convenience. i'm sure these planners don't see things that way—they'll have no problem driving on an SLT thru the wetlands without ever thinking of the culture they've paved over, save the quaint little struggle over which some brooding dissidents had their collective panties in a bunch.
Hey, here's an idea. You know how Lawrence—even well meaning types—pretty much never even acknowledge Haskell's importance to this community? Just don't ever think about it? How bout we take a breath, step back, and say—you know, we regret KDOT's institutional disregard for your culture. But that's KDOT, not Lawrencians or Americans, behind that push. We're with you, side by side, making a stand, even if it comes to some Tiananmen Square-style standoff with the Caterpillars. Your sanctuary will not be bulldozed, no more than my ancestor's graveyard will be. It's bullshit—and we're not going to just apathetically read the papers about it all while it happens.
I'm clearly upset about this—anyway, good article and thanks for the attention you brought to this Frank. Here's hoping the LJW follows suit.
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Posted by smerdyakov (anonymous) on September 27, 2007 at 3:03 p.m. (Suggest removal)
...and beautiful illustration btw
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Posted by citizen123 (anonymous) on September 27, 2007 at 5:44 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Why don't we have flying cars yet?
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Posted by DOTDOT (anonymous) on September 27, 2007 at 10:31 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Yes, excellent and even handed exposition of the project.
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Posted by frankt (Frank Tankard) on October 12, 2007 at 10:43 a.m. (Suggest removal)
Updates:
A consultant hired by the city and county says a route through the wetlands would do more to alleviate traffic on 23rd Street. He says a route through the wetlands would reduce traffic by 35 percent, and a route south of the wetlands would reduce it by 28 percent. Is this significant?
http://www2.ljworld.com/news/2007/oct/12...
And it looks like the city commission might look at the issue again, and could reverse its stance that a route south of the wetlands would be better, now that two commissioners who opposed the route through the wetlands are no longer on the commission..
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