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Opponents of the state's plans for completing the South Lawrence Trafficway are mustering their legal forces and preparing to file a lawsuit this month to stop the project.

Bruce Plenk, an attorney for the Wetlands Preservation Organization, said opponents would argue that the Kansas Department of Transportation and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers broke federal laws in their planning for and approval of a project to build a highway through the Baker Wetlands.

Expect the suit to be filed in mid- to late January in U.S. District Court in Kansas City, Kan., he said.

"That's the plan now," said Plenk, whose clients previously fought off KDOT efforts to cut through the wetlands along a 31st Street alignment. "We don't have any interest in dividing the community with a lawsuit -- or spending time and money on a lawsuit -- against something that's just a theoretical idea for the future. But until KDOT pulls the project, we feel like we don't have any choice."

Krista Roberts, a KDOT spokesperson, said the agency continued to mull the possibility of starting some work on the project -- anything to keep the corps' permission for construction intact.

KDOT still doesn't have any money set aside for construction but needs to do something within three years or else risk losing the federal permit needed for construction.

"Certainly, since work has been done to get these permissions, we may do something to preserve those permissions," Roberts said.

Different directions

At issue is the project's environmental impact statement, a study financed by KDOT and used by the corps to clear a regulatory path for the project.

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The study determined that the $110.2 million highway should be built along a 32nd Street alignment. The route calls for a highway through the wetlands, connecting with the existing trafficway at U.S. Highway 59 and Kansas Highway 10 near Noria Road.

The Wetlands Preservation Organization and other trafficway opponents argue that the highway should be completed along a route that runs south of the Wakarusa River, away from the wetlands. The Sierra Club and other groups are considering whether to join the suit, Plenk said.

An engineer hired by the Prairie Band Potawatami Nation reviewed KDOT's plans, made adjustments and found that a south-of-the-river highway could be built for as little as $111.9 million -- less than $2 million more than the route through the wetlands.

"Essentially, we're saying that the corps didn't properly consider feasible alternatives and that they prejudged the decision," Plenk said. "There is an alternate route that doesn't destroy the wetlands, doesn't interfere with Native American cultural rights, doesn't raise issues of environmental justice and doesn't destroy the community of Lawrence and split the community into another multiple-year fight. ...

"Essentially, we're asking the judge to rule that the corps didn't follow the law."

Corps officials long have asserted that their review and conclusions complied with all applicable laws, including the National Environmental Policy Act and the Clean Air Act.

Bob Johnson, who has supported KDOT's and the corps' work as chairman of the Douglas County Commission, said that he hoped that the legal challenge would be filed "sooner rather than later."

That way, he said, all legal barriers could be cleared to make way for eventual construction of the highway.

"You would be foolish not to expect it," Johnson said, of the lawsuit. "I think everybody is prepared for it if it comes."