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Thursday, October 28, 2004

I-40 Canyon Could Be Developed

By Kathy Louise Schuit
Mountain View Telegraph
    East Mountains biologists, state highway engineers and Cañon de Carnue Land Grant representatives met Monday to discuss Tijeras Canyon wildlife crossings.
    In the process, it was discovered that a lot is going on in Tijeras Canyon.
    The New Mexico Department of Transportation has entered the design phases of a project that will reconstruct Interstate 40 from Carnuel to Tijeras.
    The land grant, meanwhile, has some long-range development plans that could change the area forever.
    All of this will impact wildlife.
    Until now, human development through the canyon has served mostly as a block to wildlife's urge to follow an ancient path between the Manzano and Sandia mountain ranges.
    Many animals, roaming in a way that seems perfectly natural to them, wind up on the pavement side of rolling rubber and pose a threat to human safety in the process.
    The Tijeras Canyon Safe Passage Coalition is a group of local residents, many of them with expertise in biology or animal sciences, energized around the concept of creating safe wildlife crossings through the I-40 corridor.
    The Monday meeting was their opportunity to gauge NMDOT's willingness and the land grant's ability to support the project.
    "We're thrilled to get the input we're getting now at the early stages of the (I-40 reconstruction) design," said Mark Fahey, NMDOT engineer.
    Fahey and Jeff Fredine, NMDOT environmental analyst, told the group the department supports the wildlife crossing project and is willing to become an active partner in making it happen as the I-40 project unfolds. No date for the start of highway reconstruction has been set.
    Environmental studies, biological surveys, a feasibility study, cultural resource studies and community outreach and input will all be conducted or contracted through the department for the I-40 project, including wildlife crossings, Fredine said.
    "The corridor (between the Sandias and the Manzanos) has been identified as a top priority for connectivity for wildlife," he said.
    The feasibility study will begin in November, Fredine said. It will include counting I-40 road kills and skeletal remains, a study of how existing highway drainage features might be modified to suit animals and a survey of the areas that landowners might have slated for future developments.
    "We don't want to lead animals to a site that will eventually be a Wal-Mart," he said.
    As it turns out, the land grant— which runs east from the Village of Carnuel in a narrow band through parts of Tijeras— could become one of the area's busiest future developers.
    While Wal-Mart is not part of plans taking shape around the land grant, other commercial and recreational endeavors are on the drawing board, said Moises Gonzales, land grant secretary.
    Gonzales told the safe passage group that the land grant plans to develop a "main street" project on 60 acres of its land west and south of A. Montoya Elementary and Roosevelt Middle schools.
    The project would incorporate a "downtown with small or mixed-use commercial," "high density" housing for senior citizens and a new road around the schools. It might even include some "big box" stores, Gonzales said.
    "We're looking at how Tijeras as a whole serves as a regional commercial center," he said.
    The land grant's Tijeras project would likely have little effect on the hoped-for wildlife passages, but other planned land grant developments to the west could have a significant impact.
   
Plans and passages
    For instance, the only existing drainage culvert under I-40 with the needed height to suit deer as a crossing spills into an area near the Land Grant Hall on Old Route 66, where a future "small business incubator" is planned, Gonazales said.
    A campground closer to Tijeras Arroyo is planned in the same vicinity, he said.
    Because the proposed culvert crossing might eventually end up at odds with land grant plans, Gonzales said it should not be considered.
    In addition to the campground, Gonzales said the land grant intends to refurbish fishing ponds that once existed in Tijeras Arroyo and to establish "culture gardens" in another arroyo area that once flourished with orchards.
    Eventually, he said, "all the land along the highway" will be developed through leases with the land grant.
    Whatever the transportation department decides to do to enable safer wildlife passages "need(s) to coincide with land grant long-term plans," Gonzales said. "We need partnerships to make this stuff happen."
   
Input sought
    Jeff Davis, a Paa-Ko resident and chairman of the safe passage science committee, said he would like to see Kirtland Air Force Base included in the wildlife crossing discussions.
    Air base security fences currently going up in Otero Canyon and throughout the west face of the Manzano range also impact wildlife routes, Davis said.
    Jan Hayes, president of Sandia Mountain BearWatch and a safe passage member, asked if it would be possible to reconstruct the interstate without center barriers in the median.
    The barriers, she said, keep animals that find their way onto the highway from finding a way to leave it.
    "From a highway safety point of view, we have to keep the two directions of traffic separate," said Fahey. But he added that it might be possible to provide some breaks in the median.
    Safety, both animal and human, is the "primary goal" in the interstate reconstruction project, Fahey said.
    While the new freeway design will not yield any new traffic lanes, Fahey said the project will increase safety by enlarging the shoulders.
    Outside shoulders, currently 10 feet in width, will be widened to 12 feet, he said. Inside shoulders will also grow to 12 feet, from a present 4-foot width.
    Public comment on the project and the wildlife passages is being accepted until the end of November, Fredine said.
    To submit comments contact Fahey or Larry Velasquez at 841-2727 or NMDOT, P.O. Box 91750, Albuquerque, NM 87199.