“Don’t Pave!” rang out across Strong Hall Lawn at the University of Kansas at Lawrence on Nov. 2, as forty student-activists and locals summoned the administration to save 20 acres of wetlands from the proposed South Lawrence Trafficway.
 
The trafficway would be a six-lane highway with a 12-foot sound barrier. It would cross through the 640-acre Baker Wetlands south of 31st Street.
 
Members of Eco Justice, KU Environs, First Nation Student Advisory Board, and the Wetlands Preservation Organization collaborated with Haskell Indian Nations University students and members of local group Save the Wakarusa Wetlands. The coalition demanded that administrators ensure the safety of the 20 acres of wetland it controls.
 
Protestors were assured that the University does not plan to offer up the land.

“KU has consistently taken the position that it will not give anyone the land for construction of the SLT,” said Lynn Bretz, communications director of the university. “If the state of Kansas decides it needs the land for that purpose then it would have to obtain the land through the power of eminent domain.”
 
“We still want to use it for educational purposes,” said Millicent Pepion, president of the Wetlands Preservation Organization and representative of the Navajo Nation.

“We believe in it, we believe that it’s a sacred land, and we believe that it helps the environment.”
 
The groups gathered 1,373 signatures from both Haskell and the University that they presented to the chancellor the following day.


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