(Photo courtesy of Arizona Department of Transportation)

South Mountain Freeway map.

(Photo by Matthew Casey, KJZZ)

Protesters against the South Mountain Freeway gather outside the federal courthouse in downtown Phoenix.

(Photo by Matthew Casey, KJZZ)

PARC President Pat Lawlis.

(Photo by Matthew Casey, KJZZ)

ADOT spokesman Dustin Krugel.

(Photo by Matthew Casey, KJZZ)

Gila River Indian Community Gov. Stephen Roe Lewis.

A coalition opposed to the South Mountain Freeway spent Wednesday in federal court where their attorneys tried to convince a judge to halt efforts to build it.

About an hour before the hearing, protesters with Protecting Arizona Resources and Children (PARC) gathered outside.

“Save the mountain, save the kids, say no to 202,” about 20 people chanted.

PARC is one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit accusing state and federal agencies of breaking environmental protection and transportation laws while planning the South Mountain Freeway, which would connect west Phoenix and the East Valley.
 
PARC President Pat Lawlis said they should have to start the planning process over. “Because I feel quite certain that if they follow the law this time, when they restart the process, they’re never going to end up with that particular plan, and they very well probably won’t even end up with the freeway,” Lawlis said.

But inside the courtroom, the defense argued that plaintiffs have not proved that the agencies committed irreversible resources to the current plan without considering alternatives. They also said analysis of the freeway’s environmental impact went as far as science can take it.

“This is the most extensive environmental review ADOT has done on any single project in the history of all of our highway projects,” said Dustin Krugel, spokesman for the Arizona Department of Transportation.
 
The Gila River Indian Community is also a plaintiff in the lawsuit. Their lawyer argued in federal court Wednesday that freeway planners always assumed they’d be allowed to build on top of a trio of wells owned by the tribe.
 
The tribed has nixed that idea, and defense attorneys said freeway contractors have been told to design it around the wells. If it still impacts tribal access, plans will be re-evaluated, they said.

The wells serve one of the largest districts on a reservation where agriculture is a way of life, said Stephen Roe Lewis, governor of the Gila River Indian Community.
 
“This potential destruction for these wells would be a devastating impact to our community moving forward,” Lewis said.
 
When the judge asked how building the freeway around wells guarantees the tribe access to the them, the defense attorney said that won’t be known until the design is complete.

The tribe is also concerned about destruction of sacred land near South Mountain. The freeway project will impact the land, defense attorneys said. But they argued that they’d spent significant time working to minimize it, and the tribe could have appealed to the national Advisory Council on Historic Preservation.
    
The freeway will have a devastating and permanent effect on the Gila River Indian Community, its attorney said in court.

“Mitigation, within the context of our legal argument moving forward, is an incompatible option to a total desecration and total destruction of what we hold dear to us,” Roe said.

The judge did not rule Wednesday, and told the parties she would take their arguments under advisement.

ADOT hopes to start building the freeway this summer and Krugel said a delay would be costly.

“[The South Mountain Freeway] will actually be reducing air pollution regionally throughout Maricopa County because a moving vehicle is always better than a stopped vehicle that pollutes,” Krugel said.

Loop 202 Extension Map

Source: ADOT