Why Not Gravel on Dirt Road to Chaco?

By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
CHACO CANYON — Of all the millions of miles of dirt roads in New Mexico, why has CR7950 been adopted by San Juan County officials with such fervor?
The dirt road that leads to Chaco Canyon is 13 miles long and pretty average as New Mexico back roads go. It has its lovers and its haters — the comments in the visitor log at the park are usually pretty well split between people who think the dirt road is the park's salvation and those who think it is the park's single greatest detraction.
The county ranked paving this road as its top federal funding priority in 2004 — choosing it as the most important project in all of San Juan County — and received $800,000 of federal money for it. The county has since kicked in $200,000 of its own.
Of that million, the county has already shelled out about $350,000 to a consultant for a mandated assessment of the environmental effects of making improvements to the road. It hopes it will get the go-ahead for paving from the federal government when that study is complete this spring, but the county's public works director and the Federal Highway Administration's contact say that approval is dubious. The county will most likely have to undertake a more involved environmental impact statement, which will involve another $450,000 going to consultants.
Doing the actual road work if paving is approved? That has now ballooned to a $4.5 million price tag. And the county's own consultant's report says a paved road, with cars traveling faster, might actually make the road more dangerous.
All that money. All that time. All those arguments. It makes you think someone must have a powerful jones for paving that road to withstand all that. So, what could be so important about paving a remote road that you'd spend nearly $1 million before a shovel of dirt was turned?
Part of the answer might be found in the tourism services that sprout around other more accessible state and national parks. Paved roads allow tour buses, which bring more people by a factor of 10.
Right now, visitors to Chaco come in twos and threes in cars and pickups and total about 40,000 a year. It's unusual, even in the high season, to run into crowds at any of the park's ruins.
If Chaco is opened to tours, lots more people will visit and they'll drop their heads on pillows in motels in Bloomfield, Aztec and Farmington, and they will spend money while they're there. (A paved road could also be of service to the energy companies that hold leases on the park's periphery.)
Hellbent on paving, the county suggests Chaco could be protected from tour bus hordes by instituting a daily visitor cap. The first 250, say, would get in, and everyone after that would be turned away.
The park could do that, but it would certainly alter the free and wild experience that makes Chaco so special. And how would you like to be the tourist from Finland turned away at the park entrance on your once-in-a-lifetime trip?
There are all sorts of possible compromises that are better. Abandoning the chip seal paving idea for gravel and bar ditches would be the obvious one, combined with actually maintaining the road — something regular travelers on the road have found lacking.
Do that and residents would have a safe ride, the project would cost substantially less, Chaco would stay off limits from hordes of visitors, and no one would end up getting stuck in the mud trying to get there or, worse, having to turn around and leave without seeing the park.
U.S. Rep. Tom Udall helped the county get the initial $800,000 for the road work. He's a U.S. senator now, and he said through a spokeswoman recently that he won't help the county find any more money for the project until all of the parties sit down together to make an honest effort to find a compromise.
When you stand here on a winter's day with the sun glinting off Fajada Butte, it's not hard to imagine the ancestors of today's Pueblo people farming, grinding, hunting, praying — building a bustling city from nothing. And it's not hard to imagine all that drying up and them moving away — leaving nothing but road ruts and the bones of buildings.
If there is a place in the national park system where it makes sense to limit visitors and continue to offer an experience that is natural and quiet and free from crowds, it is right here.
San Juan County can do that with a road grader and an end to its obsession with paving this road.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com. Read all of her columns at ABQJournal.com/upfront.

Pave or No? Chaco Road Fight Costly

By Leslie Linthicum
Journal Staff Writer
CHACO CANYON — Stand here on a winter's day, and it's easy to ignore the emotional and seemingly unending debate over whether to pave the road that leads into the national park that holds the treasures of Chacoan culture.
It's quiet here. The high desert has put on its tan coat for the winter, and the pre-Puebloan ruins are able to find cover in the landscape. And besides you, there are only a couple of dozen other people in the entire park.
The journey here has taken you off velvety smooth U.S. 550 and onto CR7950, where the pavement ends and turns to dirt 13 miles from the park's entrance.
Whatever your reason for being here, you have now become part of the argument concerning improving this road with something called a chip seal, a technique that produces a smooth surface that looks and drives like pavement.
County officials and the state's Indian Affairs Committee are on the paving side of the argument. Environmental groups and Friends of Chaco and the Chaco Alliance are against paving but in favor of making the road safer with grading, gravel and maintenance.
The park's managers won't take an official position, but it's obvious from comments in the public record that they fear that a smooth road capable of handling tour buses would overrun and harm a treasure trove of delicate ruins that has been named a World Heritage Site.
San Juan County Commissioner Ervin Chavez calls the road as it is now "real nasty" during bad weather. The county's manager, Keith Johns, calls it "terribly unsafe."
Neither produces statistics to back up that assertion. But you can find them in the report the county paid for: three accidents in three years.
So, with statistics in your favor, you turn your car westward toward the park on a melting post-snowstorm morning and bump along those last 13 miles of dirt road.
You know this: It's not a superhighway. It's got all of the limitations of a poorly maintained country road, which means it's best to stick to the speed limit, take it easy on the curves, and lay off the brakes on the washboard ridges and mud spots.
You do that, creeping along at about 30 through snow, ice, slush and mud, and you arrive just fine, along with the folks in 13 other vehicles that have made the trip to visit Chaco this day.
If you haven't already noticed, the road that leads you here is a critical part of the Chaco experience. It forces you to slow you down and prepare yourself to visit one of the places in the world where ancient history reaches out and grabs you.
The national park at the end of CR7950 has become the focus of the debate, but it's only one of the addresses along CR7950. Commissioner Chavez says he wants the road improved for the Navajos who live in the nine houses along the route and who have to rattle their cars and trucks along the washboard every day to go to jobs and school and the store.
After you've made the drive in and settled into your campsite or gone for a hike and left, you're done with that road. But the people who live here deal with it every day, and it should come as no surprise that they would prefer an easier ride.
But three out of every four roads on the Navajo reservation are unpaved. Navajos live all along every one of them and suffer daily inconveniences. Why pick out this particular 13 miles for such a dogged and costly fight?
That is the $1 million question. Almost literally.
On Thursday, we'll look at the $1 million of your money that's being shelled out to date on the fight over this little stretch of road and try to get to the bottom of the burning desire among some public officials to pave the way to Chaco Canyon.
UpFront is a daily front-page opinion column. You can reach Leslie at 823-3914 or llinthicum@abqjournal.com and read all of her columns at www.abqjournal.com/upfront.