For Excellence in Wetlands and Other Ecosystems:
State Route 87

Arizona Department of Transportation
HDR Engineering, Inc.
Tonto National Forest
FNF Construction, Inc.
R. E. Monks Construction, Co.
Parsons Brinckerhoff Construction Services
Agra Infrastucture
Logan, Simpson & Dye
Wheat-Gallaher & Assoc.
Engineers International
Cella Barr Associates

This highway section in the heart of the Tonto National Forest is an important commerce corridor and primary link between Phoenix and recreational opportunities along the Mongollon Rim and in the White Mountains. Keeping scenic views, preserving geologic formations, protecting valuable ecosystems ... the planners and designers met all these environmental challenges and aesthetic concerns when they widened and improved State Route 87. To ensure that the road would "lay easy on the land," the project team did everything from avoiding alignments that would block scenic vistas to staining new rock surfaces so they would match the desert varnish of adjacent rock slopes to roughening interior surfaces of box culverts for a bat habitat. The stakeholder group for this project consisted of representatives from more than 50 groups who committed to an environmentally and visually sensitive project. The environmental mitigation used on State Route 87 was so successful that it has become the standard for all future roadway designs within the Tonto National Forest.