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By Richard Barish
From Rio Grande Sierran, July/August 2007
The Sierra Club has agreed to the dismissal of the lawsuit over the extension of Paseo del Norte through Petroglyph National Monument. The lawsuit was currently pending in the New Mexico Court of Appeals. All other plaintiffs remaining in the suit, which include the National Trust for Historic Preservation and three individuals, as well as the City of Albuquerque, agreed to the dismissal.
After an adverse decision in the district court, the plaintiffs attempted to have construction stayed while their appeal was decided. Motions for a stay were denied by both the district court and the Court of Appeals. As a result, construction proceeded during the appeal. Since construction of the road has now largely been completed, the Club determined that there was no longer anything to be gained by pursuing the lawsuit and that any further legal action was moot. As of the date this article was written, the lawsuit remains pending until the Court of Appeals enters an Order of Dismissal.
Appellants had argued that the City failed to undertake “all possible planning to preserve and protect and to minimize harm to the significant prehistoric or historic site” in locating the four-lane (and potentially eight-lane) highway through the monument, as required by the New Mexico Prehistoric and Historic Sites Preservation Act.
“It was a tough decision to give up on this case, because we’ve devoted so much time and energy into protecting very significant cultural resources for more than a decade,” said Betsy Merritt, Deputy General Counsel for the National Trust.
The City maintains that cutting a 165-foot swath through the Petroglyph National Monument was necessary to relieve the traffic woes on the Westside. However, Lora Lucero, one of the appellants and a land use planner, stated: “The extension of Paseo will not relieve traffic problems on the west side. The road will be congested the minute it opens because it was always meant to serve more development on the far west side – and it will eventually lead to even bigger traffic jams. The only people who will benefit from this road are developers, not the folks who live on the west side.
“In the future, the City needs to make sure that new development is tied to responsible transportation planning,” Lucero added. “For all the talk about cutting CO2 emissions and green development, City officials certainly didn’t walk the talk in this case.”
