Public gets say in which route over river is picked

Sometime late next month, the federal government is expected to announce its route for traffic to bypass the Hoover Dam crossing of the Colorado River.

But right now, it is considering three alternate routes for bridges to be built across the river.

A public hearing on the matter was hosted Wednesday night in Boulder City and there will be another tonight in Las Vegas.

Terry Haussler, project manager for the Federal Highway Administration, said Hoover Dam now poses a horrible traffic bottleneck for traffic traveling between Arizona and Nevada.

At Wednesday's public hearing folks strolled by various displays depicting routes across the river and the neighboring rough terrain. Some of them chatted with officials from various government agencies and gave their opinions.

All of the routes under consideration cost between $198 million and $215 million.

Much of the public concern expressed at the hearing centered around truck traffic now using the Hoover Dam, which was built in the 1930s.

"What we are concerned about is that some truck will spill something bad like gasoline down into the river. That's why we need a new bridge somewhere," Giles Andersen, of Boulder City, said.

At midday during the summer, it can take two, sometimes three, hours to cross the dam.

Much of the problem is slow-moving trucks trying to maneuver through the hairpin curves on the dam's approaches.

"Truckers tell me, if they have a 90-foot trailer, they have to swing out into the other lane of traffic to avoid scraping up against the rock," Andersen said.

Two possible routes, Promontory Point and Sugar Loaf Mountain, would run parallel to the dam -- the Promontory route 1,000 feet upstream and the Sugar Loaf option 1,500 feet downstream. A third bridge under consideration, Gold Strike Canyon, would be built about a mile downstream.

Greg Campbell, of Laughlin, objects to all three routes.

He advocates diverting some traffic 23 miles farther down the river through Laughlin. He said this would give the city of Laughlin an economic boost and would disturb less land because it merely would require the widening of the U.S. 95 corridor instead of building new roads near the dam.

The Sierra Club supports this alternative in part because it says it would disturb less wildlife habitat.

But Haussler has said such a plan is a bad idea.

It would cost about $200 million to widen 55 miles of U.S. 95 in Clark County so that it could accommodate the additional truck traffic, he said. He added the steep grades along this route would make it far from ideal for truck traffic.

None of the plans under consideration call for shutting off traffic on the dam entirely. But advocates of building a new bridge say it would mainly be tourists who would choose to take the slower route with its magnificent view.

The planned bypass would accommodate traffic traveling as fast as 60 mph. Construction on the bypass could begin as early as 2002 and be completed by 2007.

"It is getting toward the end of my career. Building a bridge would just be great," said Ed Zimmer, a Las Vegas ironworker, who came to the hearing.

He added a new bridge is desperately needed.

"These guys have to be miracle workers to even get their rigs through there," he said.

Today's public hearing is from 5 p.m.m to 8 p.m. in the Clark County Government Center, Room 3.

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