Fred Dexter of Nevada’s Toiyabe Chapter
of the Sierra Club agrees that heavy traffic between Phoenix and
Las Vegas mandates another bridge over the Colorado River near
Hoover Dam.
But Dexter is crusading against the
plan the Federal Highway Administration has chosen: a four-lane
bridge at Sugarloaf Mountain, just downstream from the dam and
within the borders of Lake Mead National Recreation Area. Dexter
says its price tag, $198 million, is too high, and he thinks the
process is moving through without sufficient comment from the
public. He wants the FHWA to look at alternatives that won’t
fragment the park.
Dexter and the Sierra Club
support a bypass over the river about 60 miles south of the dam at
Laughlin, Nev., which they say would cost only $13 million. The
FHWA’s project manager, Dave Zanetell, says that estimate is too
low. Zanetell says the Laughlin plan likely won’t be an official
alternative in the FHWA’s final EIS because of “costs to the
public” that include an extra 23 miles added to the trucking route
between Phoenix and Las Vegas.
Dexter, a former
long-distance truck driver, dismisses that concern. “Twenty-three
miles is nothing in long-distance truck driving,” he says. “It’s
peanuts.”
But while the Sierra Club has the
support of Native American groups that consider Sugarloaf Mountain
a sacred site, it does not have the support of the Lake Mead
National Recreation Area. Park planner Jim Holland says the
Sugarloaf Mountain alternative would utilize the park’s already
disturbed lands, such as power line corridors, while the Laughlin
alternative would infringe on the Newbury Mountains and their
wildlife habitat.
Zanetell emphasizes that
nothing is certain yet. “We want to let the public tell us,” he
says, “and see what comes out of the
process.”
The agency’s final EIS is due out
before the end of the year. Contact the Southern Nevada Sierra Club
at 702/732-7750, P.O. Box 19777, Las Vegas, NV 89132, or the
Federal Highway Administration at 303/716-2157, 555 Zang Street,
Lakewood, CO 80228.
This article appeared in the print edition of the magazine with the headline Bypass bickering.
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