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Today, citizens continue to "battle a proposal that is, on its face, senseless." Now the senseless plan is called the I-49 Con.
Secretary Kam Movassaghi
Department of Transportation & Development
P.O. Box 94245
Baton Rouge, LA 70804
Dear Sir:
The citizens of Lafayette fully support the extension of I-49 South. We strongly support a
Lafayette eastern bypass and are deeply opposed to an elevated interstate thru the heart of
our city. In July, 1992, a public meeting was held after an EIS was distributed of the Evangeline
Thruway corridor plan. Citizens voiced overwhelming opposition resulting in its withdrawal. In
1997, the project was restarted by DOTD at the urging of the chamber of Commerce leadership
who have relentlessly pursued the Evangeline Thruway placement. New strategy! Lead the
public to believe that other alternatives are being considered. Many reasonably assumed that the
1992 official public rejection eliminated Evangeline Thruway. Wrong! Residents realized very
late thai the "alternatives" were all simply "variations" of the previously rejected Thruway plan.
I am a spokesperson for a campaign by The Sierra Club, Citizens Speak Out, Sterling Grove
Historic Association, Tree Society of Acadiana, Annabelle Subdivision Association, and others
joined to promote an I-49 eastern bypass. Our petition has over 1000 signatures with more added
each day. Lafayette citizens arc now at risk from the 50,000 vehicles per day on Evangeline
Thruway, many hauling hazardous materials. Why plan to increase the risk with 100,000 daily
estimated for completed I-49? Proponents insist an eastern bypass was studied and rejected.
Rejected by whom? Where are the studies? Why choose this destruction and danger to our
community? ls it simply a price the local power structure is willing to pay to keep the project all
within Lafayette Parish - avoid sharing with our neighbor, St. Martin?
We are told a Lafayette eastern bypass would impact wetlands (though their plan requires moving
a runway at our airport into wetlands). Harold Schoeffler, a well known businessman and
environmentalist and Pierce Meleton, respected architect, and others actually mapped out a route
to the east between Breaux Bridge and Lafayette into St. Martin. It runs beyond Cypress Island
Swamp but west of the beautiful Teche thru sugar cane fields and pasture land coming back into
90 below Broussard. Destroys no homes or businesses. Gives St. Martin needed interstate
access and avoids the adverse impacts in Lafayette. Be vastly superior for evacuation- with two
highways out rather than the one sure to become an elevated trap in Lafayette. When taken to
highway engineers cost estimates were about half that of cutting thru lafayette. Likely you were
sent the St. Martin resolution asking that the Teche Ridge alternative be considered.
Citizens must battle to save themselves from a proposal that is, on its face, senseless? Impacts
to the human and natural environment so enormous that governments' talk of "mitigation" is a
joke in the community. An elevated federal interstate alongside a national historic district?
Elderly, poor and minorities disproportionately impacted? Their sector of the city walled of!?
Please do what you can.
Kelly Roberts Caldwell
