30 Crossing ruling vowed within ‘days’
Judge sensitive to fact that construction to start soon
U.S. District Judge James Moody Jr. said Wednesday that he will issue a decision “in a matter of days” on whether to grant a request from neighborhood groups and residents to halt work on the 30 Crossing project.
“I will give you an indication of my ruling as quickly as possible that will likely precede any written order. It will take longer to draw out,” Moody said on the second and final day of a hearing on the request for a preliminary and permanent injunction.
A final hearing is set for Oct. 20, which is roughly when construction is set to begin on the first phase.
“My analysis would be what harm comes between now and then before a final ruling from the court on the final hearing,” Moody said.
The judge’s comments wrapped up almost a full day of legal arguments from both sides and testimony from three witnesses in a case filed by a coalition of downtown Little Rock neighborhood groups and residents opposed to the nearly $1 billion project to remake the Interstate 30 corridor through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock.
The project, the planning of which began six years ago,
is the most expensive that the state Department of Transportation has undertaken.
It focuses on improving the congested corridor through downtown Little Rock and North Little Rock, an area that features the convergence of six major roadways in the space of less than 7 miles.
The project includes the I-30 bridge over the Arkansas River, which cost $5.5 million when it was built almost 60 years ago. About 124,000 vehicles a day use the six-lane bridge. It will still be replaced under the proposed new scope for the project.
The corridor extends from Interstate 530 in Little Rock to Interstate 40 in North Little Rock. The project also includes a segment of Interstate 40 from Interstate 30 to U.S. 67 in North Little Rock.
A lawsuit filed May 20, 2019, by neighborhood groups and residents led by the Little Rock Downtown Neighborhood Association says the environmental review conducted and overseen by the state Transportation Department and approved by the Federal Highway Administration was wholly inadequate.
They contend that the impacts of a project the size and scope of 30 Crossing on the adjoining area and its residents warranted a more in-depth review, called an environmental impact statement, and want the work halted until it is completed.
In court Wednesday, a lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Richard Mays of Little Rock, scoffed at the way state and federal transportation officials described their review as “an environmental assessment on steroids” and suggested it was every bit as rigorous as an environmental impact statement and constituted the “hard look” the defendants were required to use in assessing the project.
“Hard look — that’s something for the court to decide,” he said.
Mays was able to secure limited testimony from John Kirk, a history professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, and Casey Covington, deputy director of Metroplan, the long-range transportation planning agency for central Arkansas.
Attorneys for the defendants had opposed their testimony, arguing that federal rules and case law allowed the judge to consider only what was already in the record. The new testimony, they said, amounted to supplementing the record.
In an email to attorneys before the hearing, Moody said he would follow instructions from the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis “and only allow ‘testimony of an explanatory nature’ that may include explaining the nature of the project, the administrative record, and the procedures used to compile the record so long as the testimony is offered only to ‘educate the court and illuminate the administrative record.’
“Plaintiffs are expected to elicit testimony subject to these parameters, and Defendants are expected to timely object if they think an objection is warranted.”
Kirk, who specializes in the civil rights movement, has written extensively on race relations in Little Rock, particularly how geographical boundaries have helped segregate the city, with many Black residents living east of I-30 and south of Interstate 630 while whites generally
live west of I-30 and north of I-630.
The defendants’ attorney objected throughout Kirk’s testimony, which left Mays to continue his questioning under a proffer that isn’t part of the evidence but would allow the opportunity for review of the objections on appeal.
Under questioning from Mays, Kirk suggested 30 Crossing would “further amplify and exacerbate the existing issues” in a city divided along racial lines.
“If I-30 was that segregation barrier between Black and white Little Rock, [the project] is adding to that and thickening that line of segregation between the two communities,” he said. “It will have a substantial, symbolic, psychological and actual physical impact.”
That history was left unmentioned in the environmental justice section of the review, Mays said.
Under questioning from Chris Chellis, trial attorney in the environmental and natural resources division of the U.S. Department of Justice, Kirk acknowledged he was only “vaguely aware” of the public hearings held for the project in which he could have but did not offer his comments and made them part of the record.
He also was unaware of a separate comment period and acknowledged his review of the documents in the case consisted only of what Mays provided him.
Moody interjected little through Wednesday’s proceedings, limiting himself to rephrasing questions, asking for clarification on points the attorneys were making and considering objections.
But the judge did suggest Mays went far afield in arguing about 30 Crossing’s impacts on other parts of the interstate system. Mays has homed in on segments of Interstate 30 west of the 30 Crossing corridor and Interstate 630 west from its interchange with I-30 that would see increased congestion because of the extra traffic that 30 Crossing will attract by 2045, the project’s design year.
That congestion would have to be addressed with other projects, impacts the environmental assessment for 30 Crossing didn’t consider.
Mays also raised the prospect of the impact of Future I-57 on 30 Crossing traffic. Future I-57 is under department study, specifically a segment from Walnut Ridge to the Missouri border. Building that segment to interstate standards would help make U.S. 67 from North Little Rock a controlled-access road to St. Louis and eventually Chicago.
“Where do you draw the line?” in developing a project scope, Moody asked. “Walnut Ridge?”
But Mays cited the impact of Future I-57, pointing out the route will attract traffic from Texas, and even Mexico, to points north through Little Rock.
“You can say with a reasonable degree of certainty that it’s going to have an impact on traffic in Little Rock,” he said.
Rita Looney, chief counsel for the Transportation Department, said “there’s been no presentation of irreparable harm to the plaintiffs,” an element necessary to impose an injunction.
“It was lovely to hear the plaintiffs testify about raccoons in their backyards or watching birds, but even those plaintiffs didn’t say they would suffer irreparable harm if construction begins,” she said.