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I-11 planning on hold as Federal Highway Administration reevaluates environmental impact

Saguaro Cactus Forest
NPS
Saguaro Cactus Forest in Saguaro National Park, outside of Tucson.

Foes of a plan to construct a new interstate highway — including a segment that could go through environmentally sensitive portions of Pima County — have won a temporary reprieve.

The Federal Highway Administration has agreed in a filing in federal court to reevaluate its environmental impact statement which found no problem with putting a segment of the proposed Interstate 11 through Avra Valley and an area adjacent to the Saguaro National Park or the Sonoran Desert National Monument. That now requires the agency to decide whether its original decision remains valid “or a supplemental or new analysis and new decision is needed.”

As part of the agreement with highway foes, the federal agency also will allow a 60-day public comment period after it has reached a decision.

More to the point, it has agreed to take no further action to advance planning work on the highway.

Russ McSpadden, the Southwest conservation advocate for the Center for Biological Diversity, one of the groups that filed suit in 2022 to block the highway, acknowledged that, strictly speaking, nothing in the agreement with the federal agency guarantees that it will eliminate what’s called the “west option” for the highway. But he said it is an important concession.

“Our lawsuit really pushed them to take a harder look,” he said. “They agreed to these terms.”

And even if the agency reaffirms the decision, McSpadden said the agreement would simply put the lawsuit back on track. And that still gives his group and other environmental interests a chance to convince U.S. District Court Judge John Hinderaker that he should block the west option.

It’s not just that corridor that is at stake: The challengers question the need for the entire 280-mile project from Nogales to Wickenburg. And they hope to kill it entirely.

There was no immediate comment from either the Federal Highway Administration, which is conducting the studies, or the Arizona Department of Transportation, which has been promoting the new highway.

The federal agency already has said where they think most of the highway should go. But it has left undecided the path for routing the highway through — or around — Tucson.

One option is to co-locate I-11 along existing stretches of I-19 and I-10, at least through the area of Picacho Peak. At that point, a new highway would be built to the north and west.

But there also is the option that parts ways with I-19 north of Green Valley, with the road then heading west around the San Xavier Reservation and then cutting north near Tucson Mountain Park and Saguaro National Park.

It also runs directly through what’s known as the Tucson Mitigation Corridor. And that is a significant point in the litigation.

That corridor is not new. It actually goes as far back as the 1980s as part of the development of the Tucson leg of the Central Arizona Project.

Part of the reason for its creation was to minimize disruption to wildlife during aqueduct construction. But it also prohibits future development in the 4.25 square mile area to “preserve this fragile desert habitat from urbanization and maintain an open wildlife movement corridor.”

At one point, ADOT designed the west option as the “recommended alternative,” though agency officials have since insisted no final decision has been made.

ADOT and the Federal Highway Administration, which is providing funding, already tried to get the lawsuit thrown out of court without having to go to trial. They argued that litigation is premature and that no final decisions have been made on exactly where to place the new road.

But Hinkderaker, in a ruling last year, said that’s not what the evidence shows.

He said it is clear that the federal agency, which makes the initial determination, already concluded that neither the Ironwood Forest or Sonoran Desert national monuments qualified for special consideration under federal law that would require it to study whether the highway should be placed elsewhere. And he said there was no analysis done on the ecological impacts to Saguaro National Park or Tucson Mountain Park based on the agency’s conclusion that neither property was a wildlife or waterfowl refuge.

With the new agreement, McSpadden said the federal agency will go back and do what challengers contend it should have done the first time around.

What it also requires, he said, is for the feds to publish their findings and then hear from the public.

“The west option is absolutely horrible,” said McSpadden. “There’s plenty more evidence that can be presented to Federal Highway and ADOT about this, including tribal concerns about impacts to cultural resources.”

And Melissa Fratello, executive director of the Tucson Audubon Society, said there are the endangered and threatened species whose habitats would be disturbed or destroyed, including the cactus ferruginous pygmy owls, yellow-billed cuckoos, Yuma Ridgeway’s rails and southwestern willow flycatchers.

“This project risks undermining decades of conservation work, including significant federal investment, to protect ecosystems that sustain wildlife, support local communities, and contribute to Arizona’s unique identity and economy,” she said in a prepared statement.

McSpadden said where the road goes isn’t just a Pima County issue.

“Every Arizonan should be deeply concerned about the thinking of Federal Highway and ADOT here, that they would run a major interstate between a national park and a national monument and right smack through really culturally rich, archaeologically rich valley that’s important to tribes,” he said.

It isn’t just the options of where the road is located in Southern Arizona that are at issue.

A stretch between Casa Grande and Buckeye also would affect recreation areas as well as habitats for various endangered species. And there are concerns in the lawsuit about environmental effects from the final stretch from Buckeye to Wickenburg.

The project, which eventually would run through Kingman and into Nevada, does have its proponents.

That has included support from local officials in Casa Grande and Maricopa who see it as aiding economic development.

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