The first of a series of meetings for public comment on the Arizona Dept. of Transportation – Federal Highway Administration’s proposed Avra Valley route for a new interstate highway have been held, and they are being tightly controlled to minimize the extent of community opposition to their “preferred alternative.” The Draft Tier 1 Environmental Impact Study was released last month after long delays, and an Errata issued recently correcting several, but not nearly all, of the errors, omissions, and outright misstatements.
At the Casa Grande meeting on May 1, people were shunted into a series of three rooms. In Room One an ADOT video was shown, and the person in charge had no knowledge of I-11. In Room Two maps were laid out with staff there to answer questions, one-on-one, the usual ADOT public meeting format. Staff, in the past, have demonstrated limited knowledge of plan details. Room Three was where public comments could be made…sort of.
Kandy Alford, a Picture Rocks community leader in opposing the Avra Valley I-11, described it: “I believe it was worse than a farce. Imagine a single individual alone in a room facing a panel of ADOT and FWHA suits with the only other people in the room being those who are video-taping you making your comments. They aren’t there to answer questions, just to hear your comments. I’d compare it to going to a police station to give a deposition when you are a ‘person of interest’ in a case. Okay, you have three minutes to convince us that you didn’t murder the professor in the library with the candle stick.
“It was a successful exercise in how to isolate, control and demoralize a group of people – which is basically what (Project Manager) Jay Van Echo told us they were working on when we spoke at the Sonoran Corridor meeting. He said the attendees had too much control, could become disruptive and that needed to be controlled.
“I had told Jay that I was uncomfortable with having to ask my questions to people standing in the back of the room. We would not all hear the questions and answers at the same time and I’d have no way of knowing if we’d get the same answer from two different people. He said they changed the meeting format to control the way questions were asked in the meetings and people who came to the meetings to be disruptive.”
Alford and others from the Avra Valley have been actively encouraging people to attend the meetings and to speak up and file written comments, comments the I-11 planners are not required to adopt or implement. The I-11 planners rejected improving I-10 instead of building a new and destructive highway, even though it would save billions of taxpayer dollars, and the valley. Newly announced rules no longer allow community critic’s flyers or signs into the meeting rooms.
At previous Sonoran Corridor and I-11 meetings the only possible “disruption” was when a question was asked from the floor after Van Echo had told the audience how “democratic” their process was. The questioner silently raised his hand and was recognized by Carlos Lopez, who had completed his Sonoran Corridor presentation. The question remain unanswered: Given Pima County’s Resolution 2007-343 opposing any new highway, recently reaffirmed by Board of Supervisors’ Chair Richard Elias and District 3 Supervisor Sharon Bronson, and given that the Sonoran Corridor was rejected by voters in the 2015 bond election, how can this go forward? The legal opinion Van Echo promised by the end of the year has not materialized.
What has materialized is a back-up plan by ADOT and FHWA to get around the requirements of the National Environmental Protection Act, NEPA. A Memorandum of Understanding between the two agencies, called a NEPA Assignment, will allow ADOT to monitor itself during a Tier 2 EIS, where the corridor is narrowed to 400 feet, with interchanges, and taking out a two-mile chunk of Sandario Road, a major north-south Avra Valley artery. The NEPA Assignment will let ADOT spin the effects of a new highway on water, air and noise pollution, a new Valley Fever corridor, impact on low-income communities without basic services like Picture Rocks and Avra Valley, wildlife connectivity, loss of business along I-10, Desert Museum, Saguaro Park and other tourist destinations, and new drug smuggling routes.
Van Echo had promised a packed Citizens for Picture Rocks meeting last August that there would be open discussion and questions from the floor. Few Casa Grande attendees bothered to address the panel, but gathered among themselves to express their opposition. Meanwhile, a coalition of community groups has called for large and vocal turnouts at the upcoming Tucson and Marana public meetings: They do not plan to be “isolated, controlled, or demoralized.”
Community Groups Assail Plan for New Freeway near Saguaro National Park
The new proposed Avra Valley freeway, located at the doorstep of Saguaro National Park, Ironwood Forest National Monument, and the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, would cut a large swath through protected public mitigation land and bisect important wildlife corridors. However, the recently released draft Tier 1 Study for Interstate 11 – the first half of a complete environmental review process – concludes that a new north-south freeway west of Tucson is needed and would be better than improving existing freeways. Local community groups disagree with this conclusion.
“Hundreds of thousands of pristine acres have been protected by cooperative efforts over the last many decades, which contributed to the success of the Sonoran Desert Conservation Plan,” said Carolyn Campbell, Executive Director of the Coalition for Sonoran Desert Protection. “There is no logical reason to construct a new highway immediately adjacent to these parks and destroy the resources that have been protected. The direct, indirect, and cumulative effects of this proposed freeway to these natural and cultural iconic places of the Sonoran Desert simply cannot be mitigated. This route should not receive any further consideration.”
Kevin Dahl, Arizona Senior Program Manager for National Parks Conservation Association said, “It would cost several billion dollars more than the next, much more acceptable alternative – co-locating Interstate 11 along I-19 and I-10. A freeway west of the Tucson Mountains would poorly serve and severely impact the residents of that rural valley, who vehemently oppose this project. National Parks Conservation Association, America’s leading voice for our beloved park system which includes Saguaro National Park, is strongly opposed to this ill-conceived and poorly studied freeway plan because of its tremendous impacts to the natural and cultural resources of the park.”
The Sustainable Cities Lab, hosted at the UA College of Architecture, Planning and Landscape Architecture, completed a trans-disciplinary study on the I-11 corridor along with Arizona State University and University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This study, submitted to ADOT in 2016, focused on opportunities from Marana to south of downtown Tucson. Study recommendations incorporated a variety of transportation alternatives – not just a new highway – including the addition of light and heavy rail, walking, cycling, new technology for controlling traffic, and incorporating alternative forms of energy production and transportation.
Diane Call of the Avra Valley Coalition agreed, stating, “The federal and state transportation agencies are using 1950s solutions to address issues in the 21st century. We know now that new interstates encourage and facilitate development along their corridor; this interstate would assure increased sprawl. As well, thousands of current residents would either lose their property or live next to a new intrusive highway.”
The public is encouraged to attend one of the public meetings in the Tucson area, one at the Tucson Convention Center on Wednesday, May 8th from 3-8pm and the other at Marana High School from 11am-4pm on Saturday, May 11th. Written comments will be accepted until July 8. More information can be found at www.sonorandesert.org/learning-more/interstate-11/.