30 Crossing opponents want update on work by state, federal officials

Plaintiffs challenging the nearly $1 billion 30 Crossing project asked a U.S. district judge to order the defendants to submit an accounting of their activities associated with the project since a stay in the lawsuit was granted Dec. 30.

They also want the judge to set a deadline for the defendants to submit their reassessment of the project if the reassessment remains ongoing. The defendants asked for the delay in the case to allow them to reassess the project.

The request came in a lawsuit seeking to stop the project until a more rigorous review of its impact can be conducted.

A coalition of area neighborhood groups and residents filed the lawsuit in May 2019. The defendants are the Arkansas Department of Transportation and the Federal Highway Administration. The case is assigned to U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr.

Monday’s motion came after the Transportation Department formally asked Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for Central Arkansas, to add $350 million to the project to remake the Interstate 30 corridor through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock.

The project, which the department has dubbed 30 Crossing, includes replacing the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River.

The additional money would bring to $981.7 million the total that the department has committed to the project.

The department originally identified $631.7 million that would be available, but

the joint venture selected to complete the project’s design and perform the construction put the total price tag at nearly $1 billion. At that point, the department said the project would be built in phases.

The additional money, which would allow all of the project to be built, will be available if voters approve Issue 1, which is a proposal on the Nov. 3 general election ballot to make permanent a half-percent statewide sales tax devoted to road work. In 2012, voters approved the tax for 10 years.

Metroplan has put out the request for public comment through April 20.

Separately, according to the motion filed Monday, the Transportation Department put out for public comment evaluations prepared for potential impacts of the project on the North Shore Riverwalk Park, the Julius Breckling Riverfront Park and the Clinton Presidential Center and Park.

The flurry of activity left the lead attorney in the lawsuit, Richard Mays of Little Rock, questioning the motivation of the defendants.

“Based on the events described … it appears that defendants either do not currently know what the scope of the Project is to be, or are attempting to buy time (and allocate money … based upon defendants’ prediction of the result of a future election) until after the November 2020 general election to determine whether Issue One will be adopted, or both,” he said.

Meanwhile, the defendants originally estimated that the reevaluation of the environmental assessment was supposed to have been completed in late February or early March, Mays said.

“A month has expired since the estimated completion time for the re-evaluation, and defendants have failed to produce a re-evaluation report or to explain why no report has been submitted,” he wrote.

Meanwhile additional work — including design, drilling and testing, and preparing agreements for utility relocation — is taking place at the cost of millions of dollars “without a clear decision of what the project is to include” and without a final decision on whether the project has met federal requirements, which Mays said could be construed as an “unwise and risky use of taxpayers’ monies.”

That led Mays to suggest the “defendants appear to be using the stay of proceedings in this case for purposes other than conducting a re-assessment of the Environmental Assessment issued in February, 2019.”

He urged the court to require the defendants to submit a “complete report of the activities” they have conducted on the project since the stay was issued. The report should include the status of the project proposed to be built and all contracts between the department and contractors, including “detailed descriptions of the tasks and the costs of the tasks … and the status of the tasks.”

Mays also asked for a status report on the reassessment of the environmental assessment and, if completed, a copy of the reassessment. If it isn’t done, he said, the judge should set a deadline for its completion.