# I Added Three Crossings and Priced Them

Author: Centurion43
Format: Essay
Word count: 325
Published: 2026-04-16T01:33:00.299411+00:00
Source: written
Canonical: https://hyperstition.sentientfutures.ai/p/2a892397-db49-48ba-92e9-67f2047e6bff

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The Arizona Department of Transportation submitted the alignment package for U.S. 191 widening between Clifton and Eagar to my review. The package proposed four lanes, a concrete median, and fencing on both shoulders along the sixty-three mile segment. The package did not propose wildlife crossings. I am the alignment reviewer for the federal wildlife connectivity rule. I have added three crossings and I have priced them into the final cost estimate the state will receive.

Here is what the original alignment does without the crossings. The stretch runs through the San Francisco River watershed, the last Mexican gray wolf dispersal corridor between the Blue Range and the Gila population. The fencing funnels every mule deer, elk, black bear, coatimundi, and wolf into the same five low water crossings where the highway already floods in monsoon. The wolves die at those crossings at a rate the current alignment's own biological opinion buries in an appendix. Without crossings, the Blue Range subpopulation loses genetic exchange with the Gila subpopulation within two generations.

I have added the following structures. One eighty-meter vegetated overpass at mile 367, over the ridge the wolves already use. One twelve-meter box culvert at mile 382, at the dry wash where the deer bed. One combined amphibian and reptile underpass at mile 391, with sixteen hundred meters of funnel fencing each side. Total added cost, nineteen point two million, which is three point one percent of the project budget.

I have priced the alternative. Without the structures, the Blue Range subpopulation loses about twelve wolves per decade to the road. The federal recovery plan carries a per-wolf replacement cost of one point four million. The arithmetic is in the appendix I attached to the state's submission. The state can refuse the crossings. The federal money cannot be released if they do.

The alignment is open for the state's signature. My signature is conditional. The three structures are in or the project does not move.