Branstetter goes to the meetings, he offers suggestions and asks questions. But no one can tell him whether he'll lose his property -- much less how much they'd pay for it. If the state takes land by eminent domain for this project, it will conduct two appraisals before making an offer, and then the landowner will have the right to get a third appraisal that the state pays for. If the owner can't come to an agreement with the state after that, a third-party mediator will settle the dispute.
The yellow-shirts tell Branstetter that he'll get a fair price, just as they tell him his opinion on I-70 counts.
Jim J. Narcy
Mark and Betty Wonder in front of their family home.
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"I think CDOT sees our opinion at these meetings as something to write on the chalkboard to show that they've collected many 'diverse' ideas about what can or should or won't happen," Branstetter says, "and then they strike off what they want to strike off and they're going to damn well do what they want to do."
Mark Wonder wears a yellow shirt to the I-70 meetings. He's working as part of the outreach team that was created to reach out to people like him.
Another young man in a yellow shirt says Jumetta Posey's job offer came at just the right time. "I was messing up pretty bad," he says. "I really needed a job."
As the 170 alternatives were whittled down to three options for I-70, many of those jobs disappeared. Next year, the Draft Environmental Impact Statement will release an evaluation of the social, environmental and economic impacts of the remaining options and their estimated costs. That will be followed by another public comment period, and probably another round of signs, yellow shirts and barbecue. Finally, in 2007, the preferred plan will be revealed.
Mark's mother, Betty, watches and waits. Her family lost four houses to the first round of highway construction, including two that her father had built. The government bought half of an uncle's property. He thought he'd make a million dollars with the lot he had left, but all it's brought him are forty years of property taxes.
Both of Betty's parents died in the Wonder house. She says her father's ghost still drops in from time to time.
Mark grew up with I-70, which he says is almost like another relative. Some people have swing sets in their back yard; he had an overpass. As a kid, he loved to gawk at the car crashes and ride his bike up the concrete hill. "We could never write our own life story without including the highway," he says. "I know the highway like other people know the country. It's home, and will I miss it if it goes? Absolutely."
But he won't miss the unofficial homeless shelter, or the traffic.
Both Mark and Betty Wonder hope that I-70 stays right where it is. In that case, whether it's dropped to ground level or rebuilt as a viaduct, the project would take the Wonder house and five decades of family history with it. But Betty just might get enough money to be comfortable -- and as it is now, it's difficult to sell a house with a highway for a neighbor.
"They took away what they can't give back," Mark says. "She wants to leave her own neighborhood."
Another man has moved in under the freeway ramp by Betty Wonder's house. Sleeping under the traffic doesn't bother him much. "You get used to it," he says.
