Buckle up: Texas 130 project is finally a go

Texas 130, the highway Central Texas dueled, embraced and haggled over for more than a decade, is on its way. The Federal Highway Administration on Wednesday endorsed the last environmental reports required before Texas 130 can be built from Georgetown to Seguin, leaving the proposed toll road waiting only for formal approval. But, for all practical purposes, the highway became a certainty Wednesday. Projects rarely, if ever, fail to be approved once the environmental work is accepted. Substantial changes, just as rare, are not expected now that the 7-inch-thick document has been signed.

"Did you ever think we'd get this far?" said Phil Russell, director of the Texas Turnpike Authority, which oversees the project. Texas 130, one of four toll roads proposed for Central Texas, will run east of Round Rock, east of Walter E. Long Lake in Travis County and east of Seguin. The 91-mile highway will cost $1.53 billion if built as a toll road or $1.45 billion as a regular highway. The state won't decide on the toll-road option until later this year. Four firms are competing for the chance to design and build the highway.

Depending on how quickly land is bought east of Interstate 35, the winning contractor could start next spring, Russell said. Construction would take about seven years. Once built, Texas 130 will rival I-35 in its breadth and potential impact on Central Texas, from the traffic it attracts to the development it inspires. Already, 168 homeowners and 22 business owners stand to lose their property. Texas 130 will affect 20 neighborhoods overall, bringing more noise, adding traffic to nearby streets and making the highway a next-door neighbor.

Doug Monzingo, a retired teacher, built his house on five acres just north of Pflugerville in 1980, thinking he and his wife would have a quiet home for their grandchildren one day. "Now I've got a six-lane highway that I can spit on," Monzingo said. Texas 130 will run by the edge of his front yard, about 50 feet, in his estimate, from the front door. But because the highway would only approach -- not take -- his land, the state isn't including him on its preliminary list of homeowners to buy out. Monzingo soon will meet with turnpike officials to go over his options.

Designed as a way to relieve I-35 traffic jams, Texas 130 first surfaced as the proposed MoKan bypass in the mid-1980s and has been reborn several times since. Each time, the state insisted on a route west of Long Lake and inside Round Rock, sparking a years-long battle with cities, counties and citizens who favored an eastern route. That battle disappeared last summer when the state yielded and changed its recommendation to the eastern path. "I think by doing it that way, we ended up with a road that we can now go build, that's been environmentally cleared," said Pete Winstead, chairman of the turnpike authority.

While residents along the eastern route face a long process of losing their homes, Wednesday's environmental approval is a final, black-and-white resolution for hundreds of property owners who spent the 1990s believing their houses, churches or businesses were doomed. "We're on a roll now," said Ginny Antaya, director of Mercy of God Prayer Center on Yager Lane, which the western route would've demolished. The center is now expanding its 50-seat chapel and 15-bed retreat center after years of waiting because of the route controversy.

Not that the arguing about Texas 130 is completely over. Who will pay the $257 million in land costs for Texas 130 is shaping up as a skirmish in its own right. Travis and Williamson counties have told the state they will pay 10 percent -- while the state argues the counties are obligated to pay 100 percent. Travis County's portion is $155 million, according to the state, which quotes a 1986 agreement about the MoKan project. The county is prepared to pay $24 million, using voter-approved bonds, but argues that Texas 130 is such a different project that the old agreement no longer applies. Williamson County has a similar argument.

"It is absurd -- and I will use that word -- to research all the documents from 1986" and think it applies to Texas 130, said Travis County Commissioner Karen Sonleitner. But Sonleitner said she thinks the counties and the state can work out an agreement on the land costs -- after all, they solved the east-vs.-west route fight.

Texas 130 must be published in the Federal Register before it is officially approved. But the Bush administration, in a move customary for new presidents, has temporarily suspended all listings while it reviews items approved as the Clinton presidency was ending. The moratorium could last three or more months and may delay Texas 130. But after 15 years, the hurdles are mostly gone. "There are plenty of people who said, 'Phil, tell the truth: This thing is never going to get built, right?"' Russell recalled. And then he smiled.

NOTE: The eastern route was selected for SH 130.