I am writing to express my concern about ADOT’s proposal to develop an interstate trucking corridor, i.e. I-11, on the west side of the Tucson Mountain Rangean option that Gov. Katie Hobbs kept on the table. This is an ill-conceived idea supported by your predecessor Doug Ducey and real estate developers, with unforeseen consequences that go far beyond the welfare of Threatened species.
Visitor experiences in Saguaro National Park West, Tucson Mountain Park, Ironwood Forest National Monument, the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum, and Old Tucson Movie Studios would all be heavily impacted by a highway of this magnitude. Rural communities including tribal landswould also suffer severely from nonstop noise, foul air, and nighttime light pollution.
Our parklands and other tourist attractions west of the Tucson Mountains are vital to Tucson’s community. They offer a peaceful retreat from our frenzied, mechanized worldquiet places with clean air, dark skies, and rich biodiversity. They are also the most requested sites for commercial photo shoots, feature films, and documentaries in Pima County.
THE NOISE AROUND US Scientific studies continue to show the effects of noisy vehicles on wildlife and people. The sounds around us affect
our bodies and brains. Noise numbs our sense of hearing and deprives us of a vital connection with the natural world. For hundreds of years, health experts have known that natural sounds and undeveloped landscapes offer healing effects, now confirmed by modern brain scans, heart-rate monitors, and behavioral studies. In today’s world, more than ever, we need places that offer “quietude” to reduce stress. During the Covid pandemic, many people turned to the peace of parklands for safeguarding their mental, physical, and spiritual health.
Comparative studies of natural areas with and without car/truck traffic show that chronic traffic noise also increases stress in animal populations, reduces wildlife diversity and abundance, and interferes with key survival behaviors, like the ability to establish territories, find suitable mates, protect young, and avoid predators. Noise can even affect plants that depend on animal populations for pollination or seed dispersal.
The impact of noise pollution is especially acute in arid lands, where sound travels greater distances than in wooded environments. With no big trees or dense vegetation to scatter and muffle sound, it travels farther. And the rumble of low-frequency noise from cargo trucks travels much farther than noise from cars. According to the Federal Highway Administration, one truck moving at 55 miles per hour sounds as loud as 28 cars moving at the same speed.
In addition, deserts commonly experience a shift in temperature of 2030F from day to night, creating a dramatic temperature inversion. Without diving into the physics of sound, the result is that nighttime noise can be heard more clearly over even longer distances than during the day.
ISLANDS IN A SEA OF URBAN EXPANSION It’s well known that islands can support less biological diversity than mainland ecosystems. Similarly, patches of habitat that lose contact with neighboring expanses of habitat will experience a loss in biodiversity.
Urban expansion around the eastern, southern, and northern flanks of the Tucson Mountain Range is already threatening the welfare of Saguaro National Park West and Tucson Mountain Park. And if ADOT’s proposal for a traffic corridor around the western side of this mountain range is approved along with development that would follow the Tucson Mountains would assuredly become an island in a sea of urban expansion. Consider the fate of Camelback Mountain, an ecologically isolated and impoverished landmark which now offers little more than a place to hike in the Greater Phoenix area.
I strongly urge you to advise ADOT to drop their proposed option for a trucking corridor through Avra Valley on the west side of the Tucson Mountains. Better options exist to achieve the needed balance between progress and sustainability in Arizona.
Thomas Wiewandt is a field ecologist who graduated with a MS in Zoology from the University of Arizona and a PhD in Ecology & Evolutionary Biology from Cornell (1977).
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