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.